You may wish to take a look at John McCarthy’s sustainability pages, and (if it is available to you) read “Breeder reactors: A renewable energy source”, American Journal of Physics, vol. 51, (1), Jan. 1983.
The Heat Death of the Universe? Bah, that’s old news. It happened about three minutes after the Big Bang… We’ve been living on the leftovers ever since.
It may well be impossible to reverse entropy, but you’d better believe that if humans should happen to survive that long, we’ll be trying our darndest, anyway.
5 billion years. Gee.
We need to put resources into long-term development of alternative energy sources now and not wait untile high energy prices cause serious disruption before we hop to it.
[hijack] The republicans have been lambasting Gore and Clinton for not having developed an energy policy, and they would have a point exept for one thing: They themselves would never have accepted any big-government energy policy proposed by Bill Clinton.[/hijack]
>Tough to imagine. The laws of nature are such that >entropy wins out in the end. Every atom will eventually >decay. Try stopping that across the universe.
I agree that it is tough to imagine, but in fairness, I think it is also impossible to rule out right now.
To address your example, it is certainly conceivable to me that we may someday be able to construct new atoms. Why do I think so? Well, atoms were created at some point by some process. Who’s to say that humanity will never be able to duplicate that process in the future, to a limited (or even greater) extent?
I have read many theories about the ultimate fate of the universe, and believe that some uncertainty is added when you think about the role of humanity in that fate.
It’s almost as hard to get a new coal plant built here in the US as it is a new nuclear plant. This is partially due to local pressures and partially due to the EPA, which has cracked down hard on any potential new coal plant construction with obstructionist tactics that at best can be considered sabotage.
No. The heat death of the universe refers to what finally happens to a static (neither expanding nor contracting) universe after all of the energy has been converted to heat and thermal equilibrium has been achieved. There would be no useable energy and the universe would be truly dead.
Aren’t you glad we will avoid that fate since the universe is not static?
WILL YOU GUYS PLEASE STOP TALKING ABOUT THE DEATH OF THE UNIVERSE IN A THREAD ABOUT THE WORLD’S ENERGY CRISIS?!
I have enough hideous nightmares as it is in my sleep, I don’t to be thinking about this horror in my waking life.
Now I need someone to rock me to sleep at night… 
Yeah, but you know what they say about people like you: give you a cradle and you’ll only fill it with coal.
Awww, Poor Anth.
You don’t need to worry about that, darling. The sun will completely engulf the earth in red fire billions of years before the heat death!
And to think - I made you a good guy, and Eutychus an evil one in my latest story. Hmm…maybe some editing is called for…
“Millions of years of fish poop under severe compression at the bottom of the ocean has created a large supply of the stuff.” AFAIK, fish poop’s got nothing to do with methane hydrate. It’s simply a crystaline solid formed under the unique conditions of the bottom of the ocean. The methane (CH4) comes from the atmosphere via disolving in sea water. It’s suspected to be a part of the equilibrium of the environment on a geological scale.
As the atmosphere cools, water is deposited in the polar ice caps thereby lowering sea level and the pressure at the bottom. When the pressure decreases methane hydrate comes out of its solid crystalline form and returns to the atmosphere. After a while, the atmosphere begins to warm due to methane being a potent greenhouse gas. The ice caps melt. Pressure rises. Methane hydrate begins to redeposit and the atmosphere eventually cools. Ad infinitum.
I’m not sure it would be such a good idea to screw around with this system. We’ve already FUBAR’ed it with our use of petroleum and coal.
Wind and solar energy sources will be made to produce some power, but will NEVER produce “plenty”. Please, let’s don’t be overly optimistic.
Anthracite: You don’t need to worry about the end of the universe or that the sun is about to engulf the inner planets of the solar system relatively soon on a cosmic scale ‘cause we’re all gonna’ die much sooner in about 100 years +/-.
OK, prove me wrong! But I swear I read that fish poop had something to do with it in a Nat’l Geo magazine…The only thing that I have found so far on it is this little quib:
“Methane hydrate is formed beneath the sea floor
when algae from the surface dies and sinks.”
‘according to new research by Stephen Hesselbo, an Oxford University researcher’
Maybe I read that the algae feed on fish poop, and THEN this happens…Gotta find that article.
Until then, I stand (partially) corrected. 