Yeah! Bring on the electric Audis!
Shame he kept the manual transmission, I guess he left it stuck in a particular gear. That's 70kg of extra weight.

I think Cold Fusion does work, but I worry 'they' will never release it to ordinary people because it would make us too independent and not reliant on central energy companies.

Hot fusion, ie TOKAMAK, would of course be a clean form of nuclear energy if they ever make it work.

I like solar too, depending on solar cell efficiency, if you cover an area smaller than the UK in solar panels it would supply the current energy needs of the whole world. Not bad.

One thing you get from watching the video is that this guy is a bit of a tree-hugger so I think it's probably quite unlikely that he's a pro-nuclear activist, at least not without good reason or rationale.

Personally, I'm pro-anything-that-works. I like the idea of renewables such as solar, I just don't think they're very practical or scaleable. And, something I hadn't previously given much thought to, until watching that TED talk, is the sheer scale of manufacturing required to bring renewable energy to the world. When you take that into consideration and think about the amount of energy and materials required to go 100% renewable (not to mention all the maintenance and the waste generated by continually upgrading and replacing the technology), it does start to seem somewhat counter-productive and futile.

To capture enough solar energy in an instant to meet the world's growing energy needs, will take vast amounts of land and materials, especially if we're to meet the new demand and challenges that electric vehicles bring, which could potentially double the world's electrical energy requirements within a few decades. Using energy reserves makes far more sense, but not in the form of fossil fuels of course. One major energy reserve we have available to us is geothermal. Geothermal has the potential to provide practically endless amounts of energy very cleanly, if we can only develop better and more practical ways to tap into it.

Nuclear energy, assuming we make it 100% safe, is the ultimate in tapping into endless energy reserves. This is the energy that forms matter; the energy of star-stuff. Huge amounts of energy converted into matter by the stars (thanks to E=MC^2), ready to be released and harnessed. It's not a burning or chemical process but a direct conversion of matter into energy. There is no denser store of energy than an atom and no cleaner way to obtain energy than to reverse what happened in the stars by turning some of the matter they created back into pure energy. The biggest challenge for nuclear of course is making it 100% safe, but I think with generation IV reactors we're almost there. And through greater use and investment, I think it's likely that someday we'll crack Cold Fusion.



I like the idea of hydrogen as a fuel. On paper it's a perfect fuel; burn it and it combines with oxygen to make water. But in practice, storing and transporting hydrogen (safely) is a problem. It's one if the most highly combustible elements in existence. It also has a very low density so it needs to be greatly compressed, under very high pressures, to provide any kind of practical energy density.

And the bigger picture for me is that using hydrogen, as with any fuel, is just the harnessing of a chemical reaction. It's nothing more than the primitive burning of stuff. If the human race is to ever move up the Kardashev scale, and survive beyond this planet, we need to leave behind this 'burning stuff' and learn to harness energy properly. And that can only be achieved with nuclear.

The more I think about it, the more nuclear seems to be the obvious answer. I'm not pro-nuclear but I am very much pro-science and I would conclude that the science points to nuclear.

I'm into installing these Ray, converting old dumb barges into quite complex cable layers and conversions to carry the towers and blades for the turbines.

Hmmm....I've watched this video now, and I do think he's a patsy for the nuclear lobby. For me, so many of his arguments in this video fall into now typical classic misinformation territory - such as making a minor point and then extrapolating it to a major conclusion, often emotionally - e.g. "ripping turtles and their babies out of the ground to make way for solar farms", or his data on rising German electricity costs as evidence of how renewables cost more, not less (which is out of date, wilfully ignoring/not pointing out the subsidy effect on this data)

I have no idea if he genuinely believes the stuff he quotes, or if he is just naively regurgitating it, but it's not convincing at all. So I'm out. Others may disagree.

I generally - perhaps cynically? - tend to look for a greater burden of proof of an argument where I know there is a powerful (and rich!) lobbying group trying to make their point, particularly where they are trying to protect their vested interests/the status quo - whether that's the C**k (sorry Koch... :rolleyes: ) Brothers in the Oil & Gas sector, Pharma companies, etc, etc, and this guy falls into that category for me.