Not for the faint of heart...

[Lambourne]

Fusion power looks to be the best way of producing energy, with hydrogen as an means of transporting the energy.
Fusion produces no CO2, no ash, and most of the radioactive materials produced are only dangerous for around 75 years, so the storage of waste is not a major problem in the long term. The fuel supply is essentially endless.

As it stands now, the biggest bottleneck seems to be funding the research. Apparantly, there is a minimum size needed for a reactor to produce a net gain in power, which means any proof-of-concept testbeds will be hugely expensive. However, I'm sure this will become less and less of a problem up as the oil prince increases and economic pressure builds.

Some good information at the ITER project page: http://www.iter.org/index.htm

[Eomer]

Yeah, and as per usual bickering and cock waving between governments is delaying and may eventually scuttle the ITER project. Personally, I think it makes good sense not to build a multi billion dollar experimental fusion reactor in a serious earthquake zone, but try to tell Japan and the US that...

[Rune]

Now if only we could get cold fusion to work...eh? eh?

http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/6.11/coldfusion.html

[Aulirophile]

Originally posted by Eomer
Personally I'm all about building a massive solar farm on the moon, and beaming the energy back to the Earth. And I'm actually half serious here. Solar power outside the Earth's atmosphere is way the hell more efficient, and such a system would be completely without environmental consequenses.

Now if someone would get around to building a space elevator: http://www.spaceelevator.com/

And believe it or not, such a thing is actually very feasible within the next couple decades, and would bring the cost of putting material into orbit by several orders of magnitude.

It wouldn't be practical on the moon. Eight satellites per sky squadrant, thirty-two total, power beamed down as laser or microwave. Bonus, can use the beam down stations as space ports, "pushing" ships out on another beam. Space flight made cheap. It'd be fewer satellities now. Back in the 80's a bunch of a "crackpots" got together and worked it out. Sci-Fi authors, physicsts... with current technology, no refinement and no R&D, at the time mind you, the entire world could have been supplied with power for roughly fifty billion dollars.

Not that it matters. The ocean thing is a good idea, not a lot of great places to do it. The thing in Australia is good to, they build a huge pyaramid with some turbines at the top. Air inside heats up, rises, spins turbines. Big pyramid, but they have a lot of open space, works for them.

Honestly steam powered cars could work. Some sodium compounds and tap water will take you much further then you'd think. Try it. Just don't try and "discover" it, the patents are held by oil comapnies. haha.

Or Fusors. You can google it. It's a brillant idea in theory, no one can get it to work quite yet though.

There's a sea of alternative energy ideas out there... some just require money to work, others some research, the best ones require a breakthrough. The issue isn't can it be done, the issue is simply that there are a lot of people who don't want it to be done. Unfortunately it's going to be politics and then deal with the energy problem.... or energy crisis, collapse, death, famine, plague, and then energy problem.

[Samus Aran]

This thread reminds of the movie Chain Reaction for some reason.

[frott]

Is it Obvious Day at Camp Stupid? This theory has been known about for 50 years now.


And I'll quote:

The basic theory is incontrovertible. The only questions have to do with timing and cost. ...

The date can be pushed back much farther if more costly (or maybe some to-be-discovered improved) technology is used. As for the estimates of cost, by reasonable standards one could argue that oil is far under-priced. In real terms, it's not particularly high now as compared with other commodities, from some reasonable base line. And low-priced oil leads to heavier use and less effort to create sustainable alternatives.

That I think is a far more serious problem than production peaking. In fact, one could argue that the earlier production peaks, the better off the human species (and a lot more) is, because of the effects of unconstrained use of hydrocarbons on the environment.

Talk about "shrinking our economies" is pretty meaningless. Our economies would shrink substantially if we got rid of huge expenditures for the military, for incarceration, and other highly destructive activities. Sustainable economies might lead to highly improved quality of life.

Posted by Noam Chomsky

[Kasonic]

Truth. Dick-waving ruins the world, and not because of the aftermath. What if every dollar spent on Bush's game of checkers in Iraq went to funding an alternate energy source?

[Matt the Gimp]

I just solved all the worlds problems!

[Matt the Gimp]

oh ya, for good measure