I was dreaming of a world last night where we had a perfect energy source. It was a nice dream. Something which was high density, easily transportable, simple to find and not damaging to the environment. wow… What if it then had a low extraction footprint with no strip-mining, no rarity of existence, and even better, no biologically deadly emissions. It would be a Gaian dream. Greener than anything ever imagined by any human in history.
My dream grew even bigger. I don’t think small when dreaming apparently, which must be a side effect of the nefarious manner in which I was raised. This energy source was something that was easy to use with simple machinery such that energy could be made into rotational, kinetic, electric and heat with minimal mechanical requirements. You might even carry it in a bucket or something – I know it’s silly.
Such an energy source would revolutionize humanity. With almost no negative impacts, everyone on Earth would be behind it. Imagine how the freedom it would create would be completely unbounded. You could literally travel anywhere!! And then, what if that energy source emitted something useful!!!!
I know it’s impossible but wow, what a world it would be. What a world!!!!!!
My perfect dream would create no change in the existing rate of sea level rise – in all of recorded history..
Hurricanes wouldn’t increase..
Droughts would not get worse..
Famine would be dramatically reduced.
I know it’s impossible but man, what if its byproducts made clothes and food and toys and even birthday cakes!!! That would be a beautiful thing! Ahhh, if only I were God, what a thing I would do.
Everyone would be on my side.
Every single person would be my friend.
the Air Vent 
Except for:
“Everyone would be on my side.
Every single person would be my friend.”
I think your dream is real………
John Galt would (were he not fictional) disagree.
Speaking of low “footprint” :
Twitter recently buzzed with a photo of PV solar panels covering a desert, and an Elon Musk comment about the world’s “energy” demand versus the square miles to be covered with the necessary number of panels to produce a matching number.
The square miles of transmission lines from that desert to users all over the world was not part of the calculation, as far as I can tell. Nor the square miles of surface spoilage inflicted on Mother Gaia in strip mining for minerals. Etc.
One thing about voluntary exchange, auction based, free market, privately owned resource economics (a.k.a. very loosely “capitalism”) is that the hidden costs and variables are “priced in”. The distribution costs and the return on initial investments and the prices of workers’ compensation insurance and taxes and anything you can think of at every intermedia step has costs to the greedy owners that must be covered by the sales price the cheapskates offer. The thing about Marxist/Stalinist/Scientific Socialist economics (a.k.a. “fantasy”) is that a Wise Elite Expert with a God-like view of things can, in theory, put the numbers of volts and watts and acres and vehicles and hours and miles per day… into a model or equation matrix and forecast a result with reliable confidences and 97% consensus that will focus resources against needs with laser-like precision and eliminate messy wastes like 27 kinds of toothpaste in every grocery aisle, and carbon emissions… then if the greedy and the cheap argue that the laser has been mis-targeted, well, the Wise Elites in the thrones they’ve stolen from God can target complaints with weapons much more blunt and dangerous than lasers.
One thing about measurement is that one set can be converted into more convenient units, with various levels of reliability. Measure wire gauge in miles, if you like… We COULD measure the “acreage” of energy, I suppose. The footprint. Convert dollars in cost of production or extraction or transmissions or efficiency into acres of Iowa farmland …
Might be an amusing Watts Up post…
Dream on Jeff; human imagination is capable of discovering such a miraculous energy source, even serendipitously.
I have long predicted that though there is a lot of energy in the universe, Man will not ultimately use all of it.
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I recommended this article as (19) with a different title and your The EVIL nature of the cleanest energy on the planet…. ? as (2) on my blog early Thursday morning. The
“Imagine” title was not descriptive enough for my recommended reading list of 24 articles.
https://honestclimatescience.blogspot.com/2023/03/the-best-climate-science-and-energy.html
Now your Imagine article made the big time at WUWT !
It pays to advertise in your WUWT comment?
I’d like to hope Charles Rotter looked at my daily list of good articles and found yours on the list, but that’s just my wishful thinking.
Now that you are famous, perhaps the leftist act chokers will come after you?
Keep up the good writing !
Ye Editor
Richard Greene
The Honest Climate Science and Energy Blog
Bingham Farms, Michigan
Thank you.
Congrats !!
WUWT picked you up !
Oh, Jeff, you and your silly dreams… why, if such a substance existed, you know there would be humanity-hating psychopathic maleducated halfwits who would violently attempt to end its use on the grounds that it’s doing something-or-other ‘damage’ to ‘muh environment’ or somesuch, despite not having any empirical evidence of said ‘damage’ (and despite any evidence to the contrary). They’d advocate for everyone freezing / frying in mud huts and eating GMO grub worms as they, your moral superiors, flew around the planet on CO2-spewing private jets eating only the very best Wagyu beef and organic veggies, telling everyone how much the hoi polloi are damaging the planet by using their gas stove or AC unit or eating meat or living like anything other than a serf.
You crack me up, Jeff… your dream will never come to fruition, and if it ever does, those humanity-hating psychopathic maleducated halfwits will turn it into a nightmare. Wake up, Jeff.