There is hardly a Republican in our country that doesn't expound upon how things like drilling for more oil or building more nuke plants is the "answer" to our very crushing energy expenses.
This is ludicrous, not the rapper but the condition. All that Republican mantra o f "oil and nukes" results in is more expense, with most of the nation's money still pouring into the pockets of a very small number of corporations, out of the pockets of hundreds of millions of Americans.
I don't imagine that oil can be replaced any time soon. Nearly every car, train, ship, truck, bus and airplane exclusively depends on oil or its derivatives. Almost zero depend on something else, such as the old sailing ships that exclusively depended on currents of water and wind. There are a few subways and other short-haul train systems that use electricity rather than oil, and there are a growing, but small percentage of hybrid gas/electric cars and trucks.
There are also Naval vessels which are nuclear powered, but very few compared to the total number of ships crowding the oceans.
Even if ALL cars were magically converted to hybrids or all-electrics there would be a large number of barrels of oil still dedicated to the transportation industry -- either directly or via electrical power generation. Perhaps a shift from oil to coal would reduce the oil barrels, yet increase pollution far beyond our current terrible amounts.
I could go down a list of technologies, comparing costs vs pollutions vs convenience or sustainability, and so on, but this would merely drone on about things that have already been droned upon. Death by boredom.
What would aliens use for power?
This is, of course, an unanswerable question given that aliens don't offer themselves open to study. The fact of their very existence is questioned. But as a thought experiment, I will just assume that there are some aliens somewhere which have transcended archaic systems such as carbon/hydrogen/oxygen chemistry for power.
The average UFO (as reported to various researchers), floating and accelerating effortlessly and silently, must be powered by something -- and it is unlikely to be diesel fuel, coal or even plutonium. In this thought experiment, as unlikely as some find the very idea of alien spacecraft, it is only necessary to define what UFOs do NOT do as they zip around the Earth and wherever else they go.
They do NOT leave behind a trail of smoke, CO2, H2SO4, or any detectable gases, except a few reports of contrails, although simply passing through high altitude humid air at high speed could cause contrail effects.
They do NOT burn holes or strips of scorched soil into the Earth which propulsive particle beams might cause. Nor are people or objects vaporized by such beams, which would need to be extremely powerful to produce enough thrust.
They do NOT attract pots and pans and other steel objects which might be expected of a powerful magnetic object, in which the magnetic field is opposed to the Earth's natural field for propulsion.
Of course, if they were simply figments of our imagination, then they would not be expected to leave any physical traces. In comparison, the objects that do fly around in our skys less mysteriously are airplanes, jets, helicopters, ballistic artilliary and rockets. Each is either directly noisy, and most expel large amounts of polluting gases, smoke and chemicals.
We imagine ourselves in the far future in a similar situation as the magical aliens who pilot the UFOs. We will hopefully develop some kind of clean, powerful, magically safe and quiet propulsion system. We might ride in anti-gravity machines or time-machines or whatever, in a kind of "Jetsons" future -- picnicking on Mars and arriving back home on Earth in time for an music concert with speakers situated in geosynchronous orbit (I know... a vacuum would not carry any sounds).
But we don't live in the future, nor do aliens give us their secrets. We must create our own future from the tools we have right now -- and those tools do not need to depend on ancient molecules of pretroleum or coal. Sunlight is power, rain is power, wind is power, tides are power -- and all are free. They require machines, of course, and machines require maintenance, of course, so they are not truly cost free, but they are not owned by greedy men and subject to obscure commodities trading peaks and valleys.
I'm certain that a great deal of reluctance on the part of industries to use these free energies is the fact that no one can own them, nor meter them, nor turn the spigots on or off to promote some act of war or revenge. War is usually the mother of invention, and wars are destructive -- if both sides of a war cannot destroy the machines of the other side without destroying their own machines, then there is no advantage. If solar energy was the only source, then neither side of a war can snuff it out.
Yet we are snuffing ourselves out by refusing to use these free sources. Certainly I cannot step on the "gas" in my sports car and hear that roar from the gasoline engine if it is powered by some silent inertial cycling system. How could we melt steel and make locomotives without some huge pile of coal? Never mind that the sun can be focused by simple mirrors and create temperatures that can melt not only steel but virtually every material mankind is able to fabricate.
Traditions must be discarded, however, since there cannot be 100 billion people on this planet all driving 500 horsepower engines that run on gasoline or diesel. I doubt that many people could live even in the sparse lifestyle of Homo Erectus, or in the harsh, starvation edge of Ethiopians.
This is ludicrous, not the rapper but the condition. All that Republican mantra o f "oil and nukes" results in is more expense, with most of the nation's money still pouring into the pockets of a very small number of corporations, out of the pockets of hundreds of millions of Americans.
I don't imagine that oil can be replaced any time soon. Nearly every car, train, ship, truck, bus and airplane exclusively depends on oil or its derivatives. Almost zero depend on something else, such as the old sailing ships that exclusively depended on currents of water and wind. There are a few subways and other short-haul train systems that use electricity rather than oil, and there are a growing, but small percentage of hybrid gas/electric cars and trucks.
There are also Naval vessels which are nuclear powered, but very few compared to the total number of ships crowding the oceans.
Even if ALL cars were magically converted to hybrids or all-electrics there would be a large number of barrels of oil still dedicated to the transportation industry -- either directly or via electrical power generation. Perhaps a shift from oil to coal would reduce the oil barrels, yet increase pollution far beyond our current terrible amounts.
I could go down a list of technologies, comparing costs vs pollutions vs convenience or sustainability, and so on, but this would merely drone on about things that have already been droned upon. Death by boredom.
What would aliens use for power?
This is, of course, an unanswerable question given that aliens don't offer themselves open to study. The fact of their very existence is questioned. But as a thought experiment, I will just assume that there are some aliens somewhere which have transcended archaic systems such as carbon/hydrogen/oxygen chemistry for power.
The average UFO (as reported to various researchers), floating and accelerating effortlessly and silently, must be powered by something -- and it is unlikely to be diesel fuel, coal or even plutonium. In this thought experiment, as unlikely as some find the very idea of alien spacecraft, it is only necessary to define what UFOs do NOT do as they zip around the Earth and wherever else they go.
They do NOT leave behind a trail of smoke, CO2, H2SO4, or any detectable gases, except a few reports of contrails, although simply passing through high altitude humid air at high speed could cause contrail effects.
They do NOT burn holes or strips of scorched soil into the Earth which propulsive particle beams might cause. Nor are people or objects vaporized by such beams, which would need to be extremely powerful to produce enough thrust.
They do NOT attract pots and pans and other steel objects which might be expected of a powerful magnetic object, in which the magnetic field is opposed to the Earth's natural field for propulsion.
Of course, if they were simply figments of our imagination, then they would not be expected to leave any physical traces. In comparison, the objects that do fly around in our skys less mysteriously are airplanes, jets, helicopters, ballistic artilliary and rockets. Each is either directly noisy, and most expel large amounts of polluting gases, smoke and chemicals.
We imagine ourselves in the far future in a similar situation as the magical aliens who pilot the UFOs. We will hopefully develop some kind of clean, powerful, magically safe and quiet propulsion system. We might ride in anti-gravity machines or time-machines or whatever, in a kind of "Jetsons" future -- picnicking on Mars and arriving back home on Earth in time for an music concert with speakers situated in geosynchronous orbit (I know... a vacuum would not carry any sounds).
But we don't live in the future, nor do aliens give us their secrets. We must create our own future from the tools we have right now -- and those tools do not need to depend on ancient molecules of pretroleum or coal. Sunlight is power, rain is power, wind is power, tides are power -- and all are free. They require machines, of course, and machines require maintenance, of course, so they are not truly cost free, but they are not owned by greedy men and subject to obscure commodities trading peaks and valleys.
I'm certain that a great deal of reluctance on the part of industries to use these free energies is the fact that no one can own them, nor meter them, nor turn the spigots on or off to promote some act of war or revenge. War is usually the mother of invention, and wars are destructive -- if both sides of a war cannot destroy the machines of the other side without destroying their own machines, then there is no advantage. If solar energy was the only source, then neither side of a war can snuff it out.
Yet we are snuffing ourselves out by refusing to use these free sources. Certainly I cannot step on the "gas" in my sports car and hear that roar from the gasoline engine if it is powered by some silent inertial cycling system. How could we melt steel and make locomotives without some huge pile of coal? Never mind that the sun can be focused by simple mirrors and create temperatures that can melt not only steel but virtually every material mankind is able to fabricate.
Traditions must be discarded, however, since there cannot be 100 billion people on this planet all driving 500 horsepower engines that run on gasoline or diesel. I doubt that many people could live even in the sparse lifestyle of Homo Erectus, or in the harsh, starvation edge of Ethiopians.
