Reply To: turn heat into electricity

[Brian H]

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Extrapolations.
It can plausibly be argued that the prices of all human goods and services reflect roughly the amount of energy put into bringing them from source to purchaser, whether that is gold or internet-delivered bits and bytes or arugula or beer or cars or … Fuel, heat, movement, and so on are major components of those energy inputs. Reducing those costs by 95-98% will have a dramatic impact on human wealth, across the board. It will suddenly be readily possible to provide resources and life basics to billions who cannot now afford them. And the wealthier world will experience an explosion of benefits and choices which were impossible just yesterday.

Desalination, irrigating deserts (even southern California)? Trivial. Powering a nation/world of electric vehicles? Easy and essential. Huge expansion of space exploration, perhaps helped by building a Space Elevator or two? No problem. Elimination of pollution and contaminated soils and air? Cheap and straightforward.

Energy independence? Every town and neighborhood can have it if they want, for a song. Everywhere.

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Political.
Nations and regimes battening on the Devil’s Excrement will be cut off at the knees. They will continue to have some markets for their oil, from a declining transportation/power requirement to continuing feedstock/lubricant needs, but will be lucky to get $10-15/bbl for their best product after a few years. Coal providers will experience an even steeper and more permanent decline, unless some innovative new clean uses for coal (raw material for immensely expanded nanotech?) are invented.

And so on.

The crisis-concocting AGW-panic exploiters will be homeless. Perhaps a special welfare fund will be established for them, including huge special residential complexes where frequent unannounced fire and Carbon Monoxide evacuations will be called to keep them excited and interested (not all drills; a certain minimum fatality rate to be ensured to sustain realism.) 😉
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Timing:
Investment and resources have been obtained (Nov. ’08) to immediately embark on a 2-yr scientific validation and proof-of-theory project, which would set up a 3-yr engineering and production-initiation phase. Probable time-to-market is thus 5-6 years, 2016 or before.

Hold onto your hat (and hopes for a sane and prosperous future).

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The official contacts are “Eric Lerner” , and “Jim Trow”

Brian Hall

I don’t know if he followed up, or investigated further. Was this the same individual you reached?