#3 Green Energy

There are no good options for a new energy source at the moment with current techonolgy. This is factual. There is nothing without huge drawbacks or is unable to supply the heavy demand of today's modernized world.

A space elevator would just be destroyed by the covenant anyways.

The best power source has been around since the dawn of time; The Sun.

If we could somehow harness it's power, we would have endless energy, right at our fingertips!

If we can harness the power of the sun, then yes, I think we can have an endless source of power. Green Energy, IMO, is highly possible.
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99% of our energy is sourced from the sun anyways.

Also there is no such thing as endless energy. Energy always moves from higher to lower.

I'd also like to point out geothermal is AWFUL. Do you know how it works? It pumps out super heated groundwater that turns instantly to steam when it reaches a lower pressure. Water that is not renewable. Geothermal plants work for about 20 years before they hit dry and are done wasting precious groundwater. Though sometimes they try and waste more energy to pump water back in. Lovely contaminated water that gets into our drinking supply.

Wind doesn't work for everyone because not everywhere has super duper awesome wind to keep them going.

Clean coal is an oxymoron.
 
scampy said:
I suppose a space elevator is entirely possible (we would need very strong materials, such as carbon nanotubes, to keep such a structure together), but whether or not it is worthwhile is another question altogether. Considering the costs involved, it would probably be both easier and more enviromentally friendly (as in the money could be better spent on other green things) to simply store radioactive waste in underground storage facilities.
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A space elevator has more use than just dumping radioactive waste. :S

It's way cheaper than our current method of sending things to space (humans, satellites, space probes, etc), and takes FAR less energy. Right now we use fuel to send up fuel to send up fuel to send up a tiny payload. :S

The savings are enormous.

Prof. Shinx said:
Building and maintaining one would be a very hard and extreamly costly.
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A one-time large cost of building is better than the continual large cost we have now.
Maintenance and vibrations will be dealt with, I'm sure. BTW, the vibration on the video was enhanced. It says so. Also notice it self-stabilized.
 
apophys said:
A one-time large cost of building is better than the continual large cost we have now.
Maintenance and vibrations will be dealt with, I'm sure. BTW, the vibration on the video was enhanced. It says so. Also notice it self-stabilized.
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It will take Billions to build and hundreds and hundreds of millions+ to maintain. It is cheaper and better for the enviroment NOW than if they have this Elevator. Building it will take so much Fossil fuel and maintaining it 24/7.

It is such a stupid idea and a waste of time.
 
Oh, my bad. I kind of rushed that post, I ignored the space travel aspect.

Aside from the materials needed to make this thing being horribly expensive, we also have to consider just how we get a counterweight large enough to support the structure into orbit, and how we would attach it to the surface of the Earth. This would require an insane ammount of space missions to do, and waste an awful lot of energy in the process. ;p
 
And these 'super stong unbreakable carbon things'.

Everything has its breaking point, and IT WILL COLAPSE.
 
That's true, but carbon nanotubes... are extremely tough. If I remember correctly, I believe you can support a 6,300 kilogram weight with a carbon nanotube 1mm thick. More than enough strength I believe. :p
 
Thats all well and stong but... The structure is 200+ kilometers high and anything that makes it sway like high winds will snap it like a twig. The Sears Tower is only 1353 feet tall and sways 12 feet. If that happens to the 200+ km tube it will snap like a TurTWIG.

"Its not every day we can just give away all of Earth money!" - Nixon's head, Futurama.
 
I'm personally wondering when someone will look into one of the biggest natural resources of energy... Thunderstorms.
 
TO be perfectly honest, solar power is useful, so is hydroelectric and wind power. Their biggest asset is that it's a renewable source of energy. However, the only real thing holding it back is the cost.

This is a major flaw in society so far, choosing money over not being flooded to death. There is another source of energy people have been neglecting, biomass. Biomass is plant decay and waste(you know....waste) and it's more better for the environment than coal. It does have some carbon dioxide emissions from burning plant matter, but their are other methods of using Biomass instead of just burning it. We can use it by heating (but not burning) the waste and get the fuels and resources from it which has little or no harmful emissions. This method is very efficient.

We can also use bacteria to break it down to get resources from *cough* waste or we can burn it with the coal which does cause some harmful emissions but significantly less since biomass can substitute coal up to 20%. If we burn it with the coal, it will cost very little. What I think it's biggest advantages is that biomass is basically an inexhaustible resource since we can just keep planting more plants and we keep um... *cough cough* you know....making waste....

I'm not saying other forms of energy won't win the race of renewable energy. Quite frankly I believe that with different combinations of energy the world might actually be very clean.
 
The only plauseable way to get energy from a storm is with the wind turbines, cause the wind is stonger. Lightining can hit the lightining rods but it is such a short burst of electricity that it would be used by a town instantly and the electricity isnt in a circuit, it just get 'absorbed' by the rod.
 
I'm more interested in wind energy than solar pannel stuff... The processed used to make solar pannels is so harming to the environment that it completely gets rid of any benefits you would have unless you use it for an extremely long time afterwards... which isn't possible just yet. I'm thinking in about 10 years we'll have a good way to get new energy.
 
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