Come on Graham & others, you're talking about a few threads around the edges of development. Sure war & the space program drove development of inventions, but the real break through has always came from individuals.

I'm talking about really important break through like steam power, railways, the internal combustion engine, motor transport, heavier than air flight, commercial electrical power generation & distribution, the telephone, radio, Computer operating systems, etc. None of this was government development, & neither will a new power source be, although government may develop what ever is found.

Things like the internet were not actually a government initiative, although publicly funded people may have done it, out of private/academic interest, & neither was space flight/rocketry, although quite probably the latter would not have got off the ground, [like it], without the tax payer.

And yes the CSIRO did great things with plant breeding & development, but after an individual started it & showed the way.

So now give me the major developments, leading to the modern world that came from an an idea thought of by government. Do try to come up with something better than as bank note

>>but the real break through has always came from individuals.<<

And we all know that the Government doesn't employ individuals: it employs androids - soulless automatons who appear human but don't think like us normal people. I should know: my brother works for the Government.

>>I'm talking about really important break through<<

RADAR isn't important enough? Exactly how important does something have to be? How do we measure importance?

Cheers,

Tony

Always something new coming along http://www.nanowerk.com/news/newsid=24900.php
Baseload thorium nuclear power is needed for awhile after fossil fuels deplete so over the next 100 years or so alternatives will increasingly fill all needs. Maybe even fusion will kick in by then.

Rhosty,

For all your supposed qualifications, you are proposing the fantastical as government policy.

With a science degree you should know that improvements in theoretical physics tend not to overthrow previous theories completely, but rather describe anomalies better. General relativity replaced Newtonian physics, because of anomalies at high speeds and gravities etc but for most application Newtonian methods are still used as they sufficiently accurately describe the real world and are simple to use. Similarly with thermodynamics, better theories may well come along, but they are unlikely to describe our reality significantly differently. (it may describe better what happens on the event horizon of black holes, but not shed great light on the performance of a wind turbine.)

Even if PV cells became so cheap that they were free, the majority of the cost is in the transmission of the power, and it would still struggle to be cheaper than fossil fuels. Even for the existing coal based systems, the transmission makes up about 50% of the cost to our cities, and about 90% to our homes.

If a tiny portion of the vast sums spent on renewable research was spent on nuclear, we could have safe nuclear plants and realistically reduce CO2 emissions.

In "The low carbon generation", James Dyson wrote 27 April 2012:

>Engineers and scientists are being reinvented by green expectations ...

Don't leave out us green computer professionals!

> ... First, we need to secure the workforce ...

We can use technology to help train up engineers and other professionals. In 2008 the Australian Computer Society (ACS) commissioned me to write an online training course on green computing. The course materials were made open access for free use by anyone and the course is now offered by the Australian National University, Athabasca University (Canada) and ACS. The latest version is published as "ICT Sustainability: Assessment and Strategies for a Low Carbon Future": http://www.tomw.net.au/ict_sustainability/introduction.shtml

> Finally, the government must step up to the mark ... intellectual property secured. ...

One way the government can help spread the technology is by securing the IP and then giving it away with open access licenses. This way government can fund fundamental work and encourage competing companies to cooperate on the basics, before companies compete to commercially exploit the results. This has worked well in the computer industry, for example with creation of the Internet (initially a government funded venture).

Engineers from competing companies already get together to develop standards for everyone to use, such as:

* ISO shipping container: http://blog.tomw.net.au/2007/05/did-shipping-container-change-world.html

* Kettle cord: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IEC_60320#C15.2FC16_coupler

Deriving energy from wavepower is relatively quite simple and abundant. The main difficulty is shifting investment funds from fossil fuels, which will not happen while the investors have a stake in government policy decisions (top dog wants to maintain the status quo, not shuffle the deck).

These and similar ideas will be locked away until we have a legitimate crisis. If this were not the case we would be using them now instead of introducing emissions schemes.