Eventually mankind will run out of carbon-based energy. At this point civilization will collapse unless a substitute is found. Why not start now to solve this problem rather than waiting until the last minute, as is the usual approach?
Of course I agree. But this leads to an interesting point. People promoting conventional energy conservation, cold fusion, hot fusion and other energy improvements have made a big mistake, in my opinion. They have been trying to tell the public that we are running out of energy a crisis is approaching and we must do something rather than wait until the last minute. That may be true, but it is the wrong message. People will see that there is still plenty of gas in the price is not really gone up relative to inflation, and they will ignore us. What you should say instead is: "Cold fusion will save money! It will work better. It will create many new opportunities. It will cause less pollution." Those with the themes I emphasized in the book, rather than talking about resource depletion.
It is often said that the stone age did not and because we ran out of stones. People usually adapt new technologies because they work better, not because older resources are running out. However, there are some major exceptions to this rule, especially in the energy business. Old-growth hardwood forest firewood in the US really was depleted, and we were definitely running on a whale oil before we began using oil (underground oil, I mean). Oil production in the US peaked around 1974 and it has declined drastically. OPEC production peaked late last year, I think, just as Deffeyes predicted. There is no more available hydroelectric power, although there is a huge reservoir of untapped wind energy.
It is a little ironic that we have, in fact, begun to run short of conventional energy, but that still is not a good "sales" message to promote cold fusion. Conservationists have cried wolf too often. They should have known better. Anyway, cold fusion has so many other outstanding advantages there is really no need to emphasize depletion.
The original message starting this thread said:
Christians are thought callous for not recognizing the need to tackle "God sized" problems while there are nonbelievers amoung us who think the solution to planetary thermal overload and other environmental problems is to eliminate five of the six billion people on the Earth's surface.
Oh come now. No one in this forum has said anything like that! Engineers and scientists believe in solving people's problems, not in killing people off to bury the problem. Killing people -- or letting them die of AID or bird-flu, is like "fixing" a broken computer by bashing it with sledgehammer. (Okay, I have done that once and it was gratifying, but that sucker deserved it.) I myself hope that the terrestrial population will gradually be reduced to around 2 or 3 billion, perhaps with billions of other people living off planet if they want to.
By the way, experts at the CDC and elsewhere are predicting that bird flu will probably infect people within a few years, because it remains pandemic among birds and of course virus evolution is rapid. If a virulent form crosses to the human population it will probably kill between 5 million and 1 billion people. A friend of mine at the CDC just left for Vietnam to work on this problem. Researchers have strongly suggested that governments worldwide fund the development of vaccinations and improved Third World poultry production facilities to prevent a pandemic. That is what scientists do -- they try to fix problems. Governments by and large are ignoring these recommendations. The U.S. government is spending $1 billion a week on war instead. It built several splendid new CDC facilities in response to 9/11 bio-threat hysteria, but it is now cutting back on funding for the professional staff and for equipment, so the splendid new buildings are sitting empty, and the clock is ticking, and the bird flu viruses -- contrary to the officially expressed views of the Cobb County Georgia Board of Education -- definitely are evolving.
Here is a ghoulish question. If 50,000 children in Georgia are killed by bird flu, will the Board rethink its assertions and calls off the jihad against scientific knowledge? Probably not.
- Jed
