I could see their niche being for small scale home use (or perhaps supplying a farm) based off waste. A bit like solar panels are used now. Nothing you'd want to run a national grid off, but still worth looking at as far as turning your waste into something some of your things can use, at the low cost of adding some specialised yeasts to a bin/vat.
Does a lawn contain anywhere near enough energy to run a lawnmower?
We shouldn't even have lawns. Sure, they're nice to look at and put your feet on but they consume so much water. It's insanity. And then you have people that fight the use of grey water to use for lawns because they're ignorant assholes that are easily grossed out by things they dont understand.
Japanese gravel gardens for everyone! I'm totally on board with this, I fucking hate mowing the lawn.
In all honesty though, I probably live in one of the few places on earth where we can have lawns 100% watered with rain. Which is annoying.
Most of the US that is not the southwest?
Scotland. Rains every. Fucking. Day.
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HacksawJ. Duggan Esq.Wrestler at LawRegistered Userregular
I could see their niche being for small scale home use (or perhaps supplying a farm) based off waste. A bit like solar panels are used now. Nothing you'd want to run a national grid off, but still worth looking at as far as turning your waste into something some of your things can use, at the low cost of adding some specialised yeasts to a bin/vat.
Does a lawn contain anywhere near enough energy to run a lawnmower?
We shouldn't even have lawns. Sure, they're nice to look at and put your feet on but they consume so much water. It's insanity. And then you have people that fight the use of grey water to use for lawns because they're ignorant assholes that are easily grossed out by things they dont understand.
Japanese gravel gardens for everyone! I'm totally on board with this, I fucking hate mowing the lawn.
In all honesty though, I probably live in one of the few places on earth where we can have lawns 100% watered with rain. Which is annoying.
Most of the US that is not the southwest?
Scotland. Rains every. Fucking. Day.
See also: Western Washington (state). Rains every day. Even on the days when it's not raining, it's still raining, only invisibly.
I could see their niche being for small scale home use (or perhaps supplying a farm) based off waste. A bit like solar panels are used now. Nothing you'd want to run a national grid off, but still worth looking at as far as turning your waste into something some of your things can use, at the low cost of adding some specialised yeasts to a bin/vat.
Does a lawn contain anywhere near enough energy to run a lawnmower?
We shouldn't even have lawns. Sure, they're nice to look at and put your feet on but they consume so much water. It's insanity. And then you have people that fight the use of grey water to use for lawns because they're ignorant assholes that are easily grossed out by things they dont understand.
Japanese gravel gardens for everyone! I'm totally on board with this, I fucking hate mowing the lawn.
In all honesty though, I probably live in one of the few places on earth where we can have lawns 100% watered with rain. Which is annoying.
Most of the US that is not the southwest?
Scotland. Rains every. Fucking. Day.
See also: Western Washington (state). Rains every day. Even on the days when it's not raining, it's still raining, only invisibly.
Ah yes, the days when the rain doesn't so much fall as sit in the air in a fine mist that soaks you as you walk through it. Gotta love that stuff.
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HacksawJ. Duggan Esq.Wrestler at LawRegistered Userregular
I could see their niche being for small scale home use (or perhaps supplying a farm) based off waste. A bit like solar panels are used now. Nothing you'd want to run a national grid off, but still worth looking at as far as turning your waste into something some of your things can use, at the low cost of adding some specialised yeasts to a bin/vat.
Does a lawn contain anywhere near enough energy to run a lawnmower?
We shouldn't even have lawns. Sure, they're nice to look at and put your feet on but they consume so much water. It's insanity. And then you have people that fight the use of grey water to use for lawns because they're ignorant assholes that are easily grossed out by things they dont understand.
Japanese gravel gardens for everyone! I'm totally on board with this, I fucking hate mowing the lawn.
In all honesty though, I probably live in one of the few places on earth where we can have lawns 100% watered with rain. Which is annoying.
Most of the US that is not the southwest?
Scotland. Rains every. Fucking. Day.
See also: Western Washington (state). Rains every day. Even on the days when it's not raining, it's still raining, only invisibly.
Ah yes, the days when the rain doesn't so much fall as sit in the air in a fine mist that soaks you as you walk through it. Gotta love that stuff.
I call it "Stealth Rain". It sounds kinda sexy and mysterious that way.
I could see their niche being for small scale home use (or perhaps supplying a farm) based off waste. A bit like solar panels are used now. Nothing you'd want to run a national grid off, but still worth looking at as far as turning your waste into something some of your things can use, at the low cost of adding some specialised yeasts to a bin/vat.
Does a lawn contain anywhere near enough energy to run a lawnmower?
We shouldn't even have lawns. Sure, they're nice to look at and put your feet on but they consume so much water. It's insanity. And then you have people that fight the use of grey water to use for lawns because they're ignorant assholes that are easily grossed out by things they dont understand.
Japanese gravel gardens for everyone! I'm totally on board with this, I fucking hate mowing the lawn.
In all honesty though, I probably live in one of the few places on earth where we can have lawns 100% watered with rain. Which is annoying.
Most of the US that is not the southwest?
Scotland. Rains every. Fucking. Day.
See also: Western Washington (state). Rains every day. Even on the days when it's not raining, it's still raining, only invisibly.
Ah yes, the days when the rain doesn't so much fall as sit in the air in a fine mist that soaks you as you walk through it. Gotta love that stuff.
I call it "Stealth Rain". It sounds kinda sexy and mysterious that way.
I call it a fucking pain in the hole. At least with regular rain it (mostly) comes from one direction, so if you're wearing a coat you can still keep your legs somewhat dry. Stealth rain just gives you all over coverage, wet everything.
The only rain that's worse is the "sideways downpour" that sucks.
Now I'm just thinking about that bit in DS9 where Quark says "On Fereginar we have 37 different words for rain. It's currently "blemining" down out there". Living here feels like that.
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TerribleMisathrope23rd Degree IntiateAt The Right Hand Of The Seven HornsRegistered Userregular
Well sure if we had waaaaaay more cultivated farming land than we currently do and were willing to let a few million people starve. Let's not even talk about the enviromental impact farming on that scale would have, and that's before you've used the produce to to run an engine that makes green house gassess ect ect.
Biofuels are a PR exersice, not a meaningful fuel source.
Well not with your pessimism, they won't.
Pessimism has nothing to do with it. I work in the oil industry, it's common knowledge here that biofuels are a PR exercise oil companies pour a few bucks into to keep environmentalists happy and have something to show the government on their reports. They were never meant to work, they're like the original arc reactor in iron man. :P
That's weird. Biofuels are just as bad as any other fossil fuel for the environment (well maybe slightly better but still pretty bad). I really don't know why they'd be considered environmentally friendly.
They're not going to completely replace oil of course- we use oil to make fertilizer for our crops, so of course we can't turn around and use the same crops to make more oil- but I do think they could have a place in supplementing alternative energy, for niche areas where non fossil fuel just doesn't work as an energy source, like running heavy machinery in remote locations.
Biofuels are marketed by PR departments as a Green Solution to fossil fuels.
Cause it's like, from the Earth, man.
It's a bait and switch. Biofuels are touted by clueless politicans, because they are renewable (is in they come from recently dead plants that we can grow more of instead of long dead plants and animals that we cannot) and renewable is a green buzz word, not because biofuels are actually environmentally friendly. Using biofuels is still burning shit, which still makes CO2 and other pollutants. Basically, renewable is a concept that is part of the environmental movement and the public is too stupid to get the nuance between renewable in the environmental movement (keeping fish stocks high with limits, using sustainable agricultural practices, recycling, etc.) and renewable that still pollutes and naturally politicians just want sound bites that make them look green, not to mention the corn lobby also happens to have lots of money to buy politicians with.
As an interesting bit of trivia: if you use renewable natural gas sources for fuel, such as the aforementioned farts, you'd actually be reducing global climate change via the greenhouse effect, because CO2 has a far less powerful greenhouse effect than Methane.
Save The Earth: Burn Farts!!
You do know that burning biofuels returns the same CO2 to the atmosphere that the plants took out of it during the previous growing season(s), right? Theoretically the whole cycle could be carbon-neutral. There are various other reasons that make their use impractical on a large scale, but "burning shit" is not automatically bad for the environment.
Carbon-shmarbon.
First CO2 is probably the pollutant of the least immediate concern compared to ground level ozone, formaldehyde, and CO (carbon monoxide), not to mention surfur and nitrogen compounds that result in acid rain, athsma and environmental degradation. Look, you are certainly correct about carbon neutral, except in the case of trees that have been growing for decades and as long as you don't count the energy inputs into the Ethanol refineries from Coal produced electricity (most Ethanol refineries are run on the grid, sucking in coal electricity, since it is cheaper than burning their own product). You've presented an interesting observation but it's far from a convincing argument for heavy adoption of biofuels, since it is simply not possible to grow enough plants to meet current or forseeable future energy demands, and since heavy demand for those biofuels will only further accelerate deforestation to grow more plants to burn, among other negative side effects.
Frankly, our experimenting with Ethanol has proven that it causes more problems than it solves, both theoretically and in practice (like right now). It is not a more environmentally friendly energy source than any other form of burning things, particularly when compared to solar and wind power, it is expensive, it is useless to solving the problem they purport to solve (replacing fossil fuels) as well as having many terrible unanticipated consequences. How is that anything but a political green-coating for the shmuck politicians that prop up the corn industry while taking millions from it in bribes campaign donations?
You seem very knowledgeable about this kind of stuff @terriblemisanthrope and I'd love to sign up for your newsletter. I remember hearing something about algae, know anything about that?
Keeping informed is just a hobby of mine, but thanks all the same. I've heard of algea both as a biofuel source and as a carbon-sink tech, but both are technologies in their infancy and fraught with major technical difficulties, like preventing contamination in an industrial scale project, and massive water use. Tuns out that it can be very tricky to get the right kind of algea to grow in circumstances that are appropriate to industry. As far as I know (and I could be wrong) algea is quite a ways off from being a factor worth considering in the current and immediate future of the energy/pollution sphere, but it's somewhere on the horizon.
Much more promising is solar like this, especially those that use molten salt energy storage:
The Andasol 1 solar power station is Europe’s first parabolic trough commercial power plant (50 MWe), located near Guadix in the province of Granada, also in Andalusia (the plant is named after the region). The Andasol 1 power plant went online in November 2008, and has a thermal storage system which absorbs part of the heat produced in the solar field during the day. This heat is then stored in a molten salt mixture and used to generate electricity during the night, or when the sky is overcast.[8]
A 15 MWe solar-only power tower plant, the Solar Tres project, is in the hands of the Spanish company SENER, employing molten salt technologies for receiving and energy storage. Its 16-hour molten salt storage system will be able to deliver power around the clock. The Solar Tres project has received a €5 million grant from the EC’s Fifth Framework Programme.
HarrierThe Star Spangled ManRegistered Userregular
Does anyone else read The Archdruid Report? His main thrust is that industrial society as a whole is shutting down and can't be replaced. Fossil fuels are what allowed it to exist and nothing is going to serve as a perfect substitute. The best we can hope for is a civilization with drastically lower energy consumption powered by alternative energy.
It's an interesting perspective, and definitely clear-eyed.
On the other hand, we in the US might not be preparing for peak oil, but Germany certainly is.
I don't wanna kill anybody. I don't like bullies. I don't care where they're from.
Well sure if we had waaaaaay more cultivated farming land than we currently do and were willing to let a few million people starve. Let's not even talk about the enviromental impact farming on that scale would have, and that's before you've used the produce to to run an engine that makes green house gassess ect ect.
Biofuels are a PR exersice, not a meaningful fuel source.
Well not with your pessimism, they won't.
Pessimism has nothing to do with it. I work in the oil industry, it's common knowledge here that biofuels are a PR exercise oil companies pour a few bucks into to keep environmentalists happy and have something to show the government on their reports. They were never meant to work, they're like the original arc reactor in iron man. :P
That's weird. Biofuels are just as bad as any other fossil fuel for the environment (well maybe slightly better but still pretty bad). I really don't know why they'd be considered environmentally friendly.
They're not going to completely replace oil of course- we use oil to make fertilizer for our crops, so of course we can't turn around and use the same crops to make more oil- but I do think they could have a place in supplementing alternative energy, for niche areas where non fossil fuel just doesn't work as an energy source, like running heavy machinery in remote locations.
Biofuels are marketed by PR departments as a Green Solution to fossil fuels.
Cause it's like, from the Earth, man.
It's a bait and switch. Biofuels are touted by clueless politicans, because they are renewable (is in they come from recently dead plants that we can grow more of instead of long dead plants and animals that we cannot) and renewable is a green buzz word, not because biofuels are actually environmentally friendly. Using biofuels is still burning shit, which still makes CO2 and other pollutants. Basically, renewable is a concept that is part of the environmental movement and the public is too stupid to get the nuance between renewable in the environmental movement (keeping fish stocks high with limits, using sustainable agricultural practices, recycling, etc.) and renewable that still pollutes and naturally politicians just want sound bites that make them look green, not to mention the corn lobby also happens to have lots of money to buy politicians with.
As an interesting bit of trivia: if you use renewable natural gas sources for fuel, such as the aforementioned farts, you'd actually be reducing global climate change via the greenhouse effect, because CO2 has a far less powerful greenhouse effect than Methane.
Save The Earth: Burn Farts!!
You do know that burning biofuels returns the same CO2 to the atmosphere that the plants took out of it during the previous growing season(s), right? Theoretically the whole cycle could be carbon-neutral. There are various other reasons that make their use impractical on a large scale, but "burning shit" is not automatically bad for the environment.
Carbon-shmarbon.
First CO2 is probably the pollutant of the least immediate concern compared to ground level ozone, formaldehyde, and CO (carbon monoxide), not to mention surfur and nitrogen compounds that result in acid rain, athsma and environmental degradation. Look, you are certainly correct about carbon neutral, except in the case of trees that have been growing for decades and as long as you don't count the energy inputs into the Ethanol refineries from Coal produced electricity (most Ethanol refineries are run on the grid, sucking in coal electricity, since it is cheaper than burning their own product). You've presented an interesting observation but it's far from a convincing argument for heavy adoption of biofuels, since it is simply not possible to grow enough plants to meet current or forseeable future energy demands, and since heavy demand for those biofuels will only further accelerate deforestation to grow more plants to burn, among other negative side effects.
I agree with your conclusion (I'm a fission plant/electric car man myself), but you're reasoning is way off, here. Most of those pollutants you mention are the result of incomplete combustion (i.e. a poorly maintained or poorly designed combustion cycle) and a properly designed and operated engine will reduce them to almost nothing. Some of the others you mention don't even make sense--sulfur compounds from burning ethanol? Ethanol doesn't even contain sulfur--you're still thinking of gasoline.
Does anyone else read The Archdruid Report? His main thrust is that industrial society as a whole is shutting down and can't be replaced. Fossil fuels are what allowed it to exist and nothing is going to serve as a perfect substitute. The best we can hope for is a civilization with drastically lower energy consumption powered by alternative energy.
It's an interesting perspective, and definitely clear-eyed.
On the other hand, we in the US might not be preparing for peak oil, but Germany certainly is.
Yeah. A lot of his posts read like he's trying to give a history lesson to kids, and it really irritates me because it seems like he's talking down to us and he never cites any sources and he has this ridiculous grand-sweep-of-history theme. Still it's fun to read, since it's written in a nice comforting old-timey style. And it's fun listening to someone defend their idea that magic is literally real.
As for his main theme, that modern industrial society is doomed... well yeah. That just seems obvious, to me. How can anyone think that the way we live now can go on indefinitely, with everyone burning up more and more of the Earth every day? It's crazy. Whether or not oil production has already peeked, or if we'll be able to keep things going for a while longer with unconventional oil and new sources from the Arctic, it's going to come down eventually. That said, he's annoyingly fatalistic about it, like "eh why even bother to try and change things. Just give up."
Does anyone else read The Archdruid Report? His main thrust is that industrial society as a whole is shutting down and can't be replaced. Fossil fuels are what allowed it to exist and nothing is going to serve as a perfect substitute. The best we can hope for is a civilization with drastically lower energy consumption powered by alternative energy.
It's an interesting perspective, and definitely clear-eyed.
On the other hand, we in the US might not be preparing for peak oil, but Germany certainly is.
Well, I mean, there's nothing inherently impossible about replacing energy sources (all you need is something, anything, that will spin a turbine. Water + some energy source to move the water against the turbine, or directly facing the turbine into strong winds with appropriate propellers, is our current method). Our growth is probably unsustainable; the current industrial society is probably not.
It's just a matter of how quickly it can be done and how much recession will be experienced as we attempt to make whatever transition.
Or we could just build thorium-fueled nuclear plants and have a safe, abundant energy source that produces no waste and is too cheap to meter.
But, but, but....radiation.
:rotate:
Spam solar thermal, and when we hit the limits of what we can do with that, start spamming nuclear plants.
If my experience in Sim City is any indication, doing this is actually a bad idea because it leads to a gigantic spider mech cyclops laying waste to all that it beholds.
Or we could just build thorium-fueled nuclear plants and have a safe, abundant energy source that produces no waste and is too cheap to meter.
But, but, but....radiation.
:rotate:
Spam solar thermal, and when we hit the limits of what we can do with that, start spamming nuclear plants.
If my experience in Sim City is any indication, doing this is actually a bad idea because it leads to a gigantic spider mech cyclops laying waste to all that it beholds.
But we could enslave this technological terror, and have it run forever on a giant hamster wheel!
On a more serious note there's been some interesting movement in terms of solar cell research, most notably the ability to make super-thin silicon wafers for photovoltaics (so now instead of getting one wafer, you get ten at a tenth the thickness). This could seriously cut the price of solar arrays, making power plants based on that technology much more viable.
In the somewhat longer - and a little more out of left field - area, there's also been an explosion in growth of the New Space industry. Among those companies I think we've all heard of Planetary Resources, which admittedly has a long way before it returns even a single mineral sample but could have a big effect on energy technologies down the road. After all, platinum group metals are critical catalysts for a whole range of technologies and a cheap source of those elements becoming available right around the time oil becomes a non-viable fuel source would allow for some interesting possibilities.
Well sure if we had waaaaaay more cultivated farming land than we currently do and were willing to let a few million people starve. Let's not even talk about the enviromental impact farming on that scale would have, and that's before you've used the produce to to run an engine that makes green house gassess ect ect.
Biofuels are a PR exersice, not a meaningful fuel source.
Well not with your pessimism, they won't.
Pessimism has nothing to do with it. I work in the oil industry, it's common knowledge here that biofuels are a PR exercise oil companies pour a few bucks into to keep environmentalists happy and have something to show the government on their reports. They were never meant to work, they're like the original arc reactor in iron man. :P
That's weird. Biofuels are just as bad as any other fossil fuel for the environment (well maybe slightly better but still pretty bad). I really don't know why they'd be considered environmentally friendly.
They're not going to completely replace oil of course- we use oil to make fertilizer for our crops, so of course we can't turn around and use the same crops to make more oil- but I do think they could have a place in supplementing alternative energy, for niche areas where non fossil fuel just doesn't work as an energy source, like running heavy machinery in remote locations.
Biofuels are marketed by PR departments as a Green Solution to fossil fuels.
Cause it's like, from the Earth, man.
It's a bait and switch. Biofuels are touted by clueless politicans, because they are renewable (is in they come from recently dead plants that we can grow more of instead of long dead plants and animals that we cannot) and renewable is a green buzz word, not because biofuels are actually environmentally friendly. Using biofuels is still burning shit, which still makes CO2 and other pollutants. Basically, renewable is a concept that is part of the environmental movement and the public is too stupid to get the nuance between renewable in the environmental movement (keeping fish stocks high with limits, using sustainable agricultural practices, recycling, etc.) and renewable that still pollutes and naturally politicians just want sound bites that make them look green, not to mention the corn lobby also happens to have lots of money to buy politicians with.
As an interesting bit of trivia: if you use renewable natural gas sources for fuel, such as the aforementioned farts, you'd actually be reducing global climate change via the greenhouse effect, because CO2 has a far less powerful greenhouse effect than Methane.
Save The Earth: Burn Farts!!
You do know that burning biofuels returns the same CO2 to the atmosphere that the plants took out of it during the previous growing season(s), right? Theoretically the whole cycle could be carbon-neutral. There are various other reasons that make their use impractical on a large scale, but "burning shit" is not automatically bad for the environment.
Carbon-shmarbon.
First CO2 is probably the pollutant of the least immediate concern compared to ground level ozone, formaldehyde, and CO (carbon monoxide), not to mention surfur and nitrogen compounds that result in acid rain, athsma and environmental degradation. Look, you are certainly correct about carbon neutral, except in the case of trees that have been growing for decades and as long as you don't count the energy inputs into the Ethanol refineries from Coal produced electricity (most Ethanol refineries are run on the grid, sucking in coal electricity, since it is cheaper than burning their own product). You've presented an interesting observation but it's far from a convincing argument for heavy adoption of biofuels, since it is simply not possible to grow enough plants to meet current or forseeable future energy demands, and since heavy demand for those biofuels will only further accelerate deforestation to grow more plants to burn, among other negative side effects.
I agree with your conclusion (I'm a fission plant/electric car man myself), but you're reasoning is way off, here. Most of those pollutants you mention are the result of incomplete combustion (i.e. a poorly maintained or poorly designed combustion cycle) and a properly designed and operated engine will reduce them to almost nothing. Some of the others you mention don't even make sense--sulfur compounds from burning ethanol? Ethanol doesn't even contain sulfur--you're still thinking of gasoline.
I'm glad we basically agree, and perhaps I was thinking of Gasoline/NG on the sulfur, idk.
I agree that more complete combustion can make ethanol just as clean as any other form of combustion, but no cleaner. Theoretically, even coal combustion can be quite clean, but of course the issue is that in practice, power generation at plants or in cars is only as clean as required by regulation, and often not that much, since paying the fines can be, and often is, cheaper than cleaning the process. Aside from the pollution aspect I think the rest of the points are a fairly strong argument for non-adoption of trying to make biofuels a primary energy source, but I welcome your input.
Or we could just build thorium-fueled nuclear plants and have a safe, abundant energy source that produces no waste and is too cheap to meter.
But, but, but....radiation.
:rotate:
Spam solar thermal, and when we hit the limits of what we can do with that, start spamming nuclear plants.
If my experience in Sim City is any indication, doing this is actually a bad idea because it leads to a gigantic spider mech cyclops laying waste to all that it beholds.
But we could enslave this technological terror, and have it run forever on a giant hamster wheel!
On a more serious note there's been some interesting movement in terms of solar cell research, most notably the ability to make super-thin silicon wafers for photovoltaics (so now instead of getting one wafer, you get ten at a tenth the thickness). This could seriously cut the price of solar arrays, making power plants based on that technology much more viable.
In the somewhat longer - and a little more out of left field - area, there's also been an explosion in growth of the New Space industry. Among those companies I think we've all heard of Planetary Resources, which admittedly has a long way before it returns even a single mineral sample but could have a big effect on energy technologies down the road. After all, platinum group metals are critical catalysts for a whole range of technologies and a cheap source of those elements becoming available right around the time oil becomes a non-viable fuel source would allow for some interesting possibilities.
If they can just get around the technical problems this is a pretty cool thing in new solar gen tech:
HarrierThe Star Spangled ManRegistered Userregular
I wonder if Arizona's crazy right-wing government would be willing to sell most of the state's land to a solar thermal company. It would pit their hatred of green energy against their love of privatization.
Though now that I think of it, maybe all of Arizona should just be for solar power generation. New Mexico and Nevada, too. The states are literally desert; the only reason people grow crops there and live in any sizable numbers is the unsustainable pumping of groundwater.
I don't wanna kill anybody. I don't like bullies. I don't care where they're from.
I wonder if Arizona's crazy right-wing government would be willing to sell most of the state's land to a solar thermal company. It would pit their hatred of green energy against their love of privatization.
Though now that I think of it, maybe all of Arizona should just be for solar power generation. New Mexico and Nevada, too. The states are literally desert; the only reason people grow crops there and live in any sizable numbers is the unsustainable pumping of groundwater.
It's actually a pretty smart idea. There's no reason to grow crops there, much better to harvest energy there and move it with a smart grid to somewhere else. Arizona is an excellent place for nuclear power too.
People worry about Peak Oil, and while it's likely an inevitable event, I doubt that it will cause any sort of Armageddon.
Armageddon? Nah. Possible economic upheaval and social unrest as consumer prices start to outstrip wages? Maybe. Starvation among the poor in areas of the world where local agriculture is limited and food is shipped in from other countries? Quite likely. Political conflict over the last remaining fertile oil fields? Almost definitely.
I'm not quite sure how Peak Oil will lead to starvation in any but the worst managed countries
See: South African oil embargo and Congo (growing population with no green revolution)
Rural America is going to get fucked six ways from Sunday, which I keep saying. It's why conservative policies are just reality blind, the earth's total supply of oil isn't sufficient to keep gas prices low, they're going to keep going up, it's basic economics.
Worst case, we can make oil from coal. Expensive and terribad for the environment, but we won't run out.
Making diesel from coal is more environmentally friendly than burning coal, you can sequester the carbon and one thing you can do with sequestered carbon is use it to increase output of dying wells
CNG is the way to go. Some of the new diesel engines can run on CNG. A lot of larger vehicles, some tractors and a growing number of buses and trucks, already run on CNG.
The electric car thing will not work until we find some way to make that electricity that doesn't use oil. Green energy technologies will probably never do more than supplement our power grid.
We should have gone all-in with nuclear power back in the 70s. All of the false starts are extremely frustrating, and alarmists have probably stigmatized nuke plants forever.
On the topic of algea, I have a friend in the shipping industry and they are currently running tests on algea fuel in some engines on their vessels. Of course those things run on bunker oil (the vilest shit you can think off) but fuel prices are so high that they want to try it.
Also I do not think we have hit peak oil yet in terms of production, but its irrelevant. The real thing to look at is fuel costs which are primarily driven by production costs and demand. Best way to look at production is how much energy in terms of oil barrels do you need to get one new barrel out of the ground. Take a look at those figures and you will see that the real problem is not that we are running out of liquid fuels but that it will get incredibly costly to produce and this will stunt our exponential growth.
On the other hand take a look at how much driving today is discretionary. If you would take all short to medium commutes today in the US today and change them from fuel innefficent cars to super fuel efficient scooters consumption would drop drastically.
Tl;dr I dont think we are running out of oil but it will get progressivly more expensive which will stunt economic growth while moderating (not decreasing) demand. Of course the US is one of the worst hit because of lack of alternative options and gasoline taxes but on the other hand you have a huge chance to reduce demands, a history of inovation and a huge ass army currently sitting in and around most key oil producing nations.
Scooters are great, but what if you need to go to work in the freezing rain and snow, or down a four-lane highway, or up a bunch of hills? Then you still need a car, so you need two vehicles instead of one.
I provided two examples of countries who found alternatives to oil fertilizer, poor countries at that
Hell Illinois manufactures coal based fertilizer
The Congo has a population of about 4~ million. At the time of the oil embargo in the late 1980s, South Africa had a population of about 28~ million.
Morocco & Algeria alone have about 65~ million people between them, and they represent a very small slice of North African countries with climbing populations and very limited agricultural space. The Congo & South Africa have tropical climates that allow for extremely lush plant growth; North African states mostly have arid climates and are slowly being gnawed away by the Sahara.
It's pretty unlikely that anyone could replicate a successful agricultural program in a North African state in the same way that South Africa or The Congo were able to. Even when Dr. Borlaug went into Ethiopia, his lovely grain breeds still needed a ton of diammonium phosphate fertilizer in order to get the yields that were so desperately needed.
With Love and Courage
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Casually HardcoreOnce an Asshole. Trying to be better.Registered Userregular
Oil is important for a lot of products and stuff, but the most damaging thing that could result from 'running out of oil' is in transportation. Pretty much everything is transported with oil.
Scooters are great, but what if you need to go to work in the freezing rain and snow, or down a four-lane highway, or up a bunch of hills? Then you still need a car, so you need two vehicles instead of one.
Sure but at some point people wont be able to afford the car commute. A modern scooter has no problems with hills and a 4 lane highway you can mark one lane or the side of the road for motorcycles. Winter is a problem but an extra scooter isnt that much of an investment. I think its going to be an economic necesity for most people at some point.
Electric cars is not a large scale option unless we get some new tech for batteries because there isnt enough litium to replace the current fleet of cars in the world.
Its a shame because electricity generation is not a problem (coal alone could do it).
Scooters are great, but what if you need to go to work in the freezing rain and snow, or down a four-lane highway, or up a bunch of hills? Then you still need a car, so you need two vehicles instead of one.
Sure but at some point people wont be able to afford the car commute. A modern scooter has no problems with hills and a 4 lane highway you can mark one lane or the side of the road for motorcycles. Winter is a problem but an extra scooter isnt that much of an investment. I think its going to be an economic necesity for most people at some point.
Electric cars is not a large scale option unless we get some new tech for batteries because there isnt enough litium to replace the current fleet of cars in the world.
Its a shame because electricity generation is not a problem (coal alone could do it).
There's plenty of lithium (hundreds of billions of tons); it's just very diffusely concentrated in most cases and therefore expensive to extract. We aren't going to run out of lithium in the same way we might run out of some rare-earth elements in the near future.
Electric cars is not a large scale option unless we get some new tech for batteries because there isnt enough litium to replace the current fleet of cars in the world.
Its a shame because electricity generation is not a problem (coal alone could do it).
Keep in mind that I'm not terribly well-informed on this subject, but I remember hearing that using electricity created by coal power plants to power electric cars would be more environmentally unfriendly than using coal for electricity and oil for cars.
Electric cars is not a large scale option unless we get some new tech for batteries because there isnt enough litium to replace the current fleet of cars in the world.
Its a shame because electricity generation is not a problem (coal alone could do it).
Keep in mind that I'm not terribly well-informed on this subject, but I remember hearing that using electricity created by coal power plants to power electric cars would be more environmentally unfriendly than using coal for electricity and oil for cars.
Which is why we should build Thorium nuke plants.
Seriously I'm just going to keep repeating this every time someone posts about electricity generation.
Electric cars is not a large scale option unless we get some new tech for batteries because there isnt enough litium to replace the current fleet of cars in the world.
Its a shame because electricity generation is not a problem (coal alone could do it).
Keep in mind that I'm not terribly well-informed on this subject, but I remember hearing that using electricity created by coal power plants to power electric cars would be more environmentally unfriendly than using coal for electricity and oil for cars.
Which is why we should build Thorium nuke plants.
Seriously I'm just going to keep repeating this every time someone posts about electricity generation.
Yeah, really the first step is getting something that isn't fossil fuel going full bore. The thorium stuff looks really promising and doesn't seem to have anywhere near the risk of traditional nuclear power. Get that going, with a decent public transit infrastructure build up and you can not only cut down on pollution but also put off peak oil for some time.
Honestly, I don't think we've hit peak oil yet, we have hit the point where we have to start drilling for the harder to reach stuff and in some cases that doesn't just take more energy, the stuff usually gives off more pollutants than the easy stuff or it's in place where you can't afford to have a leak.
Eh, there are enough ways to produce fertilizers and enough interest in ensuring a steady supply that it won't likely be a major problem. I personally suspect a major advance could come from genetically modified bacteria to perform more efficient nitrogen fixation, maybe like cyanobacteria on steroids. That solves the nitrate fertilizer problem but it may introduce others, namely what do you feed these vats of bacteria and how do you do it without consuming too much of your fertilizer.
The problem with electric cars is that electric cars suck ass. All the cheap electricity in the world doesn't change that.
Honestly doing some reading on it I don't see why everyone is so gung ho on thorium. It's only real advantage is fewer long term waste isotopes, which while a BIG advantage, isn't really what keeps US nuke plants from being built. A rod you have to seal off for 1000 years or 10,000 year isn't really a big difference in decision making.
Seems like everything thorium is good for a uranium FBR does as well, since that's basically what a thorium reactor is. And since the uranium side is so much more matured technologically, using it seems a much easier/faster route.
The problem with electric cars is that electric cars suck ass. All the cheap electricity in the world doesn't change that.
Honestly doing some reading on it I don't see why everyone is so gung ho on thorium. It's only real advantage is fewer long term waste isotopes, which while a BIG advantage, isn't really what keeps US nuke plants from being built. A rod you have to seal off for 1000 years or 10,000 year isn't really a big difference in decision making.
Seems like everything thorium is good for a uranium FBR does as well, since that's basically what a thorium reactor is. And since the uranium side is so much more matured technologically, using it seems a much easier/faster route.
Thorium is absurdly common and refining it into usable fuel is pretty simple and cheap. Uranium is neither. Thorium also does not pose a proliferation risk, and so the attendant oversight costs that requires can be cut. They're as safe as PBRs without the necessity for the weird fuel shape and the issues that causes. The overall plants themselves are far safer because you don't have to keep the thing under pressure and steam and all that attendant bullshit, it's not going to explode no matter what you try to do with it.
The biggest benefit, by far, is that they're way the hell cheaper to build and maintain.
Posts
Scotland. Rains every. Fucking. Day.
See also: Western Washington (state). Rains every day. Even on the days when it's not raining, it's still raining, only invisibly.
Yay for living in northern europe.
Ah yes, the days when the rain doesn't so much fall as sit in the air in a fine mist that soaks you as you walk through it. Gotta love that stuff.
I call it "Stealth Rain". It sounds kinda sexy and mysterious that way.
I call it a fucking pain in the hole. At least with regular rain it (mostly) comes from one direction, so if you're wearing a coat you can still keep your legs somewhat dry. Stealth rain just gives you all over coverage, wet everything.
The only rain that's worse is the "sideways downpour" that sucks.
Now I'm just thinking about that bit in DS9 where Quark says "On Fereginar we have 37 different words for rain. It's currently "blemining" down out there". Living here feels like that.
First CO2 is probably the pollutant of the least immediate concern compared to ground level ozone, formaldehyde, and CO (carbon monoxide), not to mention surfur and nitrogen compounds that result in acid rain, athsma and environmental degradation. Look, you are certainly correct about carbon neutral, except in the case of trees that have been growing for decades and as long as you don't count the energy inputs into the Ethanol refineries from Coal produced electricity (most Ethanol refineries are run on the grid, sucking in coal electricity, since it is cheaper than burning their own product). You've presented an interesting observation but it's far from a convincing argument for heavy adoption of biofuels, since it is simply not possible to grow enough plants to meet current or forseeable future energy demands, and since heavy demand for those biofuels will only further accelerate deforestation to grow more plants to burn, among other negative side effects.
Frankly, our experimenting with Ethanol has proven that it causes more problems than it solves, both theoretically and in practice (like right now). It is not a more environmentally friendly energy source than any other form of burning things, particularly when compared to solar and wind power, it is expensive, it is useless to solving the problem they purport to solve (replacing fossil fuels) as well as having many terrible unanticipated consequences. How is that anything but a political green-coating for the shmuck politicians that prop up the corn industry while taking millions from it in bribes campaign donations?
Keeping informed is just a hobby of mine, but thanks all the same. I've heard of algea both as a biofuel source and as a carbon-sink tech, but both are technologies in their infancy and fraught with major technical difficulties, like preventing contamination in an industrial scale project, and massive water use. Tuns out that it can be very tricky to get the right kind of algea to grow in circumstances that are appropriate to industry. As far as I know (and I could be wrong) algea is quite a ways off from being a factor worth considering in the current and immediate future of the energy/pollution sphere, but it's somewhere on the horizon.
Much more promising is solar like this, especially those that use molten salt energy storage:
http://www.abengoasolar.com/corp/web/en/nuestras_plantas/plantas_en_construccion/estados_unidos/
http://www.abengoasolar.com/corp/export/sites/abengoasolar/resources/images/nuestro_productos_13.jpg
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PS10_Solar_Power_Plant
http://www.solarreserve.com/what-we-do/csp-projects/termosolar-alcazar/
http://www.solarreserve.com/what-we-do/csp-projects/rice-army-airfield/
http://www.solarreserve.com/what-we-do/csp-projects/crescent-dunes/
From The Spanish Solar Power Wiki:
try this
It's an interesting perspective, and definitely clear-eyed.
On the other hand, we in the US might not be preparing for peak oil, but Germany certainly is.
As for his main theme, that modern industrial society is doomed... well yeah. That just seems obvious, to me. How can anyone think that the way we live now can go on indefinitely, with everyone burning up more and more of the Earth every day? It's crazy. Whether or not oil production has already peeked, or if we'll be able to keep things going for a while longer with unconventional oil and new sources from the Arctic, it's going to come down eventually. That said, he's annoyingly fatalistic about it, like "eh why even bother to try and change things. Just give up."
Well, I mean, there's nothing inherently impossible about replacing energy sources (all you need is something, anything, that will spin a turbine. Water + some energy source to move the water against the turbine, or directly facing the turbine into strong winds with appropriate propellers, is our current method). Our growth is probably unsustainable; the current industrial society is probably not.
It's just a matter of how quickly it can be done and how much recession will be experienced as we attempt to make whatever transition.
But, but, but....radiation.
:rotate:
Spam solar thermal, and when we hit the limits of what we can do with that, start spamming nuclear plants.
If my experience in Sim City is any indication, doing this is actually a bad idea because it leads to a gigantic spider mech cyclops laying waste to all that it beholds.
But we could enslave this technological terror, and have it run forever on a giant hamster wheel!
On a more serious note there's been some interesting movement in terms of solar cell research, most notably the ability to make super-thin silicon wafers for photovoltaics (so now instead of getting one wafer, you get ten at a tenth the thickness). This could seriously cut the price of solar arrays, making power plants based on that technology much more viable.
In the somewhat longer - and a little more out of left field - area, there's also been an explosion in growth of the New Space industry. Among those companies I think we've all heard of Planetary Resources, which admittedly has a long way before it returns even a single mineral sample but could have a big effect on energy technologies down the road. After all, platinum group metals are critical catalysts for a whole range of technologies and a cheap source of those elements becoming available right around the time oil becomes a non-viable fuel source would allow for some interesting possibilities.
I agree that more complete combustion can make ethanol just as clean as any other form of combustion, but no cleaner. Theoretically, even coal combustion can be quite clean, but of course the issue is that in practice, power generation at plants or in cars is only as clean as required by regulation, and often not that much, since paying the fines can be, and often is, cheaper than cleaning the process. Aside from the pollution aspect I think the rest of the points are a fairly strong argument for non-adoption of trying to make biofuels a primary energy source, but I welcome your input.
try this
Spray On Solar Cells!
More Spray On Solar Nano Tech!
try this
Though now that I think of it, maybe all of Arizona should just be for solar power generation. New Mexico and Nevada, too. The states are literally desert; the only reason people grow crops there and live in any sizable numbers is the unsustainable pumping of groundwater.
It's actually a pretty smart idea. There's no reason to grow crops there, much better to harvest energy there and move it with a smart grid to somewhere else. Arizona is an excellent place for nuclear power too.
I'm not quite sure how Peak Oil will lead to starvation in any but the worst managed countries
See: South African oil embargo and Congo (growing population with no green revolution)
Rural America is going to get fucked six ways from Sunday, which I keep saying. It's why conservative policies are just reality blind, the earth's total supply of oil isn't sufficient to keep gas prices low, they're going to keep going up, it's basic economics.
Making diesel from coal is more environmentally friendly than burning coal, you can sequester the carbon and one thing you can do with sequestered carbon is use it to increase output of dying wells
I provided two examples of countries who found alternatives to oil fertilizer, poor countries at that
Hell Illinois manufactures coal based fertilizer
The electric car thing will not work until we find some way to make that electricity that doesn't use oil. Green energy technologies will probably never do more than supplement our power grid.
We should have gone all-in with nuclear power back in the 70s. All of the false starts are extremely frustrating, and alarmists have probably stigmatized nuke plants forever.
Also I do not think we have hit peak oil yet in terms of production, but its irrelevant. The real thing to look at is fuel costs which are primarily driven by production costs and demand. Best way to look at production is how much energy in terms of oil barrels do you need to get one new barrel out of the ground. Take a look at those figures and you will see that the real problem is not that we are running out of liquid fuels but that it will get incredibly costly to produce and this will stunt our exponential growth.
On the other hand take a look at how much driving today is discretionary. If you would take all short to medium commutes today in the US today and change them from fuel innefficent cars to super fuel efficient scooters consumption would drop drastically.
Tl;dr I dont think we are running out of oil but it will get progressivly more expensive which will stunt economic growth while moderating (not decreasing) demand. Of course the US is one of the worst hit because of lack of alternative options and gasoline taxes but on the other hand you have a huge chance to reduce demands, a history of inovation and a huge ass army currently sitting in and around most key oil producing nations.
The Congo has a population of about 4~ million. At the time of the oil embargo in the late 1980s, South Africa had a population of about 28~ million.
Morocco & Algeria alone have about 65~ million people between them, and they represent a very small slice of North African countries with climbing populations and very limited agricultural space. The Congo & South Africa have tropical climates that allow for extremely lush plant growth; North African states mostly have arid climates and are slowly being gnawed away by the Sahara.
It's pretty unlikely that anyone could replicate a successful agricultural program in a North African state in the same way that South Africa or The Congo were able to. Even when Dr. Borlaug went into Ethiopia, his lovely grain breeds still needed a ton of diammonium phosphate fertilizer in order to get the yields that were so desperately needed.
Sure but at some point people wont be able to afford the car commute. A modern scooter has no problems with hills and a 4 lane highway you can mark one lane or the side of the road for motorcycles. Winter is a problem but an extra scooter isnt that much of an investment. I think its going to be an economic necesity for most people at some point.
Electric cars is not a large scale option unless we get some new tech for batteries because there isnt enough litium to replace the current fleet of cars in the world.
Its a shame because electricity generation is not a problem (coal alone could do it).
Keep in mind that I'm not terribly well-informed on this subject, but I remember hearing that using electricity created by coal power plants to power electric cars would be more environmentally unfriendly than using coal for electricity and oil for cars.
Which is why we should build Thorium nuke plants.
Seriously I'm just going to keep repeating this every time someone posts about electricity generation.
Yeah, really the first step is getting something that isn't fossil fuel going full bore. The thorium stuff looks really promising and doesn't seem to have anywhere near the risk of traditional nuclear power. Get that going, with a decent public transit infrastructure build up and you can not only cut down on pollution but also put off peak oil for some time.
Honestly, I don't think we've hit peak oil yet, we have hit the point where we have to start drilling for the harder to reach stuff and in some cases that doesn't just take more energy, the stuff usually gives off more pollutants than the easy stuff or it's in place where you can't afford to have a leak.
battletag: Millin#1360
Nice chart to figure out how honest a news source is.
What's funny is that oil fertilizer destroys the land making it impossible to grow shit unless you go to the effort of soil rehab.
Eventually the centralized infrastructure of the US will grind to a halt and those of us who have built other structures will laugh.
Honestly doing some reading on it I don't see why everyone is so gung ho on thorium. It's only real advantage is fewer long term waste isotopes, which while a BIG advantage, isn't really what keeps US nuke plants from being built. A rod you have to seal off for 1000 years or 10,000 year isn't really a big difference in decision making.
Seems like everything thorium is good for a uranium FBR does as well, since that's basically what a thorium reactor is. And since the uranium side is so much more matured technologically, using it seems a much easier/faster route.
Thorium is absurdly common and refining it into usable fuel is pretty simple and cheap. Uranium is neither. Thorium also does not pose a proliferation risk, and so the attendant oversight costs that requires can be cut. They're as safe as PBRs without the necessity for the weird fuel shape and the issues that causes. The overall plants themselves are far safer because you don't have to keep the thing under pressure and steam and all that attendant bullshit, it's not going to explode no matter what you try to do with it.
The biggest benefit, by far, is that they're way the hell cheaper to build and maintain.