I've always wondered if we wouldn't be doing bad things by
tapping into ANY source of energy.

For example, if we capture too much wind energy, then not
enough is available to carry water in from the ocean and our
inland fresh water supplies dry up.

If we capture too much solar, same thing.  Or maybe
something else.

What about fusion using lunar helium-3?  Now we're importing
and releasing energy into our "energy sphere" that was not
intended to be there.  Result- more warming.

Most of these would require HUGE scales of energy
production to make a dent, but we ARE headed that way.

The only REAL solution is to stop releasing so damn much
energy into the Earth's biosphere.  So we either need to
moderate our consumption or get off Earth.

I'm all for getting off Earth.

For interesting reading about energy "solutions", look
up Freeman Dyson's theories about levels of civilization.
This is from a distant memory, so don't be too hard on me.
A level zero civilization uses fossil fuels, nuclear energy,
and maybe some solar.  A level 1 civilization uses ALL of
the energy which is incident upon its homeworld.  A level
2 civilization uses ALL the energy which escapes its
primary.  A level 3 civilization uses all of the energy which
escapes from its local stellar cluster.

So on a galactic scale, we aren't much better than
cavemen roasting mastodons over fire that has to be
kept rather than created!

Also continue (dragging the conversation in a (hopefully)
less inflammatory direction) to consider that any
civilization above level one would be, for all intents and
purposes, largely invisible to outside observers.  After
all, we can't see its primary (or local cluster), and any
energy radiated would be in the form of heat which
would red shift as they move away from us, causing it
to look even less like what we're looking for as likely
ET candidates.  So there could be tens of thousands
of these civilizations all around us and we'd never know...

Mike H.

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