There is a lot of energy in and around our world. On the other hand, there is very little energy that doesn't cost something -- money, freedom, clean air. But the main reason energy costs money is because the people that own the energy sources sell it for as much money as they can get out of it.
But why isn't energy free? What would you pay if someone decided that oxygen belonged to them, such as if Bill Gates bought the atmosphere. Since you cannot live without oxygen you would pay whatever it cost, or would kill whoever tried to charge money for it, whichever was easiest. Fortunately no one has figured out a way to own the atmosphere, but I am pretty certain that someone is trying to do that.
Energy can be carried in buckets in the form of gasoline, in lenses or mirrors to focus sunlight, in towers which are pumped full of liquids at great heights to store "gravity", in our food that we convert into various heat and mechanical power. A spinning disc made from heavy metal can be suspended in a vacuum upon magnetic bearings which both impart the momentum and draw it down as needed -- the flywheel engine.
Water can be heated to temperatures beyond boiling and emitted in flash steam jets for powering pistons or turbines. Anything can be used to heat the water, from coal to focused sunlight. Similarly, other gases can make use of differences in heat and cold for a "heat engine" effect.
None of these things are really practical unless they are available in the same manner as gasoline or electricity. I like electricity best because it has fewer issues such as carbon monoxide poisoning or fiery explosions. (Fewer does not mean none, for I'm sure I would be uneasy with giant versions of cellphone batteries. And it depends what is used to generate electricity.)
I could really go on about the physics of this subject but it is really a political problem, and therefore I am not too qualified to solve the problem. Political problems do not seem to ever become solved so much as they provide straw men to which blame can be assigned. Beheading the king's alchemist will not increase the production of gold from lead.
Someone should be fired if a nuclear plant blows radioactive gases into the city. The party in office during environmental disasters should suffer political beheading for the inevitable lapses in competence. But, mostly, nothing is ever done and no one is every held accountable. We, the great unwashed, just keep paying the consequences in frustration and fail to ever prevent them in the future.
Katrina has turned out like that. A lot of moaning and a lot of wasted money and the water will seek its own level anyway. Nature transcends politics. Reality will win to the spin doctor's chagrin.
Global warming is a slightly different issue from free energy, but that subject is unavoidable when speaking of energy production. Lets say that all 6 billion people who now live on the Earth simultaneously can use any amount of energy at a whim, even all at once, such as when heat waves occur and the air conditioners run full tilt boogie. The act of using air conditioners to cool buildings releases a great deal of heat into the environment which really makes the problem worse, because the higher temperature the less efficient the cooling system will be.
A light source that makes 1 lumen at 100 degrees C is less efficient than a source for 1 lumen at 1 degree C.
I have an LCD flat panel screen in front of me, and it seems bright enough, but it is a much cooler device than when I had a CRT producing a similarly bright screen. Hopefully all technology can trend this way so that there is more useful work extracted from every photon lost in the conversion.
I don't think this can be extended quite so easily to moving devices. Flying objects involve pretty distinct and demanding physics equations that cannot be minimized arbitrarily. A bumblebee cannot be made from lead, and making F16s from paper mache is not an option. But making very special "pastes" made from carbon fibers and lightweight epoxies can be used in devices that fly effectively with low power.
Laziness is a common trait in human-kind. Our children will experience shortages in many commodities in their lives (we are short of electricity in heat-ravaged cities already). They will try to preserve some knowledge of technology from our time but sometimes they will just neglect it, such as we have neglected horses and buggies from our forefather's times. There are still horses and buggies, but they are novelties rather than commodities.
If we were to lose our cars, trains, planes and buses because of a complete lack of fuel, perhaps a few of us would try to use horses, but eventually we would just reduce to bicycling or walking. A bicycle is the minimum technical transportation device (or unicycle -- for purists), and they can be fashioned by reasonably skilled craftsmen from reasonably low tech materials.
We must retain our space technology if we want to use space as a supplemental power source, such as giant solar collector arrays in orbit so that manufacturing and pollution problems can be left in space, where all the energy is infinitely abundant, so that only the final products and minimum pollution is allowed back on the surface of our planet.
But this requires non-lazy, technology preserving activity on the part of our offspring. Hopefully they can keep space technology from fading into oblivion. But it is something that needs vast amounts of power just to get small things into orbit. The bootstrapping process might require more energy than we can afford.
If I were to design a bicycle for the future it would have to:
1. Store and re-use gravity and momentum, either using flywheels or electricity
2. Be durable on uneven, treacherous surfaces and in bad weather
3. Consist of easily manufactured materials, even ceramics and wood
4. Use no external energy sources other than human power or sunlight
5. Be able to safely carry baggage, such as a side of beef
This precludes a lot of stuff like fancy alloy materials but makes it more likely that an insurance salesman could retrain himself to make one. Not every man could produce such devices from scratch, but enough could. Maybe a few could even make Lexus bicycles for those who are too good to ride the "plain" ones. Also, for people with missing limbs or other disabilities there can be other embellishments and auxiliary power supplies.
6 billion bicycles are much less likely to foul the environment than 6 billion cars, and will use billions of times less energy from fossil fuels and result in far less pollution. Plus, people will suffer less cardiovascular problems caused by sedentary lifestyles.
Of course there are times when bad weather might completely preclude the use of human powered vehicles, or even horses. But there are times when weather makes the use of any automobiles or powered vehicles impossible or dangerous.
None of these ideas can occur immediately, of course, but given enough discomfort, humans can eventually do what it takes to reduce it.
But why isn't energy free? What would you pay if someone decided that oxygen belonged to them, such as if Bill Gates bought the atmosphere. Since you cannot live without oxygen you would pay whatever it cost, or would kill whoever tried to charge money for it, whichever was easiest. Fortunately no one has figured out a way to own the atmosphere, but I am pretty certain that someone is trying to do that.
Energy can be carried in buckets in the form of gasoline, in lenses or mirrors to focus sunlight, in towers which are pumped full of liquids at great heights to store "gravity", in our food that we convert into various heat and mechanical power. A spinning disc made from heavy metal can be suspended in a vacuum upon magnetic bearings which both impart the momentum and draw it down as needed -- the flywheel engine.
Water can be heated to temperatures beyond boiling and emitted in flash steam jets for powering pistons or turbines. Anything can be used to heat the water, from coal to focused sunlight. Similarly, other gases can make use of differences in heat and cold for a "heat engine" effect.
None of these things are really practical unless they are available in the same manner as gasoline or electricity. I like electricity best because it has fewer issues such as carbon monoxide poisoning or fiery explosions. (Fewer does not mean none, for I'm sure I would be uneasy with giant versions of cellphone batteries. And it depends what is used to generate electricity.)
I could really go on about the physics of this subject but it is really a political problem, and therefore I am not too qualified to solve the problem. Political problems do not seem to ever become solved so much as they provide straw men to which blame can be assigned. Beheading the king's alchemist will not increase the production of gold from lead.
Someone should be fired if a nuclear plant blows radioactive gases into the city. The party in office during environmental disasters should suffer political beheading for the inevitable lapses in competence. But, mostly, nothing is ever done and no one is every held accountable. We, the great unwashed, just keep paying the consequences in frustration and fail to ever prevent them in the future.
Katrina has turned out like that. A lot of moaning and a lot of wasted money and the water will seek its own level anyway. Nature transcends politics. Reality will win to the spin doctor's chagrin.
Global warming is a slightly different issue from free energy, but that subject is unavoidable when speaking of energy production. Lets say that all 6 billion people who now live on the Earth simultaneously can use any amount of energy at a whim, even all at once, such as when heat waves occur and the air conditioners run full tilt boogie. The act of using air conditioners to cool buildings releases a great deal of heat into the environment which really makes the problem worse, because the higher temperature the less efficient the cooling system will be.
A light source that makes 1 lumen at 100 degrees C is less efficient than a source for 1 lumen at 1 degree C.
I have an LCD flat panel screen in front of me, and it seems bright enough, but it is a much cooler device than when I had a CRT producing a similarly bright screen. Hopefully all technology can trend this way so that there is more useful work extracted from every photon lost in the conversion.
I don't think this can be extended quite so easily to moving devices. Flying objects involve pretty distinct and demanding physics equations that cannot be minimized arbitrarily. A bumblebee cannot be made from lead, and making F16s from paper mache is not an option. But making very special "pastes" made from carbon fibers and lightweight epoxies can be used in devices that fly effectively with low power.
Laziness is a common trait in human-kind. Our children will experience shortages in many commodities in their lives (we are short of electricity in heat-ravaged cities already). They will try to preserve some knowledge of technology from our time but sometimes they will just neglect it, such as we have neglected horses and buggies from our forefather's times. There are still horses and buggies, but they are novelties rather than commodities.If we were to lose our cars, trains, planes and buses because of a complete lack of fuel, perhaps a few of us would try to use horses, but eventually we would just reduce to bicycling or walking. A bicycle is the minimum technical transportation device (or unicycle -- for purists), and they can be fashioned by reasonably skilled craftsmen from reasonably low tech materials.
We must retain our space technology if we want to use space as a supplemental power source, such as giant solar collector arrays in orbit so that manufacturing and pollution problems can be left in space, where all the energy is infinitely abundant, so that only the final products and minimum pollution is allowed back on the surface of our planet.
But this requires non-lazy, technology preserving activity on the part of our offspring. Hopefully they can keep space technology from fading into oblivion. But it is something that needs vast amounts of power just to get small things into orbit. The bootstrapping process might require more energy than we can afford.
If I were to design a bicycle for the future it would have to:
1. Store and re-use gravity and momentum, either using flywheels or electricity
2. Be durable on uneven, treacherous surfaces and in bad weather
3. Consist of easily manufactured materials, even ceramics and wood
4. Use no external energy sources other than human power or sunlight
5. Be able to safely carry baggage, such as a side of beef
This precludes a lot of stuff like fancy alloy materials but makes it more likely that an insurance salesman could retrain himself to make one. Not every man could produce such devices from scratch, but enough could. Maybe a few could even make Lexus bicycles for those who are too good to ride the "plain" ones. Also, for people with missing limbs or other disabilities there can be other embellishments and auxiliary power supplies.
6 billion bicycles are much less likely to foul the environment than 6 billion cars, and will use billions of times less energy from fossil fuels and result in far less pollution. Plus, people will suffer less cardiovascular problems caused by sedentary lifestyles.
Of course there are times when bad weather might completely preclude the use of human powered vehicles, or even horses. But there are times when weather makes the use of any automobiles or powered vehicles impossible or dangerous.
None of these ideas can occur immediately, of course, but given enough discomfort, humans can eventually do what it takes to reduce it.
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