Instead we dig up billions of years worth of the suns energy in the form of oil and burn it inefficiently in one great big post industrialised explosion. Free energy is there for the taking without any crackpot pipe dreams and without upsetting any balances.
okay?? So you make a provocative post to initiate a lecture about wind power or something?
Don't get me wrong. I'm probably going to build a reverse heat pump complex in my back yard one day, I'm just sick of these uneducated people who dig up a Tesla's patent from hundred years ago and think they can somehow break the very laws of nature.
I don't mind them because someday they could come up with something that leapfrogs efficiencies, infinite monkeys with infinite typewriters and all that
All I'm saying is we have free energy in almost unlimited amounts and the tech to use it but there seems to be some view that because the perpetual motion madness doesn't work we have no choice but to keep burning oil.
There are only 3 things that prevent complete conversion to renewable energy:
Efficiency. Between our huge wastage and solar etc's poor efficiencies the investment needed is orders of magnitude greater than it should be.
Density. Nothing cost effective matches oil for calories/area.
The oil industry. They will stop at nothing to keep us burning this shit.
There's probably more but I think they're the main ones
Nothing you mention there is "free energy". Renewable is not "free".
I agree that renewable sources are infinitely preferable to CO2 based sources, but calling them "free energy" just makes me think that you somehow consider them magical, like a magic perpetual motion machine. They're not, and they do have the cost of upkeep.
I see. 