Is there no limit to human ingenuity? From computers to supersonic airliners, solar panels to hydrogen powered cars, technology has endless applications.
With new technology appearing in consumer goods every day, people can be excused for believing that technology can solve any problem.
Such technological optimism has been likened to the cargo cults that permeated the Pacific early last century. Polynesians had no understanding of industrialised manufacturing and so believed the vast quantities of European goods brought to their islands had appeared by magic. Somewhat similarly today, many people have little understanding of the science that underpins modern technology and so they are prone to think anything is possible.
Don’t get me wrong – I’m neither a technological pessimist nor a technological optimist. I’m a technological realist!
People often contact me to suggest that technology will avert the energy crisis that I believe we are facing as a result of peak oil and the need to mitigate climate change.
Certainly renewable energy technology is constantly improving so that we are able to harvest greater qualities of solar, wind, biomass, tidal and geothermal energy. Sadly, much of this technology has been researched in Australia only to be taken overseas for commercialisation.
But basic laws of nature impose limits on the energy that we can capture and use. And we know lots about the basic sources of energy such as solar, tidal, geothermal and nuclear.
Just last week several people sent me an apparently credible American news report headed “saltwater burns”. It said in future we might fill our car’s fuel tank with sea water and drive off into the sunset. It sounded too good to be true – and that’s because it’s not true!
The report explained how passing radio waves through saltwater splits the water into hydrogen and oxygen which can be burned to produce energy. But we know we can’t get energy from nothing, not even in a nuclear reaction. The energy is coming from the radio waves, not from the water. It’s like electrolysis, perhaps more efficient, but will always produce less energy than it consumes. It is not a new energy source that will avert the coming crisis.
Human ingenuity has achieved remarkable things in the past and will continue to do so in the future. But one thing human ingenuity cannot do is overturn the laws of nature, so an unlimited energy supply shall forever be just a dream.
This was originally published in the Fraser Coast Chronicle on 7 August 2007.
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