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[Energy] In the end, we'll still use liquified dinosaur carcasses for something
jungleroomx
It's never too many graves, it's always not enough shovelsRegistered User regular
It's never too many graves, it's always not enough shovelsRegistered User regular
Green vs. Traditional.
Current policies vs. Proposed policies, or even the policies of your dreams.
No limits, as long as it pertains to the discussion of energy in the real world.
Current policies vs. Proposed policies, or even the policies of your dreams.
No limits, as long as it pertains to the discussion of energy in the real world.
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Now granted, we are a team truck, so we run 24/7, but we also get a whole 7.5 miles to the gallon, which is half again the national average. Now, guess about how many big trucks are out there on that road every day, sucking greedily at the petro-teat.
All told, the US eats through 134,000,000 gallons of highway diesel per day (as of 2010), enough to fill 200 olympic swimming pools or cover Central Park to a depth of six inches...every day...just for diesel fuel...
The problem is, of course, transportability. Diesel and gasoline are very efficient in terms of power for volume or weight. CNG needs five times the volume of an equivalent amount of diesel, as well as a high-pressure fuel tank. Electricity or ethanol will work for shorter range vehicles, but the one lacks the range for OTR driving and the other would require fueling way too often (like trucks backed up out onto the street too often).
Trains aren't the solution, unless you are willing to give up overnight and three-day ground shipping. Alternative fuel, is going to require a massive infrastructure investment and rise in costs (which we will happily pass on to you, the consumer). The current system simply isn't sustainable. So does anyone have any good ideas, or are we pooched?
- John Stuart Mill
Yeah, no one route is a solution, but electric/cng is/will be great for fleet vehicles and most commuters.
Overnight/3 day shipping really aren't all that important. pertro-electric trains are super efficient and the above mentioned cng/full electric fleet trucks can handle the last mile.
Computer driven 'road trains' of trucks will cut wind resistance to almost nothing, and other sources of friction can be mitigated. So even when OTR is required it can be done for less.
Once we have clean electricity and an advance energy grid, if worse comes to worse, we could just electrify our roadways, and charge truckers to use that.
The key point is that bit about passing the costs on to the consumers. That's going to happen, and people will be force to consume less as things get more expensive. There's a lot of oil left to be found, it's just going to be harder and harder to get at it.
There's also something like more energy than we have already used tied up in Methane Hydrate than we have already used as a species. It will cost a lot to exploit it, and we'll have to adapt or transportation technologies to use it, but it isn't like we are going to hit a wall and not be able to transport thing. Costs are just going to spiral up, and we'll adapt.
I don't disagree, but if it is there to be exploited, we are probably going to.
You've got to be less pessimistic and look on the bright side of things. We, or our children, are going to get to terraform antarctica.
edit:and the Hamptons are fucked!
There is also quite a lot of time sensitive point to point traffic that won't work as well for rail (e.g. fresh meats and produce).
The industrial and residential sectors can more easily take advantage of non-carbon energy, but yeah, there are also ways of cutting back there. I'm just going with what I know because it involves such a staggering amount of oil.
RedX, the day they put computer driven semis on the road is the day I stop driving cars. I've driven in a truck with a partially automated transmission; it is a fantastic way to get someone killed. You also run into a problem with trucks that you don't have with cars. Namely, every truck climbs at a different speed. There is also problems with downgrades...and slick roads...really, it will get people killed.
- John Stuart Mill
- John Stuart Mill
So is the circle interchange, that doesn't suddenly make driving to Chicago a pointless endeavor, it means you need to alter routes and capital dollars have to increase capacity and target bottlenecks rather than just pretend rail isn't part of the transportation mix.
They also have a much different regulatory structure where freight is on a far more balanced footing rather than paying property tax out of pocket against a subsidized trucking sector that also has low fuel taxes. And if you look at a density map we actually are pretty dense when looking at population centers rather than just raw land. I mean, this is rather dismissive to people who live west of the 100th Meridian, but there just aren't that many of them. They shouldn't be ignored, but nor should they skew the averages that we're talking about.
You know what might solve that issue for you? Shifting your business into
THERMAL DEPOLYMERIZATION!
Yeah, they are expanding the yards as fast as they can, but that takes serious time, especially if the yard is in a growing population center or already built out.
Be back tonight. Sleep.
- John Stuart Mill
Tests find Rossi's E-Cat has an energy density at least 10 times higher than any conventional energy source
Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2013-05-rossi-e-cat-energy-density-higher.html#jCp
Oh, I thought you were meaning transport rather than issues with shifting at the yard. So less that and more this:
It's a projection to 2035, most of the system is actually below capacity now aside from major hubs where the delay is significant enough to impact overall efficiency. While I don't have much faith in the FHWA projections for the highway system because VMT is down, I feel more comfortable with this projection since it's far more based on economics than people's preferences. No matter if you want to live downtown or in the 'burbs, you still need plastic crap from China and that still has to get to you from a port somewhere.
People seem to discuss this in terms of: "How do we keep absolutely all of our modern conveniences and our lifestyle in-tact, and get off of fossil fuels, and stave off climate change?"
What if we just can't? What if the solution is just reevaluating our modern world, and deciding we don't need cheap plastic junk shipped all around the world, or an endless supply of beef, or an endless supply of coffee? What if the answer is to change our disposable consumerist culture?
If you approach this problem from an economic, capitalistic, free-trade point of view, you've already lost. It will always be easier and cheaper and more profitable to continue on our current path, and to brush the collateral damage under the rug as an externality.
What are you basing that on?
Some of the points made in this thread concerning shipping.
My point wasn't that we can't. My point is what if we can't in a decent timeframe? Also, if we're trying to stave off climate change, and switch from fossil fuels, then why can't part of the solution be to take a good look at our disposable consumer culture and make some changes? That's not usually brought up because people like their disposable junk, 10,000 barely different smartphone models, etc.
I was just bringing up that any anti-capitalistic solutions are never usually discussed because the economy relies on a consumer economy and that's probably part of the problem when you're trying to save the world from climate change, or switch energy sources.
If you try to solve this problem using economics, or an economic point of you, you trap yourself in a feedback loop, since the primary drive behind economics is making money, and sometimes doing the right thing for our species and planet just won't be profitable.
Trying to fix a problem of this magnitude while tabling anything that is going to cost more, or not be profitable, is just stupid, I guess is what I'm saying.
Except that none of what's been posted speaks toward (let alone against) lowering tariffs or harmonizing customs regulations. We can consume less than Mennonites and still have free trade. So it's just making me scratch my head. Unless you simply mean to use it as a metonym for something else, which given your descriptions of capitalism and economics seems likely but still just as odd.
Also, switching from fossil fuels is not directly related to either total energy consumption or energy consumption by sector. Russia only fairly recently electrified its rail system. We could similarly make the investment for that (powered by various sources) along with boosting freight capacity. It doesn't solve every single problem ever, but it does address a good deal of them all while also being a good investment on its own terms.
I guess I'm just not using the right terminology since I'm pretty much a layman when it comes to talking about markets and such.
I was trying to get at the point of: "What if one of the solutions to our energy issues is prioritizing what we ship, what we buy, what we do, and so on? Would that be a no-go because it impinges on the free market, even if we knew it would help us all out with climate change and energy issues?"
I was sort-of critiquing the anarcho-capitalistic mindset that seems to be so popular in the world these days, where anything that impinges on free trade is bad, even if doing so is good for us in the long term.
I'm not anti-capitalist, really, I'm just not a fan of letting economics dictate what solutions are off the table, since market-driven thinking is kind of what causes many of our global problems, even if it is short-sighted market, economic thinking.
If the goal is to consume as much as we do right now, but use some alternative energy to enable us to continue that behavior, and if we assume we will consume more as population increases, wouldn't we just end up on consuming ourselves to extinction? I mean, any way you slice it we live on a finite planet with finite resources.
A video which talks about what I'm getting at:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=VOMWzjrRiBg
I'd love that video to be debunked, by the way, since it's fairly frightening.
-Natural Gas is currently in a massive boom due to breakthroughs in fracking technology; this has been hailed as both a way to take a step away from coal - natural gas being the lesser of two evils - while still satisfying energy needs for the foreseeable future.
-Battery Technology is improving rapidly; metal-sulfur chemistry will double battery capacity, and metal-air chemistry will reach ten times the capacity of current batteries. Unless I'm mistaken, timelines put sulfur chemistry about five years out, and metal-air ten to fifteen years out. The advent of these batteries will mean electric vehicles will be far more feasible than they are even now (particularly cost-wise), and could very well displace cars with combustion engines entirely.
-Solar: price is falling like a rock and efficiency is steadily climbing; a possible endgame is having solar be so cheap it doesn't make sense to not include it in building projects.
-Nuclear: solid and ever-improving technology especially with regards to safety, but too many people are afraid of it.
-Fusion: ITER is still fifteen to twenty years out, but a Lockheed Martin skunkworks project is going to attempt a 100 Megawatt test in 2017 with a different design that they have found promising in laboratory testing. According to that press release, if successful they would be able to begin selling said reactors in 2022.
-Orbital Solar: I believe some test plants are planned for testing within a decade, but nothing really large-scale.
I really think the only solution is to find ways to make it easy and cheap for people to behave better. I mean, look at how long it took to start phasing out incandescent bulbs. We didn't get to really start until the tech caught up with instant on, dimmer support, etc.
I don't think you're likely to find a debunking, since everything stated follows fairly logically from current trends. If the video has a flaw, it's that it doesn't really consider alternatives to those trends. Resource usage continues to grow exponentially because we still have room to grow and thus costs are not rising. If there is one thing we should know by now, it's that we won't change course until we feel the pain. Their unstated assumption is that by the time we feel that pain (via price increase) it will be too late to do anything about it, which seems like a pretty big leap to me.
It also takes a rather dim view on human ingenuity. Because we do not have solution to our energy problem now, does not mean that one does not exist.
Fracking to get gas is just as environmentally destructive as removing mountains to get to the coal. Watch Gasland. The Bush Administration declared fracking free from the Clean Air and Clean Water acts, and corporations are pumping bleach, benzene, and any chemicals they have on hand into the ground (and our groundwater). This causes localized earthquakes due to sudden amounts of lubricant where there was none before as well as poisoning aquifers and streams.
While that's true, burning gas is much cleaner than burning coal. Plus, I believe gas stoves use less energy than electric ones since they don't have the issue of transmission inefficiency.
Or:
- stop worrying about how our houses look and worry more about how they function
- tax the wealthy and heavily subsidize electric car purchasing
Many problems we face are actually choices.
Well, by the time the pain hits rich first-world white people, I would think it'd be too late.
I don't really buy their dim view of human ingenuity, but I think it's funny, in a sad way, that almost no one wants to change current trends while trying to tech our way out of this problem - we want to keep all our toys and survive while consuming at the rate we are.
Also, and I don't really have any studies or articles to link at the moment, but I would argue that the costs of our resource usage are largely hidden. There are lots of ways to keep costs down while depleting resources.
Deforestation:
REMs:
Non-renewables:
Finite world. Finite stuff. Finite amount of toys we can build. Finite future.
Gas stoves do not use less energy, and you're thinking about induction stoves (which heat cookware directly) with the whole transmission inefficiency thing. Electricity generation by nuclear power is quite nonpolluting (since we can build reactors that re-use fuel rods and dump the other waste 'neath Yucca Mountain if the government grows a pair and tells Nevada to f-- off) so hopefully we can use that instead of mining, which is extremely environmentally destructive.
Easier said than done. You could legislate that all new constructions must include solar panels, but that will be really unpopular and may lead to politicians losing their positions over it.
You seem to have missed the part where a top of the line battery now is the same cost as a top of the line battery ten years ago, yet the energy density of the current one is a large improvement on the old one. Here's another way to look at it: a Nissan Leaf goes for around $35,000 and can travel a maximum of 75 miles on its lithium ion battery. All else equal, a Nissan Leaf ten to fifteen years from now with a Lithium-Air battery would likely still cost $35,000, except with a battery of the same approximate physical size it would be able to travel 750 miles. For comparison, something with a battery pack the size of those in the top of the line Tesla Model S (around $100,000) could travel over 2,000 miles per charge with a Lithium-Air battery.
EDIT: before someone says something about running out of lithium, we're finding tons of the stuff. Like up to 18 million metric tons of it in Wyoming.
Which is one of the reasons why we're pretty much doomed - wealthy, form over function morons.
EDIT
Also, I take it you've never seen a decent home fitted for solar. They actually look really nice. I live in a community featuring some not-pants-on-head-retarded well-off folks, who enjoy paying a lower energy bill.
Infinite universe. Infinite stuff. Infinite amount of toys we can build. Infinite future.
1) Fracking, like all mining operations, leads to significant changes in the environment.
2) Only if these technologies pan out.
3) Current generation silicon solar cells have more than bottomed out in price due to competition from China. Some of the major manufacturers of silicon solar cells are going out of business because they've been dumping on the American and other markets for so long. It is my opinion that the price will rise quite a bit in the next year or two.
4) Only Americans and Japanese are that fearful of nuclear power. Western Europe uses it extensively and continues development. Nuclear power won't grow globally, however, because of international fears of nuclear weapons developments growing from nuclear power generation.
5) Again, only if the technologies pan out.
6) Not even up to the point of near-future technological breakthroughs required.
On-topic: our best bet long-term is fusion. It's the only fuel source that is viable both in the extreme long term and for space travel. Solar is a good stop-gap, whether thermal or PV. PV materials can become a problem and it's not exactly clean to make and still requires maintenance/replacement. Nuclear would be fine for all electical loads, except for the stigma surrounding it
Geez, if we're going to be that pessimistic we might as well just give up now. I can tell everyone here right now: there will be no having cake and eating it too in this with respect to getting off of fossil fuels. The only reason any economy will ever choose to shift from fossil fuels is if the alternative is cheaper or there are no fossil fuels left. Until such a time as this occurs, fossil fuels will be the dominant source of energy on Earth. Not even realistic legislation among first world countries will stop this from being the case, as export markets will still exist to the third world.
edit - oh, and on 4) you forgot about Germany
edit^2 - for clarity
[Redacted]
Alchemy works?
I'm trying to stick with what I personally know, and my involvement with rail starts and ends at the yard, I know it is more complex routing by rail, but that is about it.
Yeah, if Henroid orders a gas-powered turkey stuffer, with reciprocating crouton ram from Target, it is going to involve a shipping container, two semi trailers, a rail car and at least 4 tractors to get it from the Port of Tacoma to Tyler, TX. I've taken great big rolls of tissue paper from the PA/NJ border to someplace a few hundred miles north of Toronto, then came back with the cut and boxed Kleenex...one time I just drove back with the empty trailer. The amount of waste is sickening.
- John Stuart Mill