Hard Light Productions Forums
Off-Topic Discussion => General Discussion => Topic started by: Swamp_Thing on March 28, 2005, 10:53:10 am
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Yesterday i was watching this TV documentary about anti-gravity, and zero energy engines and batteries, and other sci-fi theoretics, and how the visionaries of this part of science were being treated as nutcases and excentrics. So i started to study the concept.
And i´m amazed as to how this revolutionary technology could revolutionize the world as we know it. Engines that could run for years with +100 horse power, powered by a spent 9 volt battery, or anti-gravity devices that levitate objects using low electrical currents, stuff that could change the world as we know it.
But apparently the main stream scientists aren´t having any. They see these people as nutties and dreamers. But weren´t all ground breaking technologies viewed as dreams, before?
So why isn´t this getting the attention that it should? Why are such revolutionary concepts only being researched by backyard scientists? Garage scientists? Why don´t they research it properly? With real funding?
It is said that the only entities looking at this are the military. The Philadelphia Experiment was part of that research.
I sure would like to see this stuff getting the attention it deserves. The possibilities are enourmous. It sure blew my mind.
Check this site:
http://www.americanantigravity.com/index.shtml (http://www.americanantigravity.com/index.shtml)
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Big oil companies & their close ties to governments. 'nuff said. Same goes for fusion. They can't have anything threating their profits, of course, at least not before we have another energy crisis. :rolleyes:
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Anti-gravity is easy. We don't understand how gravity works, IE how it is generated or how to manipulate it. So to contemplate something that the math says can't exist is anethema to physicists.
I am a firm believer that ZPE exists and that the major energy concerns and many major world governments are actively working against it's development. I mean just imagine what would happen if, all of a sudden, the world economy was flooded with free energy and every last man, woman, and child on Earth had access to a American type lifestyle. The resources of the entire planet would become exhausted in a matter of decades and the enviroment would crash.
I hate to sound like a chauvinist, but think about it for a minute. If everyone had a car that generated 400 BTU of heat an hour how long would it be before we really did start to have an impact on the enviroment just like the whackos have been claiming we have had for decades.
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I'm not going to dignify any of this with a response. If there was a way to generate cheap, clean, commercially exploitable power within our technological grasp, someone would have come up with it. However, fusion, ZPE, antigrav, all of these technologies that are being discussed, are so far out of our technological reach - provided efficient harnessing of these sources is possible at all - that the suggestion that they are being held back for any reason is ludicris at best.
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Originally posted by Liberator
Anti-gravity is easy. We don't understand how gravity works, IE how it is generated or how to manipulate it.
No.
Not really.
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Originally posted by Liberator
I mean just imagine what would happen if, all of a sudden, the world economy was flooded with free energy and every last man, woman, and child on Earth had access to a American type lifestyle.
http://www.obesity.org/
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Originally posted by Liberator
I hate to sound like a chauvinist, but think about it for a minute. If everyone had a car that generated 400 BTU of heat an hour how long would it be before we really did start to have an impact on the enviroment just like the whackos have been claiming we have had for decades.
Lib, I think that there is enough credible evidence of global warming being caused by the pollution resulting from the rapid industrialization of the society as of late - but that's little bit OT, isn't it?
And in my opinion, anysort of anti-gravity technology is even more far-fetched than for example, fusion, at the moment. What I meant in my earlier post was that any potential and serious research/funding into these matters is usually lacking precisely because there is not nearly enough interest in the current governments for long-lasting energy policies.
And Sandwich: :lol: Exactly what I was going to say.
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Originally posted by Liberator
I am a firm believer that ZPE exists and that the major energy concerns and many major world governments are actively working against it's development. I mean just imagine what would happen if, all of a sudden, the world economy was flooded with free energy and every last man, woman, and child on Earth had access to a American type lifestyle. The resources of the entire planet would become exhausted in a matter of decades and the enviroment would crash.
And what's happing now?
I hate to sound like a chauvinist, but think about it for a minute. If everyone had a car that generated 400 BTU of heat an hour how long would it be before we really did start to have an impact on the enviroment just like the whackos have been claiming we have had for decades.
So...the hole in the ozone layer is a wacko theory? The accelerrated melting of ice caps, the scientific readings that there is less and less ozone around our planet, the disruption of seasons and certain species lifestyles, the increase in global temperature - that's all crackpot theory?
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No but we dont need to worry about those things. Do they matter?
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:rolleyes: Of course not.
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I get the impression Lib is of the "if we **** the planet up, God'll give us a new one" attitude, sometimes.
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Originally posted by StratComm
However, fusion, ZPE, antigrav, all of these technologies that are being discussed, are so far out of our technological reach - provided efficient harnessing of these sources is possible at all - that the suggestion that they are being held back for any reason is ludicris at best.
I don´t know the reason why, but it is a fact that they are sitting on this. The documentary i saw showed the story of a guy who had developed a working zero point energy engine, and had gathered a bunch of signatures from several well knowned scientists atesting to the working order of the device, and yet the patent office denied him his patent. And everybody knows that to get real funds and real work done, you need a patent.
The guys at the patent office excused themselfs saying that you can´t get something out of nothing, and that such devices are only sci-fi gimmics.
There was another guy who had a lantern powered by backyard rocks. He crushed a few pebbles he had found in a gravle road, crushed them, and using the energy (that he theorizes that surrounds all things, living or otherwise), he powered a small pen light.
Another had an engine that turned a big 3 feet high propeller, using a spent 9volt battery. He was drawing over 1000 volts of power out of that 9volt battery, and he said the engine would run for years before needing a new battery. Basically the battery works as a starter engine, and then the engine "feeds" itself. That´s tremendous!! It means you could have an electric car that needs no huge batteries and doesn´t need recharges every hundred miles.
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If he has such a device, he is either ignorant to the point of nonbelief, or he's an imposter.
If he has indeed such a device, why isn't he cashing that energy by applying it to the "electricity current" (that's how it's called isn't it?) thereby making the energy companies give him money?
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Cures for cancer don't exist.
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Originally posted by Ghostavo
If he has such a device, he is either ignorant to the point of nonbelief, or he's an imposter.
If he has indeed such a device, why isn't he cashing that energy by applying it to the "electricity current" (that's how it's called isn't it?) thereby making the energy companies give him money?
You can't actually do that, for a myriad of reasons. Namely the fact that distribution grids are not set up to be two-way systems, and there is the complex issue of making sure that all sources remain roughly in phase.
However, I would like to see something approaching actual proof before I even consider it a possibility; if all the guy had was an idea with no implimentation, then the Patent Office did the right thing in refusing to issue a patent for it. But until I see something other than a bad Discovery Chanel "documentary" to back it up, it's fantasy, nothing more. Perpetual motion machines (ultimately what every example that have been pulled up thus far is) are a gimmic; obsession with them may have been useful before proper laws of motion and conservation of energy were formulated as their continued failure helped bring those laws to fruition, but not now.
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Incidentally, there are cases of people selling electricity to the power companies, at least in the UK; in particular I remember the story of one family who have solar power panels on their roof, and sell the excess back to the local company.
It's isolated, of course, but far from impossible.
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I never met, read, saw, heard, heard of any of these "backyard" or "exiled" scientists who actually had any proof/theory/concept behind their work.
I even listened to one of these self proclaimed savors of mankind - and was terribly saddened by the popularity of these charlatans.
He kept on blaming physics and its principles, while the fact that the so called "conventional" physics he lashed out at so hard were long ago abandoned by the scientific community and everyone moved onto quantum and relativistic physics.
Your idea of "repressed" and "forbidden" progress is both over and below the truth.
It would be stupid to stop development of these technologies on the part of the interested parties - it's in their best interest to claim such research and progress to replace their business in the long term.
On the other hand there are a lot of scientifically sound and accepted technologies your professors can rant about all day, and you still won't see them for the next 10 years.
Things like isotope powersources, eprom based storage of data and so on....because the world economy has gone over the top with the Kynes' doctrine and now tries to bring back the mercantilist **** that made the imperialism the facist exploitation it was.
Instead progress or pure and honest work, words like economism and profit optimization are used to cover up substandard products and agressive marketing that always aligns to the lowest common denomiator polluting the masses with stupidity.
The most horrible part is that there is no conspiracy, some mastermind who takes all the beer and woman in the world; an illuminati that remains enlightened.
We've bought into our own myth of economy and are feeding ourselves with our own hyped stupidity.
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They aren't researched because they are idiotic bull****.
They can claim that the scientific establishment is ignoring them but there are ways that they could prove that this stuff really works if they wanted to.
If I invented a zero energy device here's what I'd do. I'd contact the James Randi Foundation (http://www.randi.org/) and claim that the ghost of my father's dead hampster was being used to power my device. I'd say that I was willing to test for this paranormal occurance under laboratory conditions. I'd test it and walk away with my $1m dollar prize and a huge amount of publicity.
What I wouldn't do is ***** and moan about how the scientific establishment was ignoring me or how it was all a conspiracy. If you feel strongly about this Swamp_thing I suggest you send these people e-mails telling them to do exactly what I suggest.
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Beam me up, Scotty!
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Last I checked, somebody had managed a sustained, controlled fusion reaction, but it was only barely past the break-even point in terms of the energy they could get out of it. The technology still needed refinement.
But that was in the early 90's. Little or nothing has been done with it since then to my knowledge. Ten years later I would expect to hear something about it...
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...and I do.
Truth be told the thing that keeps the fusion development back is a debate wheter the first (experimental, but working) fusion power plant should be build in the USA or Japan.
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No, I believe it's France or Japan.
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I think it should be on the moon.
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Originally posted by übermetroid
I think it should be on the moon.
...with you as the janitor.
--->stupid suggestions
<---stupid reactions
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Originally posted by Unknown Target
So...the hole in the ozone layer is a wacko theory? The accelerrated melting of ice caps, the scientific readings that there is less and less ozone around our planet, the disruption of seasons What disruption? Spring still happens in March and Fall comes in Late September/Early October around here, just like it always has. and certain species lifestyles, the increase in global temperature - that's all crackpot theory?
I am not convinced that we are the cause of any of that.
To assume that any of that is directly caused by mankind is to be guilty of such enormous hubris that it beggar's description.
There are cycles on this world so grand that we cannot contemplate their length.
You enviromentalist whackos assume that their is some great equilibrium and that without people the Earth would be a paradise. I hate to break it to you, but Nature is a violent and untamed thing. You would be hard pressed to pick a time in all of history that there wasn't some kind of cataclysm going on somewhere on this mudball.
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Originally posted by Unknown Target
So...the hole in the ozone layer is a wacko theory?
Let's be fair - the hole in the Ozone layer wasn't caused by humans, only exacerbated by our activities. It was discovered 2 years before CFCs were commercially used, and sits directly above a bunch of Antarctic volcanoes that naturally pump out CFCs. That said:
Originally posted by Liberator
To assume that any of that is directly caused by mankind is to be guilty of such enormous hubris that it beggar's description.
And to assume that we have no case to answer is both a foolish and negligent attitude to take. The data proves that much.
Originally posted by Liberator You enviromentalist whackos assume that their is some great equilibrium and that without people the Earth would be a paradise. I hate to break it to you, but Nature is a violent and untamed thing. You would be hard pressed to pick a time in all of history that there wasn't some kind of cataclysm going on somewhere on this mudball.
There is an equilibrium. There has to be for the ecology to have evolved to fit the organic and inorganic conditions that it's forced to deal with. But you don't believe in evolution so you're obviously never going to be able to comprehend the problems.
Oh, and I point to the Late Middle Jurassic as a paradisical time in the Earths History. It was post triassic desertification, pre cretaceous chilling and environmental degredation. The earth was largely tropical, there were no major mass extinctions, and the Earth had had long enough to recover from the minor mass extinction in the Late Early Jurassic.
Originally posted by Liberator
What disruption? Spring still happens in March and Fall comes in Late September/Early October around here, just like it always has.
This is... actually pretty worrying, from my POV (That of a student of Environmental Biology). It's this attitude that has led to the problem. You're, what, 24 or something? So you've got two decades of poorly recalled data to compare. Go back. Look at the long term data on rainfall, average temperature (If you want a specific example, go back and look at the sharp fall off of Rainfall in South Western Western Australia that has occurred over the last 50 or so years, vastly altering what is, as far as anyone can tell, a long term 60 or so year long rainfall cycle that just happens to closely coincide with severe clearing of Eucalypt forests to make space for agriculture. That's just one example - there are plenty of others - The Aswan dam if you want a better known example, the incredible shrinkage of the Amazon Rainforest if you want a more dramatic one.
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That incredible Amazon shrinkage is due to idiot farmers just moving on instead of fertilizing their land.
And who's to say the last 60 years of rainfall in SW Austrailia weren't an aberation.
All I'm saying is a lot of stuff about the Climatic Ecology of our world that is based on too little data and touted by too many scientists trying to get on the news instead of proving that their idea is correct. It is highly arrogant to assume that we can change the global weather. Locally I will concede, but we can't do anything to affect climate on as gross a scale as you claim.
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Originally posted by Liberator
That incredible Amazon shrinkage is due to idiot farmers just moving on instead of fertilizing their land.
You can't tell me that the vast deforestation isn't going to cause any climate changes. Removal of plant foliage in a dense rainfall area means that topsoil is washed away leading to infertile land. The farmers then move and deforest more.
The end result? Several thousand years ago this same behavior was done in Mesopotamia and we have deserts in a once fertile flood plain.
Originally posted by Liberator
And who's to say the last 60 years of rainfall in SW Austrailia weren't an aberation.
Dendrochronology. We can measure rainfall and conditions of a climate based on tree rings for several hundred years. Adding in fossils you can create climate records reaching tens of thousands of years.
Originally posted by Liberator
All I'm saying is a lot of stuff about the Climatic Ecology of our world that is based on too little data and touted by too many scientists trying to get on the news instead of proving that their idea is correct. It is highly arrogant to assume that we can change the global weather. Locally I will concede, but we can't do anything to affect climate on as gross a scale as you claim.
We have changed global weather and climates in the past. We're currently doing so.
Even subsistence agriculture has had a massive impact on the planet, the industrial revolution and technology has allowed this impact to increase exponentially.
The real damage is though in the oceans. The unchecked fishing, trowlling, etc. has depleted environments that take centuries to recover.
We do have the ability to have more eco-friendly cars, farming, etc. but expedience, ignorance, and greed prevent this from occuring.
People screaming that researchers trying to understand the ecology of the planet are "eco freaks" doesn't help. The rainforest being cut down today might have a species going extinct with enzymes that could cure cancer.
Maybe that's the type of greed that is necessary for people to see the value of maintaining the planet. Killing species you don't understand means you'll never discover their benefits.
However I will concede one point to you Liberator, on a geologic timescale humanity is a mere inconvenience, it'll simply appear as another mass extinction that seemed to have no clear reason in the fossil record for the next idiotic sentient species to arise here which has an inflated sense of self-value.
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ok just a few thoughts.....
1. Liberator, I take great offense to you calling anyone a whacko. I am a glutton for food and litter and excess living, but at the same time, i will not disrespect anyone who actually cares for the environment.
2. I've tolerated your excesses in attitude and mouth because we share a common faith, and we are in the minority here at HLP. That ends, in one thread you preach tolerance, and in the next thread you are claiming that people who think that mankind has had ANYTHING to do with our failing economy is a whacko. It's bull****. The real reason that you don't want to face the fact that we are destroying the earth is that you don't want to face the fact that science can explain why our ecology is failing, and your faith can't.
3. If you really want to say that mankind had nothing to do with our ecological failings, let me remind you that in the early 1800's, the central buffalo herd numbered at over a million, 90 years later, the buffalo was extinct. We killed it. Man. Now i don't pretend to know what the ecological ramifications of that are, but they are there, and we caused them. Now i am not giving you an opinion, i am giving you facts, please offer me something based in fact, and not in opinion.
Whether or not you do this doesn't really matter, but as far as i am concerned your religeon does not give you the right to judge anyone who worries about out ecology as a whacko, nor does it give you the right to judge kazan as an overly intellectual self centered prick. In fact, it doesn't give you the right to judge anyone at all. But you have, and now "lest ye be judged yourself".
I've made my mistakes, i've said things i shouldn't have, but the bottom line is simple, if you don't want to be insulted, then stop insulting. If you want to argue points in science or politics, get educated about a great number of things.
Now for my opinion...sorry for the post length....
wasn't it Ai No (i may be wrong) who brought up the point that the energy companies wwould do well to encourage and fund these alternative energy sources, thereby gaining patents, and still making us pay them in order for us to use them? That's a great way of looking at it, greed exemplified through diversification. I think i would do that exact thing if i were in charge of a huge oil company. We get a good rep for cleaning up the environment, and still make a ton of money.
anti grav....maybe when we master sub atomic particles we can start to be as serious about antigrav as we are about fusion.
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[q]I mean just imagine what would happen if, all of a sudden, the world economy was flooded with free energy and every last man, woman, and child on Earth had access to a American type lifestyle. [/q]
http://www.census.gov/hhes/www/poverty.html
Read it. It's not fun.
AND WHY AREN'T WE TALKING ABOUT ANTI-GRAV?!
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Originally posted by Liberator
That incredible Amazon shrinkage is due to idiot farmers just moving on instead of fertilizing their land.
And who's to say the last 60 years of rainfall in SW Austrailia weren't an aberation.
All I'm saying is a lot of stuff about the Climatic Ecology of our world that is based on too little data and touted by too many scientists trying to get on the news instead of proving that their idea is correct. It is highly arrogant to assume that we can change the global weather. Locally I will concede, but we can't do anything to affect climate on as gross a scale as you claim.
As Ace pointed out, you can't just fertilize deforested rainforest and expect something to grow; the entire ecosystem of the rainforest is based upon a cycle of growth and decay, and that decay leading to more growth. The rainfall in the rainforests helps make the soil naturally infertile. And these irrecoverable forests also are estimated to host 2 thirds of the Earths living species - do you really think destroying massive tracts of that habitat can take place without consequence to the ecosystem?
If that land was 'recoverable', then they'd do so; it'd be cheaper for them to do so in all likelyhood if so. But it isn't, so they move on and just destroy another plot....
It's been estimated 50,000 rainforest species are rendered extinct each year. They once covered 14% of the Earths surface - now it's 6% - and are estimated to provide 40% of the oxygen in the atmosphere. Some predict they will be gone completely at current rates within 40 years.
But, I guess none of this affects us, becuase the most populous complex organism on the planet can't affect it in any way atall........it's strange, how you always seem to rely on one conclusion - 'the scientists are wrong'.
Seemingly, you can cast evidence-less judgement in complete freedom and impunity; and that somehow you can safely claim to know better than a global community which checks and cross-checks each other.
Odder still, that you'd choose the assumption that requires you do least work or consideration, that affects your lifestyle and concerns the least. The one that, strangely enough, removes any sense of responsibility or desire to affect change on your part.
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back on the subject of antigrav, inversely, creating an artificial gravity in a zero-grav enviroment would revolutionise space exploration to some degree. without the large mechanical constraints of course..
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Originally posted by StratComm
I'm not going to dignify any of this with a response. If there was a way to generate cheap, clean, commercially exploitable power within our technological grasp, someone would have come up with it. However, fusion, ZPE, antigrav, all of these technologies that are being discussed, are so far out of our technological reach - provided efficient harnessing of these sources is possible at all - that the suggestion that they are being held back for any reason is ludicris at best.
Basic fusion tech is well within our current reach, but making it efficient enough to be practical is still being worked on.
I think what they mean by technology being "held back" is that the R&D for such things is not funded nearly as well as it should be.
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I have no knowledge about antigarv stuff, etc, and it all sounds very scifi to me, but, in all honesty, I'm pretty sure that the nukes during WW2 looked quite anachronous ( sp?) compared to shermans, luggers and spitfires, so why not?
As for for the fusion power plant, it was originally betwin the USA, France and Japan. Because ( iirc ) of the anti-nuclear lobby there, USA was ruled out, Japan is probably gonna be a gonner because of the increasing number of earthquakes lately plus some economical issues that I don't know the details of, so that leave just France, which is anyway the most logical candidate if you ask me, we're the best when it comes to nuclear powerplants, I believe. We're the first user in the world, in fact, we even had experiments in more advanced forms of nuclear powerplants with the ( sadly quickly stopped ) Phoenix super-reactor. Not that I'm particularly happy with it, for a very trivial reason: that fusion prototype will cost our government a ****load, and who's gonna pay? Huh?
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I mostly agree with aldo on the environment issue.
But it is human nature to be susceptable to believing and disbelieving something they have'nt seen or experienced personally.
The earth is not really that big. Near all astronaughts become environment friendly promoters after being in space. For the simple fact that they see and experience the size of earth. They see it as finite.
To some degree, similar feelings can be experienced after flying in a plane or being atop a tall mountain. The amount you can see from horizon to horizon. Seeing the curvature of the earth.
Its big yes, but not infinite. It has its limits, and without a doubt I believe humans have made a significantly large impact on the earths environment, and will continue to do so.
As for fusion. I think its potentially dangerous, yet potentially a solution to a lot of the worlds problems.
If the world suddenly had an infinite free, clean source of energy I don't think it would end up how you suggested Lib. It would still take several years for the plants to be constructed around the world, and at first it would only appear in developed nations.
Economically, its possible that countries that do gain it would at first gain International dollar.
Without power bills, more free money for the peasants to spend on trade, and thus more tax, thus more money for government. Needless to say inflation would probably catch up.
Fusion energy doesn't really solve the car fuel problem. Unless cars are switched to be rechargable battery powered. That however would require more years research and development. (The current ones are pretty crap) Plus more years for them to drop in price to be of normal cars.
Eventually the wealth would spread, and developing nations would get there own too.
The human race would learn to cope. There isn't much that could put us at a pause excluding the possibility of a third world war.
As for the government spending '****loads' on a potentially very advantagous project. How about the '****loads' they already waste on complete unrequired crap?
Anti-gravity. Hmm. Well I like to believe that nearly anythings possible so here's hoping. :)
But seriously, I'm a bit wary of strong electric fields and magnets. They say they are harmless, but I still reckon its possible to get cancer from those things, especially if you lived near one on a daily basis...
My 2 cents worth.
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I call "Whacko" any time I see someone making demands and not taking the lead in fulfilling them.
The Enviromentalist movement has a noble goal: To reduce or eliminate as much as possible, the impact of industrialization on the enviroment.
However, when the leadership preaches things like fuel economy and lowered resource usage to the masses and then climbs into a Suburban to go to a steak dinner I question their motives. When they demand that the general public do without and they themselves continue to drive Hummers and Porches, I question them.
If the Enviromentalist movement wants to be taken seriously. They need to step up and develop some kind of plan that will detail how they intend to replace the gas burners with electrics and how they intend to generate that electricity cheaply and on a mass scale. This plan needs to be simple enough for Joe Blow on the street to comprehend without blowing out the 5 brain cells he's got left after spending half his life in a drunken stupor.
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Originally posted by Liberator
I call "Whacko" any time I see someone making demands and not taking the lead in fulfilling them.
The Enviromentalist movement has a noble goal: To reduce or eliminate as much as possible, the impact of industrialization on the enviroment.
However, when the leadership preaches things like fuel economy and lowered resource usage to the masses and then climbs into a Suburban to go to a steak dinner I question their motives. When they demand that the general public do without and they themselves continue to drive Hummers and Porches, I question them.
If the Enviromentalist movement wants to be taken seriously. They need to step up and develop some kind of plan that will detail how they intend to replace the gas burners with electrics and how they intend to generate that electricity cheaply and on a mass scale. This plan needs to be simple enough for Joe Blow on the street to comprehend without blowing out the 5 brain cells he's got left after spending half his life in a drunken stupor.
Have you ever considered that the reason that the leaders of nations don't take the lead is because a) they are representative of a population who mostly don't give a **** and b) many take significant campaign contributions for the fossil fuel giants?
You're using the hypocrisy of the worlds leadership as an excuse not to do anything.
there are people researching and proposing fossil fuel alternatives already; ethanol as a gasoline substitute (used in Brazil IIRC; can be distilled from sugar cane), wind/wave/water/solar power, burning of sewage (in stations designed to reduce pollution), the obvious work on electric and dual-powered cars, natural gas powered buses.... but all this needs the support of both governments and the people (who ultimately will help finance it). Look at an average city and the number of lights left on at night, in empty offices - why does that need a presidental order to be stopped?
EDIT; Oh, and why does a plan have to be simple? All it has to be is a plan that can work.
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ethanol's bull.
thermal depolemerisation and fuel cells is were it's at.
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How many fuel cells are you likely to see making it to 3rd world countries, though?
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it's more how long untill I see them, wich would probly be 50 years after seeing them here, but I still hold out hope for thermal depoemerisation, fuel oil from nothing.
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We can't rely on what might be developed, though. Otherwise it's the same as doing nothing. There's not going to be a single 'BANG...solution' case here, it'll just be many, many years of bringing in cleaner tech and practices.
Ethanol, at least, is a bit of an improvement, and it can be done justnow (amongst other things). So IMO it's a candidate for adoption.
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We aren't going to buck up and solve the environmental problem till people stop being ignorant about the problems that we cause. Most likely, that will happen precisely one day after we have a major environmental crisis.
By then...it may be too late and the rest of us will say we told you so but none of you ever ****ing listened because you were too busy thinking short term profits.
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I seen a guy on TV that used his diesel truck that he converted to use grease from local restaurants. His truck used its diesel engine to start it and heat up to the right temperature, and then it would switch over to the grease. He gets like 900 miles to a tank. Or hell if you want to make biodiesel yourself then here.
http://journeytoforever.org/biodiesel_mike.html
I don't think that such things as hydrogen fueled cars and other alternatives energy sources are all that far fetched. I think that history has proven that when we have a heavy demand for something we can do things that many say are far fetched. Look at how the world was in 1890 or even 1900, and then look at where we are now. In 1903 the Wright brothers little plane went about as far as I can throw a styrofoam glider. Now look at aircraft. It takes me 3 hours to get to New York from DFW International. Hell look at cars. Back in 1900 cars were a luxury, and then people like Ford had visions and seen a hidden demand for a market, and look what happened. 50 years later just about every family in America had a car. Or even going to the moon. It took less than 30 years for humans to make space travel to our nearest nieghbor possible, and on what? A computer that was about as powerful as my cell phone in my pocket. Unfortunatly I think it is going to take a major energy crisis for it to happen, but I believe that the problem will be solved some how. I don't doubt our ability to figure things out as long as our society has a need, and there are people willing to try. I don't doubt that once we run out of gasoline, that within a couple of years the car companies will produce the best damned electric truck that would produce results close to standard trucks today.
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Beside reducing individual CO2 emission, we should more importantly reduce overall emission of the population, and just get rid of some of the luxuries that do us little good.
Well managed, funded and used public transportation is godsend to a metropolis.
I would ban the use of private cars in several cities and give license only for industrial purposes or you could get a temporary license for an increasingly hefty sum - so the rich could still tote around their cars but they'd have to pay for it.
The public baths of Rome were not only medical and sanitary facilities, but centres of culture and just plain interaction that we seem to lack nowadays.
I wouldn't mind going to such a place - especially in some of the new age communities with unisex policies :devil: - 2/3 of the time.
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[color=66ff00]There is an awful lot of evidence that a lot of technologies are intentionally strangled to milk the last of the cash potential out of existing tech.
It's a money game, powerful people think only for their own gains, gains that are short term and fleeting.
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Alternative energy sources will only get real attention by consumers when it starts hurting them where the pain is greatest: their wallet. Until then the average Joe will go on using what all the other Joes and Janes use. Fossil fuels.
However, i sense that day is nigh. We are on the virge of another oil crisis, worst even than the other 2 in the 70´s. Crude oil is already being sold at over 54 dollars a barrel. When it reaches 60, you will see a true economic disaster brewing. Many companies will just close down, because they can´t affoard the cost of energy. Unemployment skyrockets, more companies close, salaries drop, and it´s the Great Depression all over again.
Maybe then these alternate energies get the attention its due.
You know, if only the oil cartels would use the money to research them, but nooo!! They raised oil prices by 200% in the last years, for no reason. It´s not like it costs more to drill the oil than it costed 10 years ago. It´s not like production droped or anything. Oil production is at an all time high, we´ve never seen so much oil being infused in the markets. So why the extra prices? For greed. Nothing more than greed.
If they used those funds to research other options, i would understand. I would even suck it up and pay the extra everytime i´d stop at the gas station. But those oil tycoons are using the money to stuff their bank accounts...
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OK, I'm not going to get involved in the debate that seems to have taken over here. You all know my position on the environment and certain corporate/governmental relationships, so I'm not going to waste time repeating myself.
Moving onto anti-grav technology - I read an article in Flight International magazine (the weekly news mag for the aviation industry) about a microwave "repulsor" engine. It's being developed at the moment, though I don't know all the details. I looked for the article online, but you can't acces FI's news archive without a subscription... :doubt: Anyway, it looked very interesting, and has potential...
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Originally posted by Liberator
However, when the leadership preaches things like fuel economy and lowered resource usage to the masses and then climbs into a Suburban to go to a steak dinner I question their motives. When they demand that the general public do without and they themselves continue to drive Hummers and Porches, I question them.
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How many environmental scientists are there on salaries like that, and will the jobs still be open when I graduate? I don't think so.
Originally posted by Liberator
If the Enviromentalist movement wants to be taken seriously. They need to step up and develop some kind of plan that will detail how they intend to replace the gas burners with electrics and how they intend to generate that electricity cheaply and on a mass scale. This plan needs to be simple enough for Joe Blow on the street to comprehend without blowing out the 5 brain cells he's got left after spending half his life in a drunken stupor.
Err... they have. It's getting the people at the top to listen that's the problem. Decentralized energy through rooftop solar cells that feedback into the grid. Hydrogen fuel cells with direct hydrogen extraction from water using solar power. And if we want to look at some other environemtal problems - Increased emphasis on a transition from consumer to conserver society through the expansion of recycling programs (stuff like curbside, which is what we have here, being expanded into government funded paid reclaimation systems ala South Australia's bottle system and other stuff like that). Diminish global fishing and emphasize aquaculture and mariculture through farmers subsidies. Fund programs like the Oil Mallee Project (http://www.oilmallee.com.au/). Compulsory revegetation. Carbon credits. Get America (and Australia for that matter) to ratify Kyoto. Tighten up environmental controls in places like China, Brazil and India (Non first world counmtries with lots of people and rapidly growing economies)There's no magic bullet that'll fix all our environmental problems, but pretending that nobody's come up with any kind of plan to start the process of sorting things out is... just plain wrong.
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wait a minute Lib, you went from calling people who say that we have caused a bunch of ecological problems...whackos...to calling people whacko for believing in the ideals....even if the leaders of the movement don't follow those ideals. That's almost like saying...you are a whacko because you believe in the same god that some televangelist believes in and supposedly serves, collecting money from widows and financing his new lear jet.
I believe in the environmental movement, we are trashing the environment, and until such a time as people look beyond thier noses and see the truth, we will continue to trash it. People who actually want to save it aren't whackos. People who don't ignore the fact that we are destroying it aren't whackos. Maybe if you KNEW that the environment would be a mess and crushed utterly, before the second coming, it would make a difference to you. Maybe then you would be willing to listen to reason.
The planet is facing serious problems, and it takes serious people to work them out, if you don't want to help, that's fine, but to call the people who do want to help whackos is another matter entirely. To me, people who continuously ignore the threat to our children and grandchildren are the true whackos. If someone put a gun to my daughter's head i would take that very seriously. So while people sit there and smugly say that we didn't **** the environment, i say that if we keep stripping away the plantlife and the trees, we will eventually run out of oxygen.
While we may not cause some of the problems, we do in fact help them to grow, and then we wonder how the hell it happened. It's like not paying the electric bill and then wondering why the electric company shut it off.
whackos...indeed.
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Originally posted by Bobboau
ethanol's bull.
Yeah. Tell that to everyone around here who spends a bit more than half as much in fuel as they'd spend if they used gasoline in their cars... Not even counting the fact that it pollutes a lot less than gasoline and is a solution that is viable, and being used throughout a country of 180 million, right now.
;)
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do you take into consiteration all of the energy used to make/distribute it, not to mention the land that has to be cleared to grow the fuel crop, and it still polutes unlike the two technologies I mentioned.
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Originally posted by Bobboau
do you take into consiteration all of the energy used to make/distribute it, not to mention the land that has to be cleared to grow the fuel crop, and it still polutes unlike the two technologies I mentioned.
Yes, I do. And it still comes out on top. Land is not a problem, it creates jobs, there are many byproducts that can be used, it can use the existing fuel distribution infrastructure, it doesn't require any technological breakthrough, and there's still a lot of room for improvement on agricultural and distillation technologies to make it even more efficient.
So yeah, it's a perfectly renewable fuel source that doesn't pollute nearly as much as oil that can be used right now, and refined to be even more efficient in the future. Hell, any gasoline-powered car (well, any recent gasoline-powered car) can be converted to use ethanol with a kit that costs less than 200 dollars, what other "future fuel" technology can claim that?
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thermal depolemerisation, removes as much polution as it creates, requiers no modification of anything.
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Originally posted by Bobboau
thermal depolemerisation, removes as much polution as it creates, requiers no modification of anything.
With the drawback that it's not possible to do in large quantities right now, and we don't even know if it will be possible in the quantities that are needed. All large scale experiments on it failed.
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And is it cheaply affordable?
(not to mention the logistical issues of simply collecting the recyleable waste in 3rd world countries)
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currently the plant has been spitting out 400 barrels of fuel grade oil a day, it's problem right now is that it's turning out to be a bit more expensive to run that thought, becase the suposed waist material they are useing (turkey parts) turned out to be a lot more expencive than they expected (who'd have though turkey waist would cost $20 per barrle). with some work this could easily out produce ethanol 2 to 1. useing a feed stock that has already served a purpose other than makeing fule (ie you could feed people the corn, then use the exrement they produce from it (as well as the packageing it came in) to genorate oil)
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Point is, how are you going to get this plant up and running for, say, Bangladesh? Or Sierra Leone?
I'm not saying it's not going to be a useful technology; my point is that it isn't going to be useable for a good while yet in the places that it'll be most needed (developing world); and ethanol, whilst not a perfect solution, is at least available in the short term.
i.e. don't discount what we can do, because of what we might do.
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Originally posted by Bobboau
thermal depolemerisation, removes as much polution as it creates, requiers no modification of anything.
Bobb your in love with a technology mothernature invented a long while ago.
Ethanol is also removes the pollution it creates.
The reason is that the plants are perfect carbon sythesizer - they build themselves out of thin air. All the carbon you burn comes from the air, so the net added CO2 is zero.
Thermal depolemerisation can be a godsend to chemistry, but burning the oil you produce is the worth thing anyone could do with it.
There are myriads of plastics and other oil products that also badly need it as a base material.
Ethanol is lot better to burn as fuel as it is a lot simpler and lighter molecule than average petrol.
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As far as Anti-Grav/Zero Friction is concerned, I don't doubt that it is being researched, but the first benefits of it will, as always, probably be involved with moving heavy weaponary around etc.
As far as the environment is concerned something strikes me here. There seems to be a line between those who complain about no alternative fuels and those who go out and find alternative fuels. I'd love to see all this futuristic tech in my house, making water and food etc etc, but I have to be realistic about it, at the moment it's a lot of theory and extremely expensive equipment. I suppose the question I find me asking myself is... When the hammer falls, who's going to be better off?
We've reached a stage now where the promises are starting to sound a bit hollow, something needs to be seen to be happening, and soon.
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I think anti-gravity research led to maglev trains, actually. So they must have done something........
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the mag in maglev stands for magnetic. Not antigravity (unless you consider somthing as rudimentary as picking somthing up antigrav)
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Oddly enough it still qualifies.
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Yes, but I think the original experiments in Anti-Gravity involved investigating the repulsion of magnetic fields in the hope it would explain something about gravity, I'm not certain though.
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Random link from the first page given by google of something I heard on radio this morning:
http://www.outsidethebeltway.com/archives/9844
w00t, 1300 wackos who knows **** about what they're talking about!
Mmh... make sail!
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Originally posted by Flaser
Bobb yer in love with a technology mothernature invented a long while ago.
Ethanol be also removes th'pollution it creates.
The reason be that th'plants are perfect carbon sythesizer - they build themselves out o' thin air. All th'carbon ye burn comes from th'air, so th'net added CO2 be zero.
Thermal depolemerisation can be a godsend t'chemistry, but burnin' th'oil ye produce be th'worth thin' anyone could do with it.
There are myriads o' plastics an' other oil products that also badly need it as a base material.
Ethanol be lot better t'burn as fuel as it be a lot simpler an' lighter molecule than average petrol.
WHAT THE ****!? :nervous: :wtf: :eek2:
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Ahoy!