h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

You're right, most energy sources do come from the sun, with the following exceptions:

Nuclear Fusion - BOOM.
Nuclear Fission - boom.
Cold Fusion - well, we're still waiting.
Geothermal - not everywhere available.

In all these non-sun sources, the environmental cost has to be considered. It also needs to be considered in the sun alternatives as well (the chemicals used in producing solar cells for instance).

A friend of mine actually worked in the lab with Fleischmann during the whole cold fusion thing. Séamus is a very bright guy - he's not wholly convinced it was nuclear fusion, but there's no doubt that quantities of energy were liberated which went far beyond the scope of a normal chemical reaction.

On the other hand, it was a rather Heath Robinson affair, controlled by a BBC model B micro and the "thermonuclear shield" was an old pudding basin

Bruce, my thoughts exactly.
Remember, energy cannot be created or destroyed, only converted from one form to another.
Besides, fossil fuels are a finite resource, some predict only 30-50 years supply of oil left at our current rate of consumption(!). What then.
I know....
We'll all drive electric cars. This will of course require a lot more power stations (nuclear probably) to keep them charged as you wouldn't want them to be solar powered (see reasons in other replies).
Or we could all ride horses but then there's the problem of all that dung! Is it Holland that has a huge problem getting rid of pig waste?
Very environmentally unfriendly...

How long have they been saying that we're about to run out of fossil fuels? It occurs to me that we have numerous untapped resources.

I noticed that someone mentioned something about SunSpot Activity. I think this is a lot more likely to contribute to the earth's changing ecosystems and weather systems than most scientists give them credit for. Most scientists seem to be set on the idea that it global warming is a direct result of us. To look forward, we may have to look back: one the planets more ancient races, the Mayans seemed to have this down pat - they based their calendar on sun-cycles. They even had a time for the orbit of the sun around the central point of our galaxy - by this i mean that the sun doesn't spin on the spot - it itself moves in a small orbit. Our scientific instruments have only recently detected this movement. Anyway, back to the point. The mayans had two calendars - a 260 day religious calendar and a 365 day 'normal' calendar. These two calendars intersected every 72 years, and by this they measured portions of their time. Their calendar fitted into a larger cycle, one that the sun followed, and was completed every 26,000 years. After the mayans died out (or disappeared), they had a calendar in place which carried on. We are now reaching the end of one the major cycles of the sun, specifically, in 2012. This is when the mayans stopped their calendar. Now, the mayans were big on sun worship, and seemed to have apretty good idea of what was going on. They seemed to realise that at the end of solar cycles, sun-spot activity increased. This is what we are seeing now.....some scientists have noticed that. Whata sunspot is, is a massive explosion of hot gases and electromagnetic radiation. the gases don't travel so far, but the radiation does - far enough for it to bambard the earth with 'rogue' charged particles. Our modern lives largely depend on electro-magnetism for day-day living - communications, electricity ( both manufacture and transport). These charged particles also affect the weather. If the planet is being bombarded by more and more electro-magnetic particles, I would imagine that we would experience precisely the sort of thing we are experiencing, and that it is only going to get worse.

This has been your pleasant thought for the day, brought to you by h2g2.com, Fat Freddie, and the number 42.

Given the climactic changes which have been seen in the paleoclimactic record (ice cores from greenland and the antarctic) we're currently in the middle of a hugely varying climate era anyway.

Still global warming is more likely to go to global cooling as a consequence. Huge amounts of freshwater from the polar ice caps go into the oceans disrupting the circulation of warm water (bye-bye gulf stream in the UK). The seas cool and so do we.

There's another alternative to fossil fuels, presently very popular in Brazil, and that is alcohol.

Although some of us may cry at the thought of burning something we would put to a much better use, it's certainly a practical option.

They get the alcohol from sugarcane - some people might claim that cutting down rainforests/jungle/native habitat to plant sugarcane is bad for the ecosystem locally

;^)#

> How long have they been saying that we're about to run out of fossil fuels? It occurs to me that we have numerous untapped resources.

Well, 2bit, that's also a great argument for withdrawing all pollution controls. It seems to me that the planet won't die for at least 70 years even if we abandon all pollution controls completely. By that time I'll be dead, so why should I care?

The answer, of course, is that some of us would like to leave a little something behind for our children, rather than using the whole thing up right now.

Fossil fuels are a finite resource. They will always be a finite resource, because it takes millions of years to turn dead fish into oil. Until we work out a way of producing oil which doesn't take up more resources than it yields, it's probably best to plan on reducing our dependence on this vanishing commodity.