Enernet would bring "liberation"

The Blog

While continuing to bet on synthetic biology as the eventual solution to energy inequality and crises, a Beliefnet post nevertheless embraces another vision called enernet.

Enernet is the idea of providing energy to everyone for free via a type of global power supply network constructed similarly to the internet. It would adhere to a similar philosophy to the internet too, making it almost a human right that everyone can be connected to this network of sharing and mutual survival.

The post is a partial review of a Lifeboat Foundation essay series. It suspects energy firms and powerful states would prefer to keep control of global energy supplies in the hands of a small few government and industrial elites, somehow, and the enernet might be no exception to this. Although such injustice would certainly be the result of some futuristic schemes to build a small number of giant thermonuclear fusion reactors like the ITER (International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor) to replace fossil fuel supplies, the post sees the enernet as something different.

To cut a long story short, because the enernet would be connected to widely distributed and decentralized sources of fuel, it should not result in political or strategic imbalances, inequalities and lopsided international relations of the kind currently seen. The post reports that the enernet sounds like a fair and balanced solution to the energy needs of disparate individuals, communities and isolated states across the world. The prediction given is that, if feasible, it would bring a form of technological "liberation" to the world's impoverished and voiceless populations similar to the internet.

A complete theory of techno-liberation to follow up from the development of the internet is explained in Catalyst, the main source of inspiration for this blog.

#ISIS is gullible, obeying #Israeli/US schemers against #Syria rather than God: @LOrdreNet https://t.co/JsdIi8iSFT pic.twitter.com/A1G1hHGRIU

— The clubof.info Blog (@ClubOfInfo) February 17, 2016

The clubof.info Blog

Read More »

Fusion power vs future synbio-power?

The Blog

Fusion power plants would likely mean sole power plants feeding entire continents or countries with electricity, giving incredible political leverage to the government or company with the off-switch.

Critics of thermonuclear fusion power have therefore said alternative energy must not just be renewable. It must also be decentralized and easily shared.

At Beliefnet, a post of the L'Ordre blog argues that synthetic biology is the key to developing easily shared and decentralized power sources. They will be circulated to even the poorest communities.

Some attention has been given to developing sustainable fuels using new biologically-engineered bacteria that excrete types of petroleum or diesel (see the BBC report here). Although it has not been covered much in the media, such developments have been frequently successful. However, the microbes currently need such specific feedstocks (namely sugar, which has its own problems of labor, land and cost that make it hard to sustain forever) to create difficulties in supplying the microbes. They may also not be used on an industrial scale due to fears of them escaping and contaminating the environment or being stolen for commercial gain, which probably limits their use to highly secure scientific premises.

In the past, the Beliefnet blog expressed a disbelief in the explanations above, pointing instead to the preeminence of corporate greed over global human welfare as the only reason for the failure to make the microbes available more quickly. This theory was in turn challenged by a post at Afflictor.com, which pointed instead to the idea that synthetic biologists are a marginal minority of scientists, which means a lack of human resources to develop that industry.

J. Craig Venter, the scientist-entrepreneur father of synthetic biology, has since become less interested in developing synthetic biology-based fuel and chemical industries than in medicine and longevity, although the idea of inexhaustible fuels is occasionally used in his writing and lectures.

The new Beliefnet post declared using synthetic biology to make a new fuel industry as highly promising but also potentially dangerous, stating, "It could also literally set the world on fire, if handled incorrectly, so the question of how to handle it and at the same time ensure fairness and equal development in the use of synthetic creatures as fuel sources needs to be addressed more deeply."

#Russia and #China build the giant #上海合作组织/#ШОС (#SCO) alliance to contain @NATO aggression https://t.co/MqjlrqtMsn pic.twitter.com/CxWzyIkMhB

— The clubof.info Blog (@ClubOfInfo) December 23, 2015

The clubof.info Blog

Read More »