Hydrogen is the most common element in the universe, but no so much on Earth, not in its elemental state. The only viable source is the oceans, but you need energy to crack water, and you won't get it all back by burning it. There's a possibility of using genetically engineered bacteria to crack it enzymatically, but really the best use of hydrogen is controlled nuclear fusion. Though the current versions of fusion require the rarer isotopes of hydrogen: Deuterium (Hydrogen-2) and Tritium (Hydrogen-3). Some of which can be acquired as products of other nuclear processes (breeding Tritium from Lithium, for example) but would probably be best acquired from the moon.

Also Tritium is radioactive and, like Hydrogen, very difficult to contain. The Deuterium-Tritium fuel cycle has 100 times the neutron flux as current fission power reactors, which is a problem for material design. The free neutrons produced by many of the proposed fusion paths are liable to alter the atoms of the reactor structure itself, changing them into radioactive isotopes. Certainly, the first series of D-T tests at the Joint European Torus left the vacuum vessel sufficiently radioactive to warrant remote handling for the following year. This wasn't contamination by radioactive materials like what you get when exposed to fissionable materials and waste, but the metal itself had been changed.

Nuclear reactors are focuses of true alchemy.

Biofuel is a terrible, terrible solution - We have a food crises already, and using vegetable oil would be like burning food in your car.

I mentioned hydrogen earlier. The problem with hydrogen is that it's incredibly energy-intensive to produce - However people are working on ways of producing it more efficiently. My earlier point was that people could use solar power in desert areas to produce hydrogen meaning that power requirements wouldn't be a problem - And it's something that's already being looked at, people have made solar panels that actually produce hydrogen, although as a way to make solar panels more efficient rather than to use the gas.

I'm still sure you could use parabolic mirrors to generate electricity and split water to produce hydrogen though - I mean you can melt steel with this. Surely lots of these in a desert can be used to generate a lot of power? (And as a side note, the people who are building these want to use this power to generate a petrol substitute by super-heating air - They're working out how to do this but I won't believe it until I've seen it. Full 7 minute clip here.):


And yeah, nuclear fuel doesn't produce any emissions, and during the time we've used it, there haven't been many accidents - I'm sure more people die on the worlds roads every week, or if not, every month, than have ever been killed by the results of nuclear power station accidents. But when there has been an accident, and like what's going on now in Japan, radiation leaks are serious business. You harm people and have the potential to make areas of land uninhabitable for hundreds of years.

Actually perhaps that's a good thing - Look at the zone of alienation near Chernobyl and how the wildlife has seemed to reclaim that area, because radiation doesn't effect other species in the same way as it affects us.

No, it does affect them in the same way it affects us. The wildlife is there because humans are not. We are worse for the natural world than radioactive contamination in the ecosystem.

Fact.

I'm not disputing that. It's still bad for us, though.

TBH I don't give a shit about the planet, it can take care of itself like it has done for millions of years - I'm more concerned about our own survival.

We need the environment the way it is to support us.

We haven't been industrializing the planet for millions of years. That's only been going on for the last 500 years at most and already we completely raped this world.

Actually wait, I'm wrong here. This statement is true but doesn't have much to do with what's being talked about - Never debate when tired. :P

This is what I actually meant, yes - We need the environment to survive, and it's in our best interests to keep it as it is. This includes preserving the wildlife. If you push on one side of an ecosystem, you've no idea what'll happen in another part of it. We shouldn't protect the environment for the sake of "being green" and not harming it, we should protect it because we need it. And many people don't seem to realise that.

We're not the worst thing to happen to the planet by far, and it'll recover from any damage we'll do long after we've gone, so long as it remains habitable. To it, we've appeared and will probably disappear in a blink of an eye. It's the current environment that we've damaged.

Sure it will recover, but not before we completely depleted it and killed ourselves in the process. Like BM said, we need the planet the way it is now to survive, not the way it will be once we're completely done with it.

If nuclear power was made safer and proven to be so, and people could be trusted not to dump nuclear waste where it could easily contaminate habitats, I wouldn't have so much of a problem with it. I'd even see it as one of the solutions to the energy crises. But this highlights the problem that people are stupid and cannot be trusted with something so potentially dangerous.

You just contradicted yourself there, you said that our survival is the most important and now you're saying we'll disappear in the blink of an eye. If you want to survive, or even live we need to start repairing the shit we have done to this planet. It's like kicking your Mum in the face after she bought you a shiny new car!

The timescale on which we appeared (hundreds of thousands of years) is a blink of an eye in comparison to the life-span of the planet. I'd like our species to last at least another hundred-thousand years, not be wiped out because of our own stupidity.

So yes, it's important to conserve our environment for our own selfish well-being, not to save the planet. After we're gone, the planet will re-consume whatever we've taken from it - Or at least, the stuff we haven't blasted into space.

right? he's been doing it a lot. i was gonna make a shitty compilation of all his previous posts because of it, but was distracted by an advert for a porn site.

in the end i think i made the better choice and spent my time constructively.

I'm terrible at illustrating my points, so what I talk about seems to be total bollocks even though I actually have valid points - But you only get better at it by trying. I'm making a lot of mistakes which don't do me any favours but it's not like I have much dignity to lose.

You intelligent people need idiots like me to feel good about yourself. :P (Said the Clakkerz in Stranger - Except about being busy vs being lazy) Then you can look at sorry wrecks of people like me and think "Man, I'm glad I'm not like him".

you either illustrate a valid point or you don't. there's no "oh i just can't say what i mean but trust me its a valid point". the only person that gets away with that is Stephen Hawking.

lol, case and point I suppose - I misused the word "Valid" in my previous post. What makes a point "valid" is having enough info to backup my points so that they make sense. And also what's valid for me may not be valid for the next guy (probably because I haven't explained my point properly even though I know what I mean).

Unfortunately the only way of making myself easier to understand is to learn by doing, and I did learn from this just now. This is turning out to be a real eye-opener.

Phew!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Algae_fuel << ALGAE FUEL! This is what I was looking for the other day.

Pot kettle.

Hey, everything I say is so deep it has four meanings. Even this.

Oh no I won't. :P

Fuel from algae is an interesting idea, and that reminds me of this video that I found yesterday (though I'll admit that it's over my head a bit):

SCIENCE:


Hmm, this is from 2 years ago. I wonder what happened to this idea?

Oh, and I'll summarise earlier points:

• I don't think we should save the planet for the sake of "saving the planet". The planet doesn't give a shit about us - Like the rest of the universe, it'll continue as it always has done for millions of years and I don't believe there's anything we can do that will stop it. The recent earthquakes are case and point of this - They've always happened throughout the Earth's history.

• We should save the ENVIRONMENT and the ecology (which is different from THE PLANET in my opinion, even though one relies on the existence of another) for our own well-being - We need it to live.

• I believe that if people keep saying "Save the planet", then it disconnects "The planet" from "the human". It takes us out of the equation for some people, and that's a bad thing. They don't make the link between saving the planet and saving ourselves. This is why I'm saying what I'm saying.

Possibility #1: it is still in development.
Possibility #2: it has been quashed by special interests.
Possibility #3: it doesn't work.

Why hasn't anyone called anyone else a cunt yet? This argument sucks dick.

Cunt.

Now we're getting somewhere.

Heeeeee's back.

Cunt indeed.

Hooray!

Also, I think nuclear power is great, if not misused. I'm stupid in real life, but right now, I have self-esteem juice, so I can speak my mind with no regrets (yet).

Nuclear power has been brought down by the media in attempts to scare us off from us for reasons i don't really know because I'm not as intelligent/educated as Bullet Magnet. However, I do believe that the positives of Nuclear Power strongly outweigh the negatives, and, as BM said, most people are simply scared of nuclear power because it is, well, nuclear power. It has been driven into our skull by the cunts that we call our world leaders (whoever you want to tag as that, it's not like it truly means anything) that nuclear power = radioactive super-mutants like the Oblongs and Susan Boyle, but, in reality, and not Scottland (sorry any Scotts on here.. is Ridg3 scottish or irish? I forgot. I think WoF is scottish, so sorry, you pussy-blood loving fuck (yes, I've creeped OWF for quite some time)), nuclear power has the capabilites to provide us with great (redundancy) power, and can be a very useful tool to harness (maynard james keenan).

Worst post ever on OWF? Probably. Yeah. Cool. Ban me. Go ahead. Infraction time, Max? Nate? Yes. I taste you, much better. Lights out. Wet skin. On read leather. Check the closet. NIGHT TIME.

Your a fucking annoying drunk.

Well, you're a fucking annoying sober!