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'Unlimited Energy' is at best a Stupid phrase.

It is unlimited the way the Earth's forests were 100 years ago.
It is unlimited the way the Fish of the ocean were 100 years ago.

A little clue,
Look at dead Mars, that may have once harbored life,
It lost the heat of its molten core and thereby lost its magnetic field, In turn it lost its atmosphere.

So if you can get by without breathing and don't mind lots of solar and Universal radiation on you then by all means use the Earth's internal heat all you want.

I am sure some development will take place, But we should be looking at other possibilities.

There are NO FREE LUNCHES. PERIOD.
.

In theory, "Theory and practice are the same."

In practice, they're different.

Yes, nothing's unlimited and all power sources can be prematurely drained. That much is true.

And slavish devotion to over-reliance on draining the earth's heat, combined with some sort of near-future huge economic expansion based on abundant geothermal energy could indeed be harmful. Just because your scenario is science-fictional doesn't mean it's not valid.
As far as I can tell, all alternative power sources produce heat. You are correct to suggest that this in itself may be a problem. But I still think geothermal has some huge advantages over hydrocarbon combustion.

The heat-energy that's there in the earth, however, is right now possibly more intriguing in a cleaner, buy-us-some-time sense, than the future of oil. Which is more of the same, costing more and getting worse as time goes by.


[edit on 5/1/2005 by Noumenon]

[edit on 5/1/2005 by Noumenon]

While you're definitly right about ther being no free lunches and that massive use of geothermal power may have unpredictable and disasterous results it wouldn't cause a loss of atmosphere. Mars lost it's atmostphere due to insufficient mass not a loss in it's magnetic field. Also Sideways drilling wouldn't allow you access to more power relative to simply continuing down, also note that the complications of drilling deep are not by any means small. Geothermal power away from these shallow points just becomes untenable, due to the difficulty of getting that deep and the small scale of it all. Especially in the drilling proccess a lot of oil would be used too making it a useless solution after peak oil hits, when most if not all actions is likly to take place.

Now our energy sources are for the most part oil and gas, coal, nuclear, and hydro.

They use oil and gas for certain operations in a nuclear power plant (emergency control-power generators, for example.)

They use diesel generators in coal mines.

They use nuclear-generated electricity in oil refineries.

It's all linked up. The grid is designed for redundance, too.

Corn alcohol is in our gasoline.

Liquid fuels, or gasses such as hydrogen, are manufacturable by using the other sources if need be. Just like the garbage fuels mentioned on other threads. Transportation fuels need to be lightweight to compete with gasoline, and that's about it. The technology exists for alternate energy conversion to standard infrastructures. It's the energy itself that's the problem. The nuclear equation STILL has not owned up to inevitable disposal costs. Thus the problem, and the explanation about why we haven't gone nuclear. Even the pro-nuke people get uneasy when they look at the actual numbers and costs for permanent, moderate disposal. We can ignore political considerations when talking theory. We can posit de-facto revolutions to allow common sense to occur. Even so, we need new energy sources. That's a fact.

As far as "Why sideways?" it's because for every down you need an up, and if you try to combine the hot coming up and the cold going down, in a simple vertical hole, you'll find a situation your accountants won't like: loss of power.



[edit on 5/1/2005 by Noumenon]