The New World

[legion431]

I've been thinking. Seeing as how Oil and Coal are non renewable energies, wind power takes up too much space and the accident at Fukashima has left people paranoid about nuclear energy etc. We will need to change our society BIG TIME.

I know most of us all think the same thing and with PETA hanging over us it's pretty hard to try and not get involved or think about it any more but it is still real. I just wan't to know if you were in power and you could make an act, theoretically, to change this world for good, what would you do to make it a better place, within reason.

I'd start by converting all sources of energy to nuclear, wind, solar, tidal and thermonuclear energy and expand all of them massively. If it fails, then I quit my job as leader and go and live in the Caribbean.

 

[PettingZOOPONY]

Change is happening already it just takes longer than people realize. Where in the world do you people come up with the idea we need change BIG TIME when its always happening and usually for the better. Just look at history.

 

[SilentCom]

Change is slow, but the only kind of change that could be described as fast would be nothing short of a revolution.

Frankly, I think more clean sources of energy would help a lot. The type of energy would depend on the regional. For example, here in Washington, we use hydroelectric power from dams on all the rivers we have. Also, since it's cloudy here most of the year, it is not practical to use solar power.

Until there is some kind of energy revolution, we pretty much have to continue changing things at its current rate to cleaner, renewable energy. Hopefully some clever scientist somewhere will discover cold fusion or something awesome.

 

[ZeroMachine]

Take all the trolls of the internet and then burn them as fuel? They've been fed a lot, so I'm sure it'd last us a good few decades.

If that doesn't work, I don't know. It's one of the few things I don't have any even remotely good suggestion for as I don't know enough about it, so... I'm not even going to go there.

 

[legion431]

Change is happening already it just takes longer than people realize. Where in the world do you people come up with the idea we need change BIG TIME when its always happening and usually for the better. Just look at history.

Yes, but It's a bit different now with all the major countries having nuclear missiles pointed at each other and the extraction of oil from the Middle-East.

 

[Smooth Operator]

Well a few random ideas:
- go heavy on solar power, every year each roof gets one additional solar panel on it (financed by governments), this would fuel the production and much needed development to really get somewhere

- combine private and public transport, longdistance - you drive your owned/rented vehicle to a public transport station where you join traffic rails where all vehicles travel automatically at really high speed, at your destination you get off and drive around town/country side

- would also slowly implement air tubes, railed traffic would travel inside tubes with one way air flow, so you don't cut through the air but move with it, dramatically increasing speed possibilities

 

[BonsaiK]

I've been thinking. Seeing as how Oil and Coal are non renewable energies, wind power takes up too much space and the accident at Fukashima has left people paranoid about nuclear energy etc. We will need to change our society BIG TIME.

I know most of us all think the same thing and with PETA hanging over us it's pretty hard to try and not get involved or think about it any more but it is still real. I just wan't to know if you were in power and you could make an act, theoretically, to change this world for good, what would you do to make it a better place, within reason.

I'd start by converting all sources of energy to nuclear, wind, solar, tidal and thermonuclear energy and expand all of them massively. If it fails, then I quit my job as leader and go and live in the Caribbean.

Don't wait for change from the government to make the world better, that's not going to happen. The real changes for the greater good will happen from private industry, and they'll come to the party because consumers will demand it, and market forces will make it inevitable.

Nuclear (fission) is a non-renewable just like oil and coal - there's only so much uranium in the ground. All of these technologies ultimately have a short future in the grand scheme, coal because it's stupidly bad for the environment, oil because it's running out and uranium because it's also running out and it has a serious PR problem. The big thing will be solar - not the solar-voltaic panels that we normally think of when we think solar power (they're actually great for your house but pretty useless for large-scale applications), but solar thermal collectors, that can run and produce clean energy on a large scale in any temperature. Out of all the free energy that hits Earth over 99.9% of it is solar.

What's PETA got to do with any of this?

 

[BonsaiK]

Change is happening already it just takes longer than people realize. Where in the world do you people come up with the idea we need change BIG TIME when its always happening and usually for the better. Just look at history.

Yes, but It's a bit different now with all the major countries having nuclear missiles pointed at each other and the extraction of oil from the Middle-East.

The big-ass mondo nuclear war will never happen. Ever. If it was ever going to happen, it would have happened during the Cold War, but it didn't. Now nuclear weapons are old technology, their time has passed - modern conventional weapons get the job done cleaner, quicker and neater, and with less of a pollution and PR problem. Nukes simply don't do their job all that well. Consider that the main purpose of war in history has always been the control of territory and resources. What good is that territory and resources if it's polluted with radiation? Nobody reading this right now will live to see a nuclear war. Not even North Korea will drop one, wait and see.

 

[rokkolpo]

Everything nuclear sounds great.

We'll just fly the waste into the sun (like it will notice it)

 

[BonsaiK]

Everything nuclear sounds great.

We'll just fly the waste into the sun (like it will notice it)

Sounds great until a rocket carrying waste blows up during launch.

 

[AlkalineGamer]

Nuclear fusion, i heard there's some promise in that.
However it's also quite costly, and isn't exactly renewable.
I think it require lithium to be made to act like hydrogen or something. also i don't think it's 100% safe, but is safer than fission.
And it does give a VERY good energy yield, though is pretty much in the beta stage.

I was thinking, do power stations still just use the energy to boil water?
Is there not a more efficient way to extract energy from a reaction?

 

[Jedamethis]

Burn whatever I can find as fuel. Except trees. I wonder if burning landfills would cause huge problems...probabyl would, but try it anyway!

Until renewable energy can take over, of course.

Also, see what happens if we ban cars.

 

[Cracker3011]

Get everyone at CERN to work on cold fusion instead of shooting atoms at other atoms.

If we can get THAT holy grail of physics working, then we're sorted.

 

[rokkolpo]

Everything nuclear sounds great.

We'll just fly the waste into the sun (like it will notice it)

Sounds great until a rocket carrying waste blows up during launch.

And if that does happen, a lot of people will die, which will result in less energy usage.
Everybody's happy

(Yeah i was kidding)

 

[legion431]

I've been thinking. Seeing as how Oil and Coal are non renewable energies, wind power takes up too much space and the accident at Fukashima has left people paranoid about nuclear energy etc. We will need to change our society BIG TIME.

I know most of us all think the same thing and with PETA hanging over us it's pretty hard to try and not get involved or think about it any more but it is still real. I just wan't to know if you were in power and you could make an act, theoretically, to change this world for good, what would you do to make it a better place, within reason.

I'd start by converting all sources of energy to nuclear, wind, solar, tidal and thermonuclear energy and expand all of them massively. If it fails, then I quit my job as leader and go and live in the Caribbean.

Don't wait for change from the government to make the world better, that's not going to happen. The real changes for the greater good will happen from private industry, and they'll come to the party because consumers will demand it, and market forces will make it inevitable.

Nuclear (fission) is a non-renewable just like oil and coal - there's only so much uranium in the ground. All of these technologies ultimately have a short future in the grand scheme, coal because it's stupidly bad for the environment, oil because it's running out and uranium because it's also running out and it has a serious PR problem. The big thing will be solar - not the solar-voltaic panels that we normally think of when we think solar power (they're actually great for your house but pretty useless for large-scale applications), but solar thermal collectors, that can run and produce clean energy on a large scale in any temperature. Out of all the free energy that hits Earth over 99.9% of it is solar.

What's PETA got to do with any of this?

Sorry, I meant to say all the annoying environmentalists.