• Question: are there any alternatives for fossil fuels??

    Asked by krishase99 to Claire, Kate, Matt, Rob, Sam on 21 Jun 2013.
    • Photo: Claire Lee

      Claire Lee answered on 21 Jun 2013:

      Nuclear power is very good! And we’ve come a long way since it started, so it’s cleaner and more secure.

      But nuclear should not be the answer – we will run out of fossil fuels pretty soon, and we should use nuclear power as a stepping stone to cover us while we get renewable sources of energy (and more efficient living) up to scratch.

    • Photo: Kate Husband

      Kate Husband answered on 21 Jun 2013:

      There are lots of options: solar, wind, tidal, geothermal, (nuclear) but none of them yet can produce enough cheap energy like fossil fuels – but that’s why there is so much investment in trying to improve them or invent new ways of generating energy.

    • Photo: Sam Geen

      Sam Geen answered on 21 Jun 2013:

      There’s a lot of solar power out there – the sun produces three hundred trillion trillion joules every second. So if we could get even a fraction of that, we could replace fossil fuels easily. The trick is building enough solar panels to do this, and making efficient solar panels.

    • Photo: Matthew Pankhurst

      Matthew Pankhurst answered on 22 Jun 2013:

      Yes, I can’t add anything to the lists the other scientists here have written. Fossil fuels are just easier – it’s like a bad habit we can’t seem to shake ourselves out of. We need to make the others even easier to change where we get our energy from. Hopefully the sooner the better!

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