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[JoshuaFH]

I like your style Umi

[umiman]

Stick with me, and I'll guarantee that the world will end in a glorious display of superlasers.

[Aqizzar]

Spoiler: This Is What Happens When An Elevator Fails (click to show/hide)

Spoiler: This Is What Happens When SUN LAZER Fails (click to show/hide)

I may be exaggerating, but the point is made.

Not that I'm saying I'm against the SUN LAZER.

[JoshuaFH]

Whats so bad about some concentrated sunlight? I mean, yeah, it's probably really hot, but it's free, infinite, and produces zero pollution.

[inaluct]

Also, routine accidents will be awesome. Headline: "Pennsylvania boy dies after being incinerated by sky laser."

[JoshuaFH]

Hey, those boys are gonna have to learn not to play by the deathbeam factory.

[Aqizzar]

Hey, those boys are gonna have to learn not to play by the deathbeam factory.

I'll be quoting that momentarily.

Also, it's snowing in Dubai.  This is supposedly like the second time in recorded history the area has had any kind of lasting snow.  The local tribes don't have a word for it.

This has nothing to do with America's Energy Dilemma.

[sneakey pete]

The "Microwave" part is a misnomer.  It's really just ordinary solar power, using a larger focus, up in space where the light is brighter.  It's a serious technology, SimCity just named it wrong.

Ah, but is it? what you describe is indeed a possible way to harness solar energy, however the microwave power stations in sim city were based upon the idea of photovoltaic arrays in space generating electricity which is wirelessly transmitted to an earth based receiver via microwaves.

[Duke 2.0]

 Naturally.

 Not to bring back an old topic(Like Global Warming, which as I said in an earlier post should remain buried to this forum for all time), but remember that too much of a good thing is a horrible thing. For example, heat. Increasing the temperature of the earth and carbon dioxide would make plants grow better and increase the amount of farmable land on the Earth by insane amounts. Of course, too much heat and you run the risk of the caps melting.

 Ashes might have benefits, but if we burn wood for fuel we will have too much ash. We would not know what to do with it other than cover landfills with the stuff. Even then, we would end up with environmentalists working up a huff over dumping ashes into the ecosystem.

 Nuclear wastes might last a while(Not thousands of years, which would be too much, but just long enough to have it decay to levels of naturally-occurring uranium deposits), but there really isn't that much of it in comparison to other waste products. Heck, bury it deep enough and the problem will solve itself. We would bury it in geologically thick areas unstable for geothermal, with layers of concrete as a cap deep underground with multiple layers of rebar and warnings showing humans dieing to things below. We would also show models of atons and radiation, thus solving two of the following possibilities:

 If primitive people find this cap somehow(Assuming everything has gone to crap thanks to sun-lasers killing most major civilizations), they won't be able to penetrate the concrete and rebar. If an advanced civilization finds it, they will recognize the dieing humans and nuclear models and know to avoid it. Of course, this assumes humans find it. If another lifeform grows intelligence, then screw them. They might be a part of our downfall.

 There was actually a discussion on how to warn people who might or might not know our modern culture on the dangers of buried nuclear wastes, and how to avoid future archeologists digging up our wastes.

[sneakey pete]

Of course, too much heat and you run the risk of the caps melting.

out of interest, does anyone have some information on how much the sea level could rise if they melted? Its something that i've always wanted to get a better idea of, but i couldn't really find anything from a quick glance.

[umiman]

A rough estimate would be... most small islands would be submerged, as well as most coastal cities. That is, if they didn't do anything to stop the rising waters.

To elaborate, a country like Singapore would be mostly underwater but Thailand wouldn't. Similarly, Japan would be largely underwater but the US wouldn't.

Again, this is if the countries didn't do anything to stop the rising waters. These things don't happen overnight, so they have plenty of time to build large walls like Holland.

The technical information is as follows:

The main ice covered landmass is Antarctica at the South Pole, with about 90 percent of the world's ice (and 70 percent of its fresh water). Antarctica is covered with ice an average of 2,133 meters (7,000 feet) thick. If all of the Antarctic ice melted, sea levels around the world would rise about 61 meters (200 feet). But the average temperature in Antarctica is -37°C, so the ice there is in no danger of melting. In fact in most parts of the continent it never gets above freezing.

At the other end of the world, the North Pole, the ice is not nearly as thick as at the South Pole. The ice floats on the Arctic Ocean. If it melted sea levels would not be affected.

There is a significant amount of ice covering Greenland, which would add another 7 meters (20 feet) to the oceans if it melted. Because Greenland is closer to the equator than Antarctica, the temperatures there are higher, so the ice is more likely to melt.

There you have it.

[Il Palazzo]

Also, you are evidently not an economist if you think the net output of CO2 from wood is zero. You'd make a good accountant though... maybe... nah, I doubt it. It's not an insult. Accountants and economists have very different ways at looking at costs. An accountant would see "tree absorbs CO2, CO2 is emitted, therefore zero". An economist would see "transportation, production, usage, refinement, all create CO2 as well, making the end result have higher CO2 than is efficient.".

Oh, man, you make a brain-fart like with the uranium and then you call me a poor material for an accountant. Have some modesty yourself.
Not to mention that anybody who proposes solar-collector satelites as a clean energy source forgets about, ehem, "transportation, production, maintenance". Mind you, that unless we get to build a space elevator(or better, space fountain), sending stuff into space is going to take whole lot more of energy than it produces.

In principle, though, it's a nice idea.

7m rise

This is the most often quoted estimate. However it's the runaway warming that presents the real danger.

edit:After checking the appropriate data, let me correct you on the uranium again:
uranium density=19,1g/cm³
1 cubic meter of uranium = 19100kg
assuming it is commercial grade uranium, enriched so that it's U-235 component is around 3%, which gives 573kg of fissionable material. 1kg of U-235 after complete fusion can theoreticaly yield 2x10¹³Joules of energy(after wikipedia), 1 cubic meter of uranium would yield 1146TeraJoules(10¹²J) of energy.
The above is an ideal situation, as in reality only about 3% of U-235 undergoes fission before rising concentration of nuclear poisons prevents further reaction(and requires reprocessing, if economically feasible). So, in the (other-extreme) event of -not- reprocessing spent fuel after one cycle, 1m³ would yield ~34,4TJ.
So the correct estimate would be between 1146TJ and 34,4TJ.
If it's not refined uranium that you've had in mind, then the above figure is lower by the factor of four.
Also, Watts are used to describe energy change over time(power). When used to describe a powerplant, it tells you how fast it is able to produce energy - a characteristic of it's design.
Should you assume, for the sake of argument, that all this uranium can be fissioned in one second, you'd get 1146TWatts-34,4TWatts. About million times more than you've assumed.

Only 3% of this becomes nuclear waste.

...while the remaining 97% is a dead mass, not yielding any energy... unless converted to U-239 or used in special-design reactors(fast reactor)... and then it does turn into radioactive waste.

[DJ]

[q]Ashes might have benefits, but if we burn wood for fuel we will have too much ash. We would not know what to do with it other than cover landfills with the stuff. Even then, we would end up with environmentalists working up a huff over dumping ashes into the ecosystem.[/q]
Where do you get this? Wood ash is an excellent fertilizer, so it's practically impossible to have too much. If you do have a bit extra, you can always make some soap

[umiman]

Il Pallazzo: As usual, your eyes only see what your brain imagines. It wasn't an insult, it's a common fact that economists like to see variables outside the directly related and accountants don't. They have equal worth. I clearly stated that it wasn't an insult.

Also, none of those posts were even directed at you. Stop butting your nose and starting fires.

[Duke 2.0]

Ashes might have benefits, but if we burn wood for fuel we will have too much ash. We would not know what to do with it other than cover landfills with the stuff. Even then, we would end up with environmentalists working up a huff over dumping ashes into the ecosystem.

Where do you get this? Wood ash is an excellent fertilizer, so it's practically impossible to have too much. If you do have a bit extra, you can always make some soap

 Alas, we will still have too much ash even if we fertilize every field and replace the soap industry, which I think uses synthetic stuff nowadays. We use up a lot of energy. Of course, this is an educated guess. I'm still willing to bet that fields won't be able to handle that much ash. Even making places once devoid of life into fields, I'm willing to bet there will still be too much ash.