I know I know, laws of physics say no free energy. but thats only for closed systems and the earth is not so.
how would the world change if energy was totally free? say we found some wire that just picked up charge from background radiation, or something rediculus like that.
how would the planet change if electricity was entirely free? at first it seems like a simple question “duh, it would be like it is now, but cheaper”
but then you can start thinking about the stuff that we don’t do now because it would cost more than it would benifit… like processing the gold out of seawater (there is a small amount of most elements in seawater, just can’t even nearly profit getting them out because of energy costs)
I don’t know… was reading a sci fi book about what would happen if there was free energy… and it was really pretty much lame, I wanna hear more interesting predictions, I mean its not impossible we could find a limitless and easy to tap energy source somewhere. how WOULD that change the world?
Yes, I know. The energy itself is free. But the free energy generators will cost money (and energy) to build, and they’ll presumably wear out eventually. So even if we’ve got a magic wire that pulls zero point energy out of the ether, it’s not totally free energy.
So, assume we’ve got an energy source that never runs out and is really really damn cheap. I’m sure there are endless industrial and recycling processes that are now too energy-intensive to be practical which would become widespread. One bad effect of limitless free energy would be a great increase in light and heat pollution, as people ceased caring about energy efficiency or conservation. In the long run, heat pollution might become a significant enough problem to force the government to institute some sort of energy tax in order to curb waste heat generation.
Heat pollution might actually be less of a problem than it is now. If your magic electricity could be generated with units small enough to run a car and a plane, then we could eliminate most of the use of fossil fuels. Internal combustion engines of all kinds produce a lot of waste heat; electric motors are much more efficient in that regard. And, of course, we’d stop producing so much carbon dioxide.
While thing would be fine on Earth, a young couple taking walk on Tau Ceti IV would notice their sun suddenly grow dim, and while watching it shrink into a pale red dot, would be run over by a velocipede that had gone out of control when it’s engine suddenly died.
But hey, shift happens.
A quick question about your scenario, though…is the free energy coming from large free energy plants, or could it be produced by smaller, vehicle-mounted units?
And I wonder what free energy WOULDN’T effect…Fossil Fuel might not be needed to power cars and cities, but what about jet aircraft (Try running an SST off an electric motor)? Or producing new plastic?
The energy we use to make electricity already is free. It is the long process of transformation and transportation that requires a lot of human effort. The only way to have truly free electricity would be to have slaves who did all the work. And even then you’d need to manage the slaves. You would need a class of people who voluntarily decided to work for free and dedicate all their energy to pleasing a few in exchange for nothing. It already happens to a few who we call “trust fund babies”. Just ask them what it’s like to get stuff without having to work for it.
Don’t forget about the transmission issue. The NIMBY forces (some of them well intentioned and well informed, to be sure) make it extremely difficult for electricity to be transmitted today from the places it is cheapest to manufacture to the places that need it more.
Unless you magic energy comes to everybody’s home by magic as well, using free energy will still be a major hassle. And the freeness of it all will set up even more demand for it to be made available everywhere damning those who have to suffer the transmission burden.
If energy were suddenly truly free the whole world economy would be completely disrupted and there’d probably be a worldwide depression. I don’t even want to think about what this would do the stability of the middle east and its impact on terrorism.
It seems to me that eliminating the world’s dependancy on Middle Eastern oil would eliminate their ability to blackmail the Western world. Thus, the terrorist’s power base would be eliminated.
All you have to do is take it from the vacuum. Calculations have shown that every square inch of space contains enough energy to boil the world’s oceans. Tesla was onto it. And now, Dr Stephen Greer is trying to ensure the world can tap into it within a number of years.
I realise most Dopers will roll their eyes at this sort of thing, but shouldn’t unless they have read through all the material available from http://www.disclosureproject.org/
The two are related, as you will discover.
The interesting mental exercise before you isn’t so much " what if free energy was available", but “what happens if alternative energe replaces the current oil-based energy industry?”. Oil is a finite resource, it will happen one day. Question is - will it happen in an orderly and planned fashion before we need to do it, or will we leave it until there is no other option?
For cites - please see above web sites and material contained within. I recommend the audio streams for quick and easy overviews.
There’s an easy way to stop our eyes rolling, fungi. Just show us that these people have actually produced real working power for a real company that powers a real business in the real world.
Please continue to monitor their success at doing this and let me know when I can give my eyes a rest.
