Just a thought

[boomerang]

Quit thinking small. Throw all the resources we can towards the development of the transporter. We can beam ourselves and every other commodity wherever it needs to go. No roads, bridges, fueling stations, no emissions, no recycling, no injuries and deaths due to car accidents, etc.

Is this practical - who knows? Is this possible - who knows? Quit thinking evolutionary and start thinking revolutionary.

The following quote is attributed to Albert Einstein.

"We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them."

 

[miketheidiot]

personally, i am willing to bet the the future is the internal combustion engine, although hydrogen power cells are probably a better bet than batteries

 

[wwswimming]

Robert Hirsch is one of the scientists & economists that have studied energy transition in great detail.

his basic conclusion in the report published in 2005, the Hirsch Report, a government funded study.
he works for SAIC & MISI. they get paid $$ to write reports about what happens as we transition
away from cheap abundant oil.

his basic conclusion - in order to make the transition without massive economic dislocation, we
needed to start 20 or more years ago. that meant listening to the last president that tried to talk
about energy, Jimmy Carter. his message of conservation, the sweater speech, was not popular.

one of the basic points in the Hirsch Report is that it takes energy to make all these new technologies.
people have to drive to work for 5 years, to get the job done.

if the economy stays in a deep recession, that will keep the costs of energy down, which is good for
a government funded R&D effort ... almost.

at this point the US government relies on people to buy the debt instruments it sells. people in foreign
countries, many of whom are in a recession themselves and don't have the money to buy the US
debt to finance Obama's energy R&D projects.

so now the US has basically painted itself into a corner, and just happens to have gone about $7 trillion
deeper in debt during the last year, or $1 trillion, depending on how you do the accounting for the TARP
and related programs.