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Have to agree - the whole "man made climate change" thing made a great political football, but the science always looked dodgy. Now that the results of all the studies are starting to come in we really need something else more, well...., "scientific" to talk about in a science forum. Alternative energy sources are always fun though. Good applied science ideas, and possible ways to save money are always welcome. The new super cheap and efficient nanotech solar cells they did an article on several months ago were probably the most interesting idea of recent times, as they are actually building a factory for those in California. I would expect that once everybody has "solar shingles" on their roof the need for most of the more exotic ideas will go away.

Barnes Wallis designed huge bombs, and the aircraft to carry them. He is best known for his "spinning bomb", which was successfully used in a very significant raid on two huge hydro-electric dams during the 2nd world war. The bomb was spun on an axis at right angles to the flight path, skipped along the water two or three times and then rolled down the underwater face of the dam before exploding. See, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barnes_Wallis The mysterious inventor Nikola Tesla was reputed to have tested a "resonator" which was capable of causing buildings to collapse by exciting the natural resonant frequency of the structure. In any case his research was sufficiently scary that the government impounded all his papers upon his death.