TA: Topics for Energy

Here's the rundown.

1. Peak Oil Crisis, is it real? What do we do about it?
2. Is funding for fusion research realistic? (Not to be given to the U of course, they'd just waste it...)
3. Why do more people not use hydroelectric power?
4. Is nuclear power more earth friendly than solar or hydro?
5. Do Energizer batteries really last longer than Duracell?
6. Why ethanol is the beginning of the apocalypse and will lead to rampant anarchy and primitivism.
7. What will happen to the world population when we run out of oil reserves and we can't discover new oil fields? What will happen to the international market?
8. Was the industrial revolution detrimental to human progress?
9. The US tends to be very imperialistic and that earns us a bad reputation (with the middle-east and venezuela and china and Europe, and Central America and Russia, and everyone else in the world) which affects our access to oil and the prices we pay for it. What international policy changes could we make to cooperate better with our trading partners?
10. How much energy do Americans consume each year? What can we do to limit our use of energy? Will our small steps even help at all to slow the coming onslaught?
11. Biofuels could be a temporary stepping stone to ease our dependence on fossil fuels, but we need to find a more permanent energy source. If we stick with biofuels for too long the consequences will be far reaching and deadly. Are those consequences worth it in the long run? We have to find an alternative energy source before petroleum runs out and before we lose the ability to feed our population.

I think the one I would like to focus on is Peak Oil, but I also really like to take stabs at ethanol. I think ethanol would be very easy to find resources to quote from and so forth, but it would make a very boring paper at the same time, because the ethanol argument has been made so many stinking times that no one wants to hear it anymore. But honestly, I think it's a topic that needs to be argued until we find a solution. That's my quandary. It's interesting to very few people, but very many people could die based on decisions made in the US regarding ethanol. It's an extremely important issue, but I feel like people get bored reading about ethanol all the time in the newspaper. Would it make a good paper to publish in a professional journal? Absolutely. Would it earn me a good grade in class? Probably not.