[Coach]

Resolute, I think you and I have been down this path a few times, and we just wont agree, so I'll be brief in my answers. Anything further, feel free to PM me, as we are pretty off-topic, although I do find the discussion very interesting.

For the record, I come at this from a stand point of "things we can and should do" not from a "things we WILL do". Because humanity is a collection of selfish a-holes (including myself), and it's rare that anyone does something without benefit to themselves. So even rarer that 100's of millions or billions of us could do anything collectively. I'm not blind or ignorant of that fact, but I do like to look past it to think about possibilities.

Originally Posted by Resolute 14

How many solar panels would it take to power the entire globe? How much space would that take?

This number will dwindle pretty quickly with improved R&D/tech, but I think a couple panels on the roofs of every house and building should do just fine to feed a power grid.

Who pays for the manufacturing? Who pays for the R&D to design more efficient builds? Who actually constructs them? Who pays for that? And more importantly, given you have made it very clear that this is to be free power, why would you expect anyone to fund all of this with a promised ROI of 0?

We do. The people and their collection of resources. Yes, this means a centralized effort, probably with the help and expertise of some very smart and altruistic people to guide it (yes, these people are few, but they do exist).

Incidentally, do you practice what you preach? Have you eliminated your reliance on oil for 'free' energy? Do you eschew the accumulation of wealth in favour of altruism and working for the betterment of others? Or are you, like so many other wannabe Earth Rangers, demanding that other people take the step you won't?

Firstly, yes, I do and have eschewed my own wealth in favor of the benefit of others. I have spent most of my twenties volunteering plenty of time to efforts that benefit me only in spirit, and (hopefully) benefit others, at the opportunity cost of more work/more money. I know this is a weird concept to some people, but beyond my own needs (which are quite minimalist) I really don't care about money at all.

But, in regards to energy, to my dismay, no, I can't. And it literally eats at me every day that I turn the key in my car, or flick my lights on knowing there's the possibility of something better, but money means I can't do it. In this vein, I am more angry with humanity of the past than anything. We went down the wrong road a long time ago. And selfish interests (and unfortunate circumstances) squashed any possibilities of alternatives. A world war breaking out just as solar actually began to gain momentum, but it was crushed because we didn't have time to make it work, we had to use what we had in place to drive the efforts of war. Lobbies pushing for prohibition lead by the founder of Standard Oil just as people started to figure out we can use alcohol to fuel machines rather than oil. Funny coincidence there. A hundred years later and most people still have no idea that their cars can run on pretty much any mixture of gasoline and alcohol (including a 100% of either) but the only reason we can't is that it's programmed OUT of the cars, and then gets sold as some sort of special feature (FlexFuel), when all it is, is a change in the computer coding.

Those types of instances are what bother me, what make wonder how things would be if it wasn't for them. And make me think, this stuff was possible 100 years ago, why haven't we done it yet? And that question is what leads me down the road of looking into stories like the above and getting frustrated at people.


Anyways, not as brief as I thought. This stuff is more just an exercise in thought experiments than anything. But I don't think you can discount the ideas that there are powerful people pulling strings on this stuff behind the scenes as just crazy consiracy theories. It's not a "OH NO THE LIZARDMEN!" thing, its a "this crap has happened before and been happening forever" sort of thing.