Nano-tech Solar Cell research.

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Solar is the only energy source that can replace oil as it is in practicality, infinite. The sun isnt going to switch off for a billion or so more years and its energy output..even the tiny fraction that hits the earth .. is absolutely massive.

The tech. needs to be made cost-effective and efficient is all. I'll give it 200 years until it happens.

I say it will take about till 2050 and it will be available to everyone.

Geothermal is often over looked. it has massive potential.

Patrick, I always enjoy your posts about tech like this

I've been considering investing in geothermal or even starting my own company at some point. I like the idea of multiple houses utilizing a shared geothermal system.

As for the sun, we haven't even begin to completely tap the potential energy that we could use. Sometimes I think about science-fiction-y mega engineering projects like Dyson spheres, utilizing 100% of a star's solar output. That kind of structure would probably require multiple solar system's worth of raw materials, though

Inefficient. To get the economies of scale use geothermal to produce electricity and ship the electricity to where it is used. That is much more economical.

ruveyn

I was actually thinking purely in terms of heating and air conditioning. You can heat your house and also cool your house with geothermal. Heating oil isn't that cheap

Thank you. I am glad to know it is appreciated.



Economical is an outdated term in my books,

The question should always be concerned with do we have the resources to do it and do we have the technology to implement the idea into a solution.

Nonsense. Resources can be used wisely and well or foolishly and poorly. Economy is only a scoring mechanism to measure how rationally we deploy and allocate our resources.

ruveyn

Even so, there are millions of homes and plants to heat and we need only hundreds of thousand of geothermal energy generating units. Economy of scale still applies.

ruveyn

Continue living in a dream then. Forget revolutionary social changes.

Study history and you find that most revolutionary social changes are bad social changes. Do you know why? Because revolutionary social changes generally work against human nature which is wired right in at the genetic level. Here is something that no social change will ever undo: we care more for our own children than the children of others. Take that one to the bank.

Progress in human existence is more often slow and incremental than revolutionary.

Ten thousand years of living in communities under governments and people are still stealing from each other and killing each other. And this is in spite of all the revolutionary changes in science and technology. Underneath all that techno-glitz is still the same hairy beast. Humans are the smartest baddest primates in The Monkey House.

ruveyn

You keep speaking from past but fail to recognise a key point. The technological changes are of course being implemented step by step and are in fact progressive faster than they ever have. It is the way people should be looking at the use of technology and political systems is what I believe will become the revolutionary social change.

You keep repeating the same crap like people stealing from each other.

Resources are valuable. No doubt about that. They can exchanged for other material resources and even money. Now for a start if we could create things regardless of money through carefully designed automated systems we do not need to worry too much about the creation of products and sustaining our current resources. Things are freely available to all people so stealing becomes less likely.

Things can of course be stolen for money; With the sort of system I mentioned above in place there there is no need for money when the essentials are provided.

You seem to also believe that it goes against our genetics to be able to exist well and comfortably within a different social system.

Genetics play a role and the environment a plays a significant role too. Genetically, people with genetic traits which are often associated with crime, when in an environment where resources to survive are more readily available and people are more accepting of one another socially has been proven too have a positive impact on the person. Meaning that with the things they need around them they are massively unlikely to commit crime.

If you understand any of the above then you might realise that if intelligent people push for a system which would create equality for all then people born into such a society will become much nicer people as we see today and seen in the past, due to people being able to profit from putting themselves before others.

Feel free to read this google book which addresses the matter of Nature vs Nurture in great detail:

"science and sanity an introduction to non-aristotelian systems and general semantics"

http://books.google.com/books?id=KN5gva ... &q&f=false

So f***ing what? With all our techno-glitz we are still the same bad folk we have always been. And there is not one piece of technology that has not been used by someone to do something bad to someone else.

You apparently ignore the lessons of history, so you are doomed to relive them.

All of our technological and scientific genius has not improved the breed. Albert Einstein formulated the Theory of Relativity (actually two such theories) and deduced that E = m*c^2. What came of that? Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Albert Nobel tamed nitroglycerin and what came of that? High Explosive artillary shells, all the better to blow other people to bits.

You are an idealist. If you are young that is forgivable. If you are not young that is unfortunate.

Clemenceau once said if a young man is not a socialist when he is twenty he has no heart. If he is still a socialist when he if forty, he has no brains.

Just to put a point on it: all of our technological and scientific cleverness will not make us Good.

ruveyn

I took in what you said and I agree that people take advantage of technology for their own purposes.

This is why there is a massive amount of people all around the world campaigning to raise awareness about how it can be used for everybody. This includes myself and several scientific researchers I know. We emphasise that useful technology has be available for everyone and are trying to steer it away corporations too.

Say that it is impossible if you would like to. If more people took the same approach as I am however, as in, A LOT more it could quite easily become a reality within a few decades.

And if my grandmother had testicles she would be my grandfather.

ruveyn

Both of us keep repeating out points of view on countless occasions. We should try and avoid this topic if we can as it is counter productive to discussing the technology itself.

Geothermal does not take the Yellowstone Caldera, the earth has a constant just a hundred foot down in most places, two wells, and a power siphon raises ground water, and returns it, with very little energy.

Most ground water is 50 to 65 degrees, and endless. water passing between the wells is heated or cooled, and reused, a loop.

From the top a simple heat pump, that can cool a 90 degree day, or warm a minus 10 winter day.

It does not take natural water, the bottom can be sealed, and the heat exchange medium does not have to be water. It forms a heat sink or source as needed. Flush out a cavity, flowing water to wash out the strata, Fill with a sealer, blow a bubble, then when sealed, back to flowing water.

AC for one is not how cold it blows, which is what costs, but that outside coil, that disapates heat, in the sun, during a 95 degree day. If the coil is jacketed, a slow siphon of shallow ground water, it is now 60, and water does not need an exhaust blower, and drops the 140 degree coil to 60 very quickly. 60 degree Freon can absorb more heat from the inner coil, The energy need of the system drops way down.

It is like using a vacuum on the exhaust of a steam engine, it pulls heat, and speeds up the process.

The best solar is bio-solar, water, CO2, sunlight, as it's main byproduct is Oxygen. Algae is food, can be fed directly to bugs that are fish food, and they can all live in the same tank. Fish meal is a good feed.

It is self regulating, as long as you harvest the fish.

The Ocean, at the surface, warm, a mile down very cold, a natural thermocouple, Around here a 60 degree differance, and it is endless.

Fight Global Warming, bring rich cold water to the surface, make electricty, and fuel the food chain.

The problem with all of these ideas is they do not call for huge grants, to study the problem. They could be built for less than the study mentioned in the article. They do not take high tech materials, mostly a home plumbing job.

To be fair, I have an idea for using String Theory to power existing coal burning plants that will make them 10% more efficent, It will take a $200 Million dollar grant and years, and some new technology being built, and will advance science.