Charlie Zureki wrote on Sun, 11 May 2008 14:25 |
We burn stuff because currently it's cheaper, more efficient, and that it is the technology afforded to us at the moment.
|
The price we pay depends on whether you factor in the hidden costs of their use or just pass those costs on to the next generation. That can't last.
Is it more efficient when braking to dump momentum as heat or to regenerate it as electricity? The reasons that we don't have electric vehicles are political, economic and social, not technical.
Afforded to us by whom? There are other technologies in existence, but many have the potential for decentralized production which may not benefit those who currently control our energy.
Charlie Zureki wrote on Sun, 11 May 2008 14:25 |
The "grid for distributing it electrically", the majority of power from this grid is from burning. (some from hydro, wind and solar, but a very small percentage)
|
Umm, yeah, but my point is that the grid is there if we decide to find other sources of energy. There's no real reason that the source must be combustion other than the substantial economic momentum for doing it that way. There is energy everywhere and all we really have to do is be creative about extracting it. The grid can even make decentralized generation like home photovoltaic more efficient by allowing those generating excess to supply those with a shortfall.
Charlie Zureki wrote on Sun, 11 May 2008 14:25 |
The laws of Physics are quite clear, you cannot create or destroy matter, all that you can do is change it's form. That the changing of it's form is where we get our "energy". We can only create energy through, Chemical, Mechanical, or Thermal methods.
|
Yes, the laws of
Newtonian physics are clear, but in the quantum world what you say isn't necessarily so. Even within your constraints there are lots of other ways to use the energy all around us. I'm not talking about cold fusion or anything equally questionable, I'm talking about leveraging our solar thermal, photovoltaic, wind, geothermal, tidal etc. technologies into a practical system of generation. I think it can be done on a technical level but it's the political and economic forces that resist the change.