Talk:Unlimited energy

message: Deleted Supply of Tritium is very, very, very small to the point that mining it from lunar soil might be cost effective.  Tritium would be breed from lithium, so its supply is not important.  pstudier 06:10, 22 Aug 2004 (UTC)

message: Arguments against solar energy are poorly formatted.
"Some solar cells use gallium and arsenic (gallium arsenide, two heavy metals, manufacture of which is dangerous;" is somewhat biased; solar energy can be harvested without the use of these materials. 
"Electrical power is direct current, not alternating current, so to use it most people need an inverter, which is up to half the cost of a functioning solar electric setup" is also similarily biased; the larger the system the less costy is the inverter setup.
"Most of these power supplies are intermittent, and would require uneconomical methods of power storage;" storing electrical energy is uneconomical? Interestinglu put.
"Not economical without government subsidies" True, but the technology is still developing. It is uneconomical because of rarity, and rare because of high cost. The wheel of neverending ecological disaster.
On an interesting side note; in the comic series Transmetropolitan the human kind has plated the surface of Mercury with solar cells. The energy produced by them is then beamed in microwave carrier to satellites orbiting Earth which redirect it to the surface. Near unlimited energy. This would be terribly expensive of course.
Another interesting fact - by covering the whole of Sahara with solar cells it is possible to extract enough electricity to supply either the whole planet or very near so - I don't remember which. Again, very expensive. Khokkanen 17:09, 31 August 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Solar energy 

message: and this story http://www.multivax.com/last_question.html Asimov's favorite. --Leladax 23:32, 14 October 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Someone has to read about entropy 

message: Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unverifiable material may be challenged and removed. I did insert some references. J. D. Redding 19:59, 25 March 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: It's no longer true that the article does not cite any references or sources, so I converted the tag to "refimprove".--Srleffler (talk) 04:31, 11 April 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: This article does not cite any references or sources

message: :Many of the pros and cons are vague. Terms like "large" and "significant" are inappropriate. They need to be replaced by numbers backed up by citations. (Citations that give estimated numbers are fine, as long as the references are of good quality.) See Wikipedia:Avoid weasel words.--Srleffler (talk) 05:38, 12 April 2008 (UTC)
replies: text:  Could you list them in bullet format? Then everyone can help improve it. J. D. Redding 16:27, 12 April 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: No, but I marked quite a few of them with cite needed and/or vague tags.--Srleffler (talk) 05:49, 13 April 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: vagueness?

message: :via personal attacks ...
Wikipedia:No personal attacks ... 
* 10:55, 15 April 2008 User:JzG (Reverted to revision 205807916 by ScienceApologist; More Reddi nonsense. 
* 10:38, 15 April 2008 User:ScienceApologist (bad sourcing and more Reddi nonsense.) (undo)
Both users comments on a contributor, not on conent. J. D. Redding 16:04, 15 April 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: You've placed this complaint on ANI, which is fine, but let's keep this talk page for discussion of improving this article. -FisherQueen (talk · contribs) 16:09, 15 April 2008 (UTC)
replies: text:  The US government works are nonesense? Documents from the US government are a relioable source .. but it's been removed ... J. D. Redding
...  the editing has all removed different significant theories. J. D. Redding 16:35, 15 April 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: POV reversion

message: I've replaced the split tag with a proposal to merge this article with Sustainable energy. My reasoning is that there is no content here that belongs in the first three articles listed above (the content that belonged in Perpetual motion has been removed). Much of the content here would fit into Renewable energy, but Sustainable energy seems like a better fit because it focuses on the idea of an energy supply that lasts indefinitely, with less concern about the environment. In particular fission and fusion fit into the "sustainable energy" category, but are more controversial as "renewable" sources. 
Generally, I am proposing a merge because of the issues that have remained unaddressed in the Appropriateness of article section above. No one has advanced a clear explanation why this article is needed or exactly defined the scope of its subject matter. It's not even clear what "unlimited" means here. The existence of the article on sustainable energy casts further doubt on the need for this article. The only element covered here that doesn't fit there is the science fiction aspect, which is not really discussed much here and is of questionable value. 
After the merge, a dab page can be created here with links to all of the relevant articles.--Srleffler (talk) 03:58, 19 April 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: I'm not sure about this proposal. First of all, energy efficiency and conservation is an inherent part of sustainable energy. To many, it's even the first frontier. The idea of energy abundance and free energy is not compatible with sustainable energy. In sustainable energy circles, the term 'unlimited energy' is rarely if ever used. The article on sustainable energy suffers from a lack of a clear definition on the subject. There is a confusion between sustainable and renewable energy. And all energy systems, whether based on carbon fuel, nuclear energy or renewable energy have an impact on the environment. -- Hans De Keulenaer (talk) 11:33, 20 April 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: That's pretty much why I'm proposing the merge. As used here, "unlimited" means pretty much exactly the same as "sustainable", as defined in the sustainable energy article. The current name is misleading, and invites the addition of inappropriate POV/pseudoscience content. The merge need not introduce the term "unlimited" into the destination article. Rather, any useful content and references that this article contains would be added to the destination article.--Srleffler (talk) 04:56, 22 April 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: These are two different topics.  A few kernals of information could be moved to other pages (most of the important stuff is already there), but this page should either discuss psuedoscience or be deleted.  NJGW (talk) 15:55, 23 April 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: This article should not discuss pseudoscience, since that is already covered at perpetual motion and free energy suppression. I'm open to suggestions to delete, but a merge seems less drastic.--Srleffler (talk) 17:24, 23 April 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: The only way energy can have no limit is if it's psuedoscience.  Maybe this page should be a disambiguation to pseudo science and sustainable, or else a discussion of why unlimited energy isn't possible.  As I said, not much to move to other articles.  NJGW (talk) 17:30, 23 April 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: I agree with you. See #Appropriateness of article, above, where I raised some of these concerns. The merge proposal is an attempt to fix this. If we can get consensus to merge with Sustainable energy, all valuable content and references can be moved from this article into that one, and this article can be replaced with a dab page. Note that it doesn't matter how much or how little valuable content there is—we need either consensus to merge or consensus to delete to convert this page into a dab page.--Srleffler (talk) 21:56, 23 April 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: Merge?

message: Offhand, I do not recall any of the currently listed authors, Isaac Asimov, David Brin, Greg Bear, or Larry Niven, treating explicitly the concept and ramifications of unlimited energy. Certainly the civilizations of the Galactic Empire / Foundation, the Five Galaxies, The Way, and the Ringworld Builders would require colossal power sources, but in each case the author uses this condition as a necessary backdrop rather than a central theme. Plenty of authors use settings that require nigh-unlimited energy, but this, I would argue, is not sufficient to be classified as an "unlimited energy author". By way of analogy, consider what makes Flannery O'Connor a Southern writer as opposed to merely somebody who lived and wrote in the American southeast.
Sifting through my collection, there are a number of instances where vast energy requirements are acknowledged (oh yeah, we teleport that in from a dying star / use "hyperspace" / strip mined Neptune ...), but none that I can find that are central to the story. There are Dyson spheres a-plenty, but Charles Stross' is the only one I remember that is being built and mentions the types of constraints; even that is post-Singularity, which arguably pushes it into Fantasy. Peter F. Hamilton mentions in his Night's Dawn space opera that all the energy beamed in or extracted or otherwise moved to Earth's surface is conserved, going eventually mostly to waste heat produced by friction and irreversible computing.
So, I am deleting this section for now without prejudice to recreation with descriptions of specific instances of unlimited energy being treated as a central or major theme. - Eldereft ~(s)talk~ 17:05, 15 April 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  In popular culture 

message: I restored the see also section's link to Free energy suppression, and also added Perpetual motion. While this article should not discuss pseudoscience (unless carefully handled so as to remain NPOV), a see also link from "Unlimited energy" to articles about the pseudoscience conceptions of getting energy from nothing seems appropriate. This does not constitute an endorsement of those ideas, and is strictly NPOV. (Hopefully those articles are themselves NPOV, of course.)--Srleffler (talk) 04:50, 17 April 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Restored links to pseudoscience articles. 

message: There's lots of discussion above, so let's put it to a vote:
* dab I think there's nothing useful here that is not already at other pages.  The term is not used by scientists, exept perhaps in passing.  The sources use the term in passing as well, not as an actual technical term (such as "alternative energy" or "sustainable energy"). Other uses imply a misunderstanding of basic physics or pure science fiction.  Thus I vote to moved any relevant information to other pages, and have a disambiguation page here to related topics (eg perpetual motion, sustainable energy, solar/geothermal/whatever).  The talk page should stay as a record.  NJGW (talk) 02:39, 24 April 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Vote to '''Keep''' article, or change to a '''DisAmbiguation Page'''