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Why Sustainable Power Is Unsustainable
Urchin writes "Although scientists are agreed that we must cut carbon emissions from transport and electricity generation to prevent the globe's climate becoming hotter, the most advanced 'renewable' technologies are too often based upon non-renewable resources including indium and platinum —
resources that could dry up in 10-15 years if they were widely used in the renewable energy market."
"Although scientists are agreed that we must cut carbon emissions from transport and electricity generation to prevent the globe's climate becoming hotter"
They are NOT agreed.
Dave Barnes 9 breweries within walking distance of my house
i've said for years that PV is no good, molten salt solar and nukes are the only viable alternatives.
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
For things like solar, sure. But I don't see wind or tidal power generation needing anything more advanced than fiberglass.
Use less energy.
No, it can't solve everything, but more conservation would be vastly more helpful than trying to exploit new energy sources.
It's right in the original article:
There's another resource being unsustainably wasted on renewable energy, neodymium for neodymium-iron-boron magnets in wind turbines generators. Wind turbines produce even more worthless power than solar panels(see West Texas where wind farms pay ERCOT to take their electricity 20% of the time. If nobody wants the power ERCOT has to do the equivalent of running a giant toaster to get rid of it or the voltage and frequency would get out of wack).
The article points out Indium in some of the better solar cells in the lab (40% efficient), and Platinum as an important catylist in a hydrogen fuel cells. Both of these are already valuable metals for existing applications, and will easily see minable reserves dry up if you add on renewable energy applications.
However, this is why you don't focus on one and only one solution to this problem. Solar reflectors, wind, tidal, and nuclear all have roles to play.
Not a typewriter
I disagree categorically with the article title. Sustainable energy is the only sane way to exist and make tradition upon. If in the short term, we find we can't implement some energy catching machine because of a scarity of an earthbound resource, someone will find another way. Human innovation is invincible.
Take it even further. Neither nuclear nor geothermal suffer from this supposed problem. And not even all solar power systems face it--molten salt and biomass-mediated systems, for example, won't suffer either.
So really we're down to a potential problem with photo-voltaic solar power, and only then on the assumption that no systems based on plentiful materials are waiting in the wings.
Bah.
--MarkusQ
The earth has a volume of 1.0832073x10^12 cubic km, I would humbly suggest that we are not running out of anything, nor are we ever likely to.
Here's the Wikipedia article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simon-Ehrlich_wager The problem back then was supposed to be population which would drive the cost of scarce materials up. But lo and behold, despite a decade with the largest population growth in history, the prices went down. I'd bet anyone the same with regard to indium or any other metal. Not only will we not run out in 10 years, but the price will be lower.
If we are practicing unsustainable living, then life will not be sustained. The resources will dry up, or we'll choke on our waste, whichever happens first will result in large scale die-offs, after which point those who remain alive will at that point be practicing "sustainable" living until their population grows too large or their consumption grows too great, at which point there will be another great die-off.
You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!
Who would pay for an exploration team to go around, looking for new sources of a material that was already abundant? Answer: no-one. As a consequence, a lot of "rare" minerals only have a known source that will last a couple of decades - or less. Until they become scare and the price rises, there's no profit in spending money looking for new reserves.
In the 70's the big scare was that there was only 15 years worth of (known) oil reserves left. Hey, we didn't run out. When the price went up, that incentivised people to go out and find new sources.
Same when I was doing electronics design in the early 80's - there was a scare that we'd run out of tantalum (for capacitors).
Scares aren't new and tend to have a way of working themselves out. Even if one metal did become to prices - i.e. scarce, no doubt processes will be invented to use a different material.
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
Too bad we don't have any other way to make magenets...oh wait.
Don't you love the impartial scientific tone here? And the sheer illogic of this statement is staggering. If you know you are going to have large amount of episodic oversupply there are all sorts of useful things you can do with it. Make ice. Melt salt. Run pumps. I wouldn't be surprised if the "giant toaster" is some clever over supply utilization system being ridiculed by TFA's evidently clueless author.
--MarkusQ
Personally though I would prefer if we didn't have to make stuff from farm animals, a part of me does feel sorry for the things.
Use less power.
Since I intend for my people to walk among the stars, using less power really isn't an option I want to go with.
How do you kill that which has no life?
Yup, the planet's been cooling for 10 years. Ask your newspaper why it's not news.
An earlier poster mentioned it but how about geothermal energy? Use the latent heat stored in the Earth to boil water to drive a turbine. The water is forced down into the Earth's crust where heat trapped millenia ago boils the water. This technology is under serious consideration for the central part of Australia, and I can think of places in America where it is viable as well. As for the copper coils used in converting the power one of the main areas of research today in the field of power generation is a superconductor which would mean less copper and more power from all existing technologies
Laughter is the best medicine, except if you have a broken rib.
There's plenty of iridium around. There simply isn't much in the Earth's crust, but we aren't required to stay in our nest.
As even mentioned in the article, the prices of the resources used in the construction of these renewable energy systems have dramatically increased due to unexpected increases in demand.
As prices go up and up, manufacturers aren't gonna be entering bidding wars for the last few grams of silicon. They're going to try and find cheaper materials that do the same job, switch to systems that don't use materials of such increasingly scarce supply, or decrease the amount of rare materials that each unit needs. Solar panels, windmills, etc. aren't going to become impossible to produce in a few decades.
These materials are scarce on Earth, but asteroids and other worlds would have these resources as well.
.. is suitable for realistically providing power for the typical modern life.
Nuclear is clean, safe and practically inexhaustible. The latest advances could provide small nuclear "batteries" the size of a hot tube that could provide power to an entire neighborhood decentralizing much of the power systems (and huge networks of wires) we've come to think of as unavoidable. Making our power systems virtually fool proof. For too long we've lived in the fear from the propaganda of the illiterate press. It's time to start using the miraculous energy source we uncovered and made practical nearly 3/4 of a century ago. It's there, it's understood, it's completely doable and for a hell of lot less money than the democrats want to steal from the people of the US right now.
Go nukes! Go nukes! Go nukes!
We need research into different energy sources, it's true, but what boggles my mind is why people don't address the simple things in their own lives, if they're concerned about energy conservation. The funniest thing I can see in this particular arena is the moron who rails against the oil companies and middle eastern governments, terrorists, and whatever else, then gets in his Explorer to commute to work by himself, getting 3 mpg, while babbling on his phone about how bad the energy situation is. If you drive a truck (no, I don't use the euphemistic 'SUV'), then shut the F up- you're part of the problem.
There is so much BS going around about alternative energy sources, but we could make a big difference now. I haven't ever owned a car that got less than 25 MPG, and I work half of my time from home; when I don't, I often ride a train. I doubt there are many alternative energy advocates that are close to my carbon footprint, but they put their faith in technology that doesn't exist instead of getting their supersized butts out of their trucks. And people listen to them anyway.
That is a very valid point. "Sustainable" is a buzzword that actually has very little defined meaning. It's a wonderful marketing word because it sound like something we naturally agree with, and all understand. However, it's vague enough to mean what you want it to mean. Or mean what a Government or Corporation wants it to mean.
It's like "biodiversity" too -- sounds good, has no agreed practical meaning. "Heritage" is another. There's plenty of them. "fairtrade" "organic" etc etc.
I think we are all agreed we need to be more sustainable. Now we just need to figure out a definition of sustainable that we all agree on -- not just Government and Corporate definitions of it. It actually is a big part of the problem.
Nobody wants to hear this, but, eventually, no matter how strong a civilization might be, they must eventually go bye bye. It is part of the natural process of life and death.
"I like it when the red water comes out.."
Ok, IRTFA. Sheesh, talk about using bazookas to swat flies. Is this anything more than FUD to scare people back to coal? Let me spell it out:
Solar-thermal plants using mirrors, steam turbines, and if you want 24/7, underground heat reservoirs. Completely buildable using some of the more common materials on the planet: sand, steel, concrete, copper, salt, etcetera. Who cares if they're inefficient compared to the super-fancy super-rare stuff in TFA, just build lots of them.
Maintenance? Bugger all in comparison to a coal plant, the bloody things run on sunshine. There's no toxic+radioactive coal dust/ash/soot getting into everything, no gas-guzzling trucks and trains leaving said dust billowing in their wake over nearby towns and farms as they go between mine and plant... blah blah bloody blah.
There are only three real reasons that the countries with plenty of sunshine (e.g. my own) haven't gone this route long ago: vested greed, common ignorance, short-term thinking.
I'd agree with most of you post, but not the "young Earth" model behind this statement. The heat wasn't "trapped" (or at least what little "trapping" there was occurred billions of years ago, not thousands); it is being constantly procuded by radioactive decay.
--MarkusQ
Ultimately, how much are we willing to pay? Energy cannot be "made" out of nothing; there is always a cost, some are more bearable than others but the cost is always dear and painful. Massive concentration and disbursal of chemical substances Earth took millions of years to distribute and sequester; either path leads to destruction. Heat convection from cities energy use modify weather patterns for hundreds of miles and more. Removal of forest destroys natural cooling. Disrupted weather patterns are wildly redistributing heat carrying moisture.
Supratik Guha of IBM told the conference that sales of silicon solar cells are booming, with 2008 being the first year that the silicon wafers for solar cells outstripped those used for microelectronic devices.
This is particularly worrysome from my perspective. This implies solar cell demand has a HUGE impact on the price of silicon. If demand for silicon solar cells has increased this much, then all these assumptions about silicon solar cells reaching parity with grid electricity within a few years in terms of dollars/watt may NEVER happen.
Anyway, I think the article is being alarmist about nothing. What the article DOESN'T mention is how much of these rare metals actually go into each wafer. The average silicon wafer is several mm thick, but the volume of that wafer that is actually used in electronics is exceedingly small - only a couple micrometers in depth at most. The amount of indium needed in an ITO (Indium tin oxide) layer is on the order of nanometers so one kilogram of indium could provide enough for tens of thousands of wafers. Now someone at this point might say "well tens of thousands of wafers isn't even one city block in area", but also consider the well-known fact that solar cells are actually *more* efficient with more light incident on them (assuming they are cooled), so the concept of concentrator solar cells are becoming extremely popular. One might concentrate light to 100x strength on one cell. If we can create the concentrator out of something cheaper, then the metal shortage problem disappears.
Anyway, my point is engineers have been all over this stuff for a long time. I took a class on solar cells at Georgia Tech taught by one of the experts in the field, and let me just say that a lot of cleverness has already gone into solar cells a long time ago that address these relatively simple issues. The only huge problem with solar cells that hasn't been addressed more or less yet is the ability to capture wideband EM radiation efficiently. The world record is still only around 40% of incident light.
I thought the problem was that they can't get the transmission lines built because the NIMBY guys have been keeping the power companies in court for years. Last I heard they were finally getting started with the lines though, so the situation might turn around in a few years.
I read the internet for the articles.
It's not a question of things that need electricity: the problem is how to get electricity from the wind turbines to places that can use it.
I had but a simple dream, to destroy all humans.
The situation with renewable energy is different. Yes when it takes energy to manufacture biomass into fuels. But if is done right, we are taking carbon out of the atmosphere one year, and putting it back in the next, creating a steady state. Clearly there are some issues now, but that is political. In the US, instead of using weeds, the corn growers, which have been pushing the US for years to a deadly philosophy of monoculture, is using food crops. On the other point, I don't think that biofuels is causing food prices to increase any more than lack of oil is causing the current high prices at the pump. demand for luxury food is increasing, the economic expansion of the past several years means that people are buying more, and there is much less focus on the needs of those that have no food.
As far as rare metals, these are not consumed. All these products can be remanufactured. The issue is political. In my US town, trash is picked up once a week at every house, but recycling is picked up only every other week at some houses. Houses are allowed to throw away dangerous materials without any fine. The only way to send electronics for remanufacture to go to the drop off on a work day. Of course a lot of this has to do with the costs involved. it is cheaper to mine new material rather than reuse old. for these materials the economics might be reversed, and we might the trend reversed.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
is the solution to all our problems.
You speak London? I speak London very best.
The only thing the power company can do is sell that energy for a cheaper price. They are a power company, not a "salt melting company". Building a plant to perform these kinds of activities costs a lot of money and needs a very complicated business plan that depends heavily on logistics-related factors.
A salt-melting (or any other kind of process) plant would need to run 24/7 to be profitable, using valuable energy during most of the day. The only difference from a normal salt-melting company would be the cost of a single part of their operation, during specific times of the day.
Conclusion: They would be selling energy at a cheaper price. But to themselves, while needing to run a new (to them) and complicated business. It's better to simply sell the energy to anyone else.
And they already do that: they sell energy at a lower price during low usage times. And the part the can't be sold is simply wasted using giant "toasters". It's cheaper to simply burn the excess energy than powering off the thermoelectrical plant.
SkyNet> Segmentation fault, core dumped ++ LOST CARRIER
You speak London? I speak London very best.
TFA is complete BS, at least in terms of platinum.
I work for a company which is in the process of adding several centuries' supply of PGEs (platinum group elements) to proven reserves. Platinum and fuel cells are going to get a lot cheaper, within 10 years.
We know where PGEs are, but it's often in politically unstable places, or those that are busy strangling their domestic exploration industry (e.g. Canada).
This global recession will likely help finally unjam a lot of political roadblocks. When people are hurting, they don't tolerate environmental protests as much, and aren't as willing to turn a blind eye to eco-terrorism, which has wracked the industry in the last decade. Even the first world is finding it harder to ignore potentially adding a hundred billion to one's GDP for decades.
Agreeing on the cause is one thing, and as you point out, there is pretty good agreement on it. There is much less agreement on the proposed solutions. What effects would lowering carbon dioxide emissions starting in 2009 have vs. not lowering them? And what amount would they have to be lowered by to have some particular desired outcome? Is lowering emissions going forward even a useful option at this stage, or do we need some sort of active reversal of existing damage in addition (or instead)? The answers to all those questions seem pretty up in the air.
I'd personally like to see an IPCCC-like document outlining proposed best practices, which currently available scientific evidence suggests would, if followed, have some desirable outcome or prevent some undesirable outcome. Or at least giving some odds on each of the major proposals. But we still seem to be a bit off from that.
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Conserving energy does nothing more than put the nation back a few decades in technology.
No it doesn't. With the exception of one light fixture, which I rarely use, all of the lights in my apartment are CFLs which use 1/4 the power of incandescent lights. That didn't put me back a few decades. With the right technology a building can be insulated so it does not need heating or cooling.
China and India are growing in economic power
When you're low there's only one way to go, up.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
National Academy of Sciences (United States of America)
Royal Society of Canada
Chinese Academy of Sciences
Academié des Sciences (France)
Deutsche Akademie der Naturforscher Leopoldina (Germany)
Indian National Science Academy
Accademia dei Lincei (Italy)
Science Council of Japan
Russian Academy of Sciences
Royal Society (United Kingdom)
Australian Academy of Sciences
Royal Flemish Academy of Belgium for Sciences and the Arts
Caribbean Academy of Sciences
Indonesian Academy of Sciences
Royal Irish Academy
Academy of Sciences Malaysia
Academy Council of the Royal Society of New Zealand
Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences
Academia Brasiliera de CiÃncias (Bazil)
Definitely take a look at the first link if you want to know how to talk to a global warming sceptic.
I personally mostly walk, but I'm actually somewhat unsure of the effects on greenhouse gases (I do it mostly for health). Last I looked up some numbers, biking/walking produces about as many greenhouse gases as driving does when the calories come from an average American diet, due to the high greenhouse-gas output of meat farms. To be a net win, the energy you're putting into your bike (in the form of food calories) has to be cleaner than petrol.
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Also the UK government didn't buy any salt for the snow we had this week because they thought global warming wasn't going to make it cold enough. Another example of why it matters when people lie about global warming.
That would come to an argument that government officials are over blowing global warming; I'm not sure you want to make that point. Of course, lately I've been hearing 'global climate change' rather than warming.
To say repeating the same bullshit line has no consequences is just moronic.
I view it as extending the holly branch to the doubters. Go screaming 'GLOBAL WARMING IS TRUE111!!!!' isn't going to change their minds.
On the other hand, 'nobody likes pollution' has a lot of truth to it. Even somebody who disbelieves GW 100% can get on the bandwagon of wind power when it's pointed out the pollution that can be avoided; the coal left unburned.
Please stop turning the global warming debate into a religion, you're being part of the problem including your silly little precaution speech.
At least to me, your statements make it seem that you view it as a religion far more than him; including attacking non-believers for contradicting your beliefs.
I don't read AC A human right
One small nickel-iron type asteroid will also yield plenty of platinum, iridium and similar metals. Heck, there's still some disagreement over what they're mining in Sudbury, Ontario, is there because of magma upwelling after the original impact (circa 2bya) or remnants of the original impactor.
Separating them out can be done in space with a number of processes using large reflectors and solar heating. (Zone refining, fractional distillation, carbonyl extraction, etc..)
If we'd had the guts to start moving towards that when some people first started suggesting it seriously, we'd be there or nearly so by now.
-- Alastair
The title is "Why Sustainable Power is Unsustainable" but then the article says current *approaches* are unsustainable, rare materials and all that, before admitting that there are promising alternatives. They'll just take a while longer to develop.
Platinum and Indium shortages only affect a limited number of technologies in the renewable camp, namely fuel cells and solar panels, neither of which are worth considering for large scale power generation due to their gross expense and lackluster performance. In the case of the latter, you don't even need Indium, though it makes for appreciably better panels.
This doesn't stop us from building solar-thermal power plants and wave farms rated in the hundreds of megawatts. Show me a windmill, or a hydraulic ram, or a steam turbine that uses either of these metals in any appreciable volume. Nuclear reactors might use some, but when you have nuclear power plants rated at over a gigawatt, that doesn't seem like a bad investment at all.
Ummm, I think you missed the point there.
Making ice, melting salt, and running pumps are methods for storing energy (like a battery) so when you are making too much power you can save up the excess and extract it later when you are producing too little power.
The poster wasn't suggesting that power companies become molten salt salesmen.
We can use the sun, wind and waters to generate more power than
we could ever fit humans onto this planet to use.
Who are all these 'tards who keep flogging oil, coal, and nuclear?
Instead of slurring alternate energy sources start designing
and engineering them.
Most of them agree about anthropogenic climate change. Very few disagree based on scientific merits. Of course you could dig up those anti-climate change petitions signed by economists and fields not related to climate science. But thats up to you
>Jew
>Hitler-loving
Wait, what?
Am I missing something here, or did he just say that Jews love Hitler?
Disregard the above.
Duh!
Anyone who has believed otherwise has been caught drinking too much of the spiked Kool-Aid.
We live in an effectively finite ecosystem with finite resources. Had we not allowed human population to explode as it has, particularly in the last 200 years, virtually none of what we consider "crises" would even be problems worth noting yet. We would still have had to address them eventually perhaps, but we would have had centuries more to learn before then. Unfortunately the species is very adept at burning the candle at both ends. What we're experiencing now is not much different than the crash of withdrawal after binging on some hallucinogen. The morning after is always a bitch.
Again, human overpopulation is the 800-pound Samsonite gorilla in the room. Until we deal with that, none of the rest is anything but posturing.
You could get electricity from the Sahara to Europe with HVDC cables at less than 10% losses.
Kool-Aid is not a nutritional supplement. It's making you mentally anemic.
"Sustainable" isn't ill-defined, it's clearly defined every English dictionary and it is in the dictionary sense that the word is used in the environmental debate. Something is sustainable if it can continue indefinitely - energy sources which won't run out before the end of the world, for example.
Chernobyl 'not a wildlife haven' - BBC News
The WWW is the solution.
Wind, waves and water can be harnessed for renewable enegy without exotic metals.
The premis of the title is wrong as it makes the assumption that the only way to get good energy is through current solar cell technologies.
No exotic metals here
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wind_power
or here
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wave_power
or here
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydroelectricity
or here
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tidal_power
or here
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geothermal_power
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I think this is the source I was thinking of.
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they put their faith in technology that doesn't exist instead of getting their supersized butts out of their trucks.
That is because their super-sized buttocks will only fit in a large American car or truck. Have you ever seen the big guy in the sub-compact car? They don't want to be that guy. Not everyone can drive the Civic or the Prius even if they work great for you.
I got hit up by Greenpeace yesterday, pushing for support on legislation to reduce carbon emissions. Here's what I told them.
How many kids do you have/plan to have? Honestly, it doesn't matter. Do you have/plan to have any?
As a global society, we can't even manage to get everyone to sign up to stopping the increase in emissions. Even those countries that do sign up rarely show any interest in anything close to 50% reductions within a single generation (around 20 years).
Assuming we can't manage to drop at least 50% over each and every generation, and the population certainly isn't going down... Humanity is going to put out more carbon over your genetic line's lifetime, no matter what you do, than someone without kids will ever put out in their lifetime that politely ends and then stops stressing the environment.
You want to save the environment... Stop focusing your energy on nice-idea-but-ultimately-inconsequential carbon cuts and push for the real problem, humans, to stop breeding.
Humanity is, sadly, a plague on the global environment in just the same way locusts are in smaller areas - they massively produce in numbers too large for their environment to support.
The sad conclusion I've come to is that, able to keep draining the environment in new and creative ways that no other animal can do, short of choosing to conciously adopt a responsible breeding program, no amount of trying minor tweaks is going to make that dramatic a difference until we screw things up so badly nature forces it upon us.
It's whether sustainable power corrupts sustainably.
Liberty uber alles.
Or make giant toast.
Do you have ESP?
As far as I know, scientists do not agree that we must reduce our carbon emissions to stop global warming. Opening your story with an obvious fallacy is not a good way to gain credibility. Objectivity is important to science. In fact, there can be no real science without objectivity. I'll stop now. The likelihood of this post ever being seen is infinitesimal anyway.
What the heck are you posting? The survey was sent to 10,257 people and of those, 3146 responded. Guess what Sherlock, that does not correspond to 97% of specialists and 82% of scientists, only of those people that responded.
Strictly speaking trying to extrapolate statistical information on an unscientific survey is pretty crazy. Even worse that it's self reported. What does "significant" mean? There's a difference between human activities contributing to an event and causing it. The study was poorly worded and poorly executed.
calling skeptics "deniers" is like something out of the salem witch trials.
People who deny are deniers, just like people who swim are swimmers, and people who count are counters. This is the way the English language forms nouns.
Is English not your native language?
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
when indium dries up your going to have to coat your roof in cadnium.
When indium price rise then it will be economically feasible to mine it from places it is not feasible now, much like happened with oil.
i've said for years that PV is no good
PVs aren't the only way to generate power from the sun. At large scales solar concentrators may be more efficient. And PV tech may improve.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
It's Free! As part of the government's stimulus package, they're installed free up to $AU1.6K
As for the materials, use wool.
... these same climate experts were also spouting off that there would be an ice age not so long ago.
Citation needed.
Try this one: Study Debunks Global Cooling myth of the 90s (or here)
"The supposed "global cooling" consensus among scientists in the 1970s -- frequently offered by global-warming skeptics as proof that climatologists can't make up their minds -- is a myth, according to a survey of the scientific literature of the era....
But Thomas Peterson of the National Climatic Data Center surveyed dozens of peer-reviewed scientific articles from 1965 to 1979 and found that only seven supported global cooling, while 44 predicted warming. Peterson says 20 others were neutral in their assessments of climate trends. The study reports, "There was no scientific consensus in the 1970s that the Earth was headed into an imminent ice age.
"A review of the literature suggests that, to the contrary, greenhouse warming even then dominated scientists' thinking about the most important forces shaping Earth's climate on human time scales."
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
The first problem is what exactly is meant by "sustainable"? The weakest definition is something like "not using fossil fuels" or some such nonsense. Why is this nonsense? Because unless you want to define the lifespan of the humann race as your own, it is meaningless.
Today, we have "sustainability" problems because of multiple factors and fossil fuels is only a small part. There is the matter of recycling wastes into raw materials, something which happens through natural processes. The only problem is today there are far, far more wastes being produced than can possibly be processed before the raw materials are needed. The only way out of this trap is to either obtain resources off Earth or to reduce the resource consumption to the level where natural recycling can occur. The latter means a big population reduction, on the order of 95% or so.
Well, that isn't going to happen. That pretty much means that use of off-planet resources is an absolute necessity for the human race to survive for more than another couple of generations. Would that be "sustainable" enough?
No. We need to look at a longer term. Where are things going to be in 1,000 years? How about 10,000? We are poised at a cusp where we must make some hard decisions. If we choose to fix problems on Earth first, pie-in-the-sky kinds of things like eliminating poverty, we are going to run out of resources and will to obtain off-planet resources. This effectively dooms us to the first alternative mentioned above of population reduction. Somewhere around 1850 was the last time that Earth recycled wastes through natural processes at a rate equal to or better than the rate the resources were being consumed. What the population back then? Think about that for a while.
Sustainable means it is good until the Sun expires. Currently the only thing that comes close to this is nuclear power with a breeder reactor fuel cycle. This is permanent. Solar power satellites with an orbital and lunar industrial base would be pretty much permanent. Virtually every other proprosal either falls far short of current power requirements (which are just going to grow with the population) or doesn't last for even 100 years.
Personally, I think we can hope for a solution that nobody has dreamed of yet and plan for a big population reduction. We have maybe 10 years before the decision is made for us no matter what we want. After that we will likely be struggling to keep the lights on and not likely doing a real good job of it.
Nuclear power is cheap, clean, virtually unlimited, and SCALABLE.
None of the "renewable" sources are even close to being scalable.
The nuclear waste problem can be taken care of by using reactors that use up fuel as completely as possible. Even if such reactors are too expensive for now, the amount of radiation released is far less than that of coal and it contained very easily by comparison. Spent fuel can be buried and then dug back up when it is cost effective.
Wasting time and taxpayers money on non-scalable methods is stupid when we have an excellent workable solution already. Give people the permits to build the reactors and the market can take care of this efficiently!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Integral_Fast_Reactor/
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/reaction/interviews/till.html/
I'm pretty sure you missed his point entirely. They aren't running "another business" but instead finding some temporary storage place for the excess electricity. That's why the GP said "over supply utilization system".
Melting salt sucks up power and then generates it when you use that trapped heat to make steam later. Running pumps lets you store power with gravity. Pump water up higher, it releases the potential energy when it comes back down. And there are many other methods.
Elrond, Duke of URL
"This is the most fun I've had without being drenched in the blood of my enemies!"-Sam&Max
You might want to look into that train usage. I won't deny that trains *can* be much more efficient than passenger vehicle. After all, think of what they accomplished with the embarrassingly inefficient engines of the steam age. But the economics don't seem add up at the moment, even before you consider subsidies:
You can fit 7 people in a minivan that gets 25 mpg on the highway. A 1000 mile trip should cost less than ~$120 in fuel. It takes about the same amount of time by train, but costs over $300 per person. It's more costly in some cases than air travel. And it's subsidized.
Damn straight.
I drive a 98 Windstar.. and it gets ~22 MPG, considering I do mainly highway driving. And Im 6'5". Yeah, good luck finding a subcompact that fits me.
It was the old wind turbines that had smaller blades that killed birds. Today's turbines have bigger blades and spin slower.
The birds are an integral part of the ecosystem.
Cats are also part of the ecosystem yet they kill more birds than wind turbines do. According to this building are a big killer of birds.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
That would be Texas Toast
These supercapacitor we keep hearing about could conceivably be used as batteries, but I it is probably more realistic for nuclear plants to provide for the base load and have other technologies supplement during peak hours.
Geothermal can also be used as a baseload [pdf].
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
the amusing part in this even if it was just hype by a few vocal media whores (sounds familar, Al Gore i'm looking at you), between 1940 and 1980 the world actually did have a cooling trend, even though we were pumping out CO2 the whole time.
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
There will be a market for energy that is big enough and hungry enough to overcome current tech. This market needs to be fed.
For best results, avoid doing stupid things.
"Sustainable" isn't ill-defined, it's clearly defined every English dictionary and it is in the dictionary sense that the word is used in the environmental debate. Something is sustainable if it can continue indefinitely - energy sources which won't run out before the end of the world, for example.
It's not sustainable if it doesn't work into eternity. I want to out live the planet darn it!
Why do so many people still get it wrong?
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
We need research into different energy sources, it's true, but what boggles my mind is why people don't address the simple things in their own lives, if they're concerned about energy conservation.
Agreed. Another one is front opening refrigerators and freezers. Top opening is much more efficient because all the cold air isn't displaced by room temperature air every time you open it. This guy claims his chest refrigerator uses about 1/10th to 1/20th of the power of an upright one. He also gives the plan and parts list for the conversion. I'm going to be doing this soon. The "Thermostat diagram" link also has an article on his reasoning and installation info etc.
http://marriedmansexlife.com/
How so? All tidal power needs is the up and down of the tide. Plants don't create those.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
you first. start with turning off your pc.
I do use less energy. All the light fixtures I use have CFLs in them. And when I'm not going to use my laptop, which uses less energy than desktop or tower PCs, for more than a few hours I turn it off. Though I have a car, in the more than 9 years I've had it I've only put 45,000 miles on it.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
When buildings are sealed tighter and the air locked in them, things like radon gas become more of a problem. Along with formaldehyde and other pathogens.
So design better buildings.
There has to be a 'building industry revolution' for energy efficient housing to work. Meaning entirely new structures and methods of shelter.
There is one, LEED, sponsored by the US Green Building Council. It has some problems though. Then there's those who build Off the Grid using passive solar designs among other techniques.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
we are currently suffering from a slight water shortage
You mean with the Murray-Darling Basin? I wouldn't exactly call that a "slight water shortage". The second driest continent, according to the Economist, is becoming drier.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
So you own a car but want to pass blame up to truck drivers in an effort to make yourself feel good?
You're part of the problem. And WTF is 'often'? Unless you mean "virtually every day" I'll have the high horse back, ty. Want to feel a little better myself.
Boron, IFRs, and algae.
http://www.prescriptionfortheplanet.com/
I'm not a vegetarian, I'm a pragmatist; The closer you get to the sun in what you eat the more energy you will receive from the food, potentially.
I'm not a vegetarian either, and don't plan on becoming one, but there's another wy to reduce the energy needed to get the food to your plate, grow your own.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
> Although scientists are agreed ...
That's a lie.
There is no scientific consensus on AGW - over 31,000 American scientists (including more than 9,000 PhDs) have signed this petition arguing that there is no convincing evidence supporting AGW theory.
Nothing is sustainable. We can't really expect the universe to last forever. We may find alternatives to platinum. We won't use half as much if we go to electric vehicles. Indium has had a scare recently. The article is just rerunning tired FUD. Silicon is still poised to achieve $1/W in a few years if the indium cells get too spendy. We have plenty of roof space available for less efficient cells. Wind turbines, batteries and carbon fiber are developing on a pace to replace fossil fuels in the next decade or two. Faster if oil prices rise and carbon offsets become part of the cost of doing business in India, China and the US.
I think by "giant toaster" TFC means a hydro-electric storage facility.....or a dam. :) If the grid doesn't have the ability to manage its load then it's not the fault of the wind farm, it's the fault of the outdated grid.
I reserve the write to mangle english.
Nuclear is not clean!
It's there, it's understood, it's completely doable and for a hell of lot less money than the democrats want to steal from the people of the US right now.
So I guess CATO and Forbes are Democrats. Where are these commercially running plants?
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
RECYCLE
"Trashed econmomy."
BS. Seriously. We buy new cars anyway, so why NOT more efficient ones? Besides, if everyone drove dramatically more efficient vehicles it ALSO mean reducing (or eliminating) our trade deficit in oil. How does THAT trash the economy?
Eliminate dependence on foreign oil, and it also means we don't have to spend billions sending our kids off to die every time the Middle East hicups. How does THAT trash the economy?
And there are as many economic OPPORTUNITIES in doing the right things as there are not doing them. Solar cell have to be manufactured and installed. Wind turbines constructed. And so on. That spells jobs.
Less polution. Reduced environmental impact. Economic growth. Reduced trade deficit. Eliminate dependence on foreign oil. And perhaps, taking out some insurance on our planet. There are many, many, many reasons for making the investment.
And practically none for NOT doing so...
Any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed into law if it acquires the political power to do so.
nother one is front opening refrigerators and freezers. Top opening is much more efficient because all the cold air isn't displaced by room temperature air every time you open it
If the door, opening, is on the top then where is the compressor, you know the thing that heats up? Heat rises so if it's on the bottom then the compressor has to work harder thus creating more heat. There are some manufacturers that place the compressors on top, such as Sun Frost.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
Not only are people the problem, but our infrastructure is as well. Lots of places draw a whole lot more electricity than they need because the system is not "smart". Electronic devices no matter how big or small need a way of telling whatever they are pulling power from, exactly how much power they need. Many of our tvs, dvd players etc draw several watts while not even on. Lets say a tv draws 2, dvd player 1, video game console 2-3, computer 2 etc. The average household probably has at least 10 watts of idle load and that is just for their small consumer electronics. Lets say in the U.S alone there are 100,000,000 households which equates to 2.33 people per household. I believe this to be not far off of the actual figure. That is a combined idle load of 1,000,000,000 or 1000 Mega watts. This is the amount a large sized nuclear reactor can produce. If all of the inefficiencies of our system were accounted for we could cut a lot of waste and unnecessary pollution.
1) We're currently in an ice age --- do your own research if you didn't know that. (Wikipedia isn't too far wrong on climatology, check it out). In other words, temperature has nowhere to go but up over the long term.
2) Within this current ice age, we're currently in an interglacial (a small warm patch). Do you know what that means? Yay, things are melting! Whoopeedo! It would be a jolly funny interglacial if they weren't. And within this interglacial, all the curves are bouncing around wildly, as they have always done.
3) Our CO2 levels are roughly where they have been over the last 50 million years (they're always rising and falling within a few 100ppm). The manmade CO2 influx of the last century seems quite large at first glance, but it isn't significantly more than natural processes inject quite regularly. The CO2 curves over millions of years are some of the most erratic processes known to science.
4) Over the past 200 years, we've utterly decimated biodiversity in the oceans. Those oceans are involved in the carbon cycle bigtime (the oceanic CO2 exchange is 10 times larger than manmade CO2 injection), and guess what process carries carbon to the depths and into subduction? Yeah, it's oceanic biota. Yet no GCM currently models our destruction of the carbon transport mechanism. I guess it's not sexy for the media and won't bring in research funds.
5) We were in the 200 ppm's of CO2 interval before the industrial age, and now we're in the 300 ppm's ... but we were at 1000 ppm just 100 million years ago, and temperature has not correlated with CO2 at all since then over long time scales.
6) Temperature correlates with CO2 over geologically short time spans of 100ky periodicity as shown in the Vostok cores, but which is cause and which is effect (if either) is far less certain. What is much clearer is that the Milankovitch cycles have a very clear causal role, since CO2 cannot possibly be affecting our orbital parameters, and therefore we *know* that temperature is strongly causal.
7) The paleoclimate record shows that CO2 levels are not in the slightest a primary determinant of average planetary temperature. At the end of the Ordovician Period some 400 or so million years ago, the Earth had CO2 levels of 4000 to 5000 ppm, well over 10 times our present value, yet guess what the mean temperature was? We were in the deepest ice age that the planet has ever experienced.
8) The only place in which we get good correlation between CO2 levels and temperature which we know to be causal is in a test tube. But the Earth is not a test tube. It doesn't behave as one at all because it has numerous extremely powerful feedbacks that mitigate the effect of CO2 change. CO2 is definitely important overall, but changes in atmospheric CO2 levels simply don't have the expected effect because other factors like cloud cover are vastly more important and they change too. And we can't model cloud cover at all well yet. :-(
9) Despite the clear orbital forcings, our climate models cannot even predict in a scientific manner the average glaciation parameters across our reasonably regular 100ky CO2 and temperature cycles. The error bands in the simulations are colossal, in many cases we do not even know the SIGN of the change. In other words, our science is not yet predictive in this area. Those professional scientists whom you see making personal interpretations of the data where the scientific models cannot make a valid prediction are simply not working as scientists, but as advocates with an agenda. (I think it's a very good agenda for the planet, but one should not take liberties with science.)
So you see, it's not as simple as the media portray it.
Of course the current poor state of the GCMs doesn't mean that we should continue to pollute our world. Only total morons spew crap all over their only home. We should stop immediately, but we don't need to base that decision on unjustified interpretations of scientific observations. We should base it on commonsense, despite the lack of predictive power at this early stage of climatology.
Nothing is fully renewable that is suitable for realistically providing power for the typical modern life.
You're absolutely correct - the only way that modern life has come to be is to redress the net energy balance that fossil fuels have given us. Once fossil fuels cease to exist, technological civilization ceases to exist. That people believe that it would be possible to sustain a 6 billion person human population at our current level of energy consumption for high tech devices, hundreds of millions of cars, airplanes, etc. on the power of solar collectors, the wind, tides, and geothermal energy hardly passes a sanity check. That the end of technological civilization was an inevitability troubled me for a long time until I realized that technological "progress", while giving me great pleasure to take part in, is essentially pointless. There's really nothing to "progress" towards. If the laws of thermodynamics dictate that humanity is destined to spend the majority of its time on this planet at a pre-industial level, then so what?
they can always use it to pump water uphill and store it. or split water into hydrogen and oxygen and store it for burning later. its stupid for them to just run a giant toaster.
The solar energy concentration is not sufficient to convert the amount of energy we need with the technology we have without bulldozing half of the available landmass.
According to SciAm's "A Solar Grand Plan" all of the electricity used in the US in 2006 would take less land than in the Southwest to produce. But you're smarter than they are right?
If it were as easy as you think, it would already be solved, for Pete's sake.
Until you add vested interests.
Brazil contemplating how much of the rain forest they could knock down to grow corn
Except Brazil doesn't use corn, Brazil uses sugarcane which is a better feedstock than corn. An even better feedstock than sugarcane is Switchgrass.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
A lot of us have been pointing this out for years. I've been called "stupid" and "short-sighted" when I've brought it up
Really, short-sighted? It's pretty fucking obvious to me that short-sighted is just assuming men in white lab coats or the market are going to solve your problems. Too many humans consuming too many resources to maintain a lifestyle that is (in most places) too high.
You can switch and shuffle around your source of energy all you like, but you're always gonna hit the cap of the most limited resource to make that technology possible
Pretty fucking obvious
The only thing that looks remotely promising is Thorium-Fluoride reactors, but that won't really help with the water crisis, liquid-fuel crisis, food crisis, etc
Too many people, people. Malthus is back in style!
If the door, opening, is on the top then where is the compressor, you know the thing that heats up? Heat rises so if it's on the bottom then the compressor has to work harder thus creating more heat. There are some manufacturers that place the compressors on top, such as Sun Frost.
He made it out of a chest freezer, which usually have better insulation that refrigerators. Also because of not loosing the cold air the compressor only runs about 90 seconds per hour, so I doubt it gets very hot. For people whose house is designed to fit an upright refrigerator the compressor on top is a good idea though.
http://marriedmansexlife.com/
I do not take the liberal media to be a reliable source of information. I need to read from someone who has nothing to gain by saying its so. I have absolutely no respect for the media or the people who buy into what they say. Of course if they are your only source of information they you would be lead to believe many incorrect things. We are not on mars or the other planets, yet they are warming at a rate proportional to ours. That is a fact backed up by astronomers from nasa and other organizations. Anyone know what else has not changed on the other planets; their CO2 levels. So and sane minded person ought to be able to look at this and think, "hmm, I see a pattern here, and humans are not in this equation". There is a sun which has increased sun spot activity and an increased number of solar flares and cosmic dust. All of which attribute to the increased temperature.
One last thing. I do not know where everyone lives that it is so much hotter than it used to be, but where I live it has been one fridged winter so far and it usually does hit rock bottom till the end of february into march. It has definitely cooled this winter with record low temperatures.
As far as I know, scientists do not agree that we must reduce our carbon emissions to stop global warming.
Those who are experts in the subject, Climatologists, do agree. "97% of active climatologists agree that human activity is causing global warming".
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
... then gets in his Explorer to commute to work by himself, getting 3 mpg... There is so much BS going around about alternative energy sources...
You may help the "BS" problem by not adding to the shit pile yourself. Yes, hyperbole does count. Riding a high-horse because of your 25mpg car looking slightly down on those at 17mpg, is NOT impressive. Why is the green movement filled with so many damn liars? What motivates you? You know what I did to help (myself)? Moved close to work: 5 miles. Go fuck yourself and your horse.
Do what TVA does and pump water to a holding tank at the top of a big hill. It can sit there for YEARS and still be ready to be dumped back through the dam for more power and/or water.
We already extract oil at a net energy loss in some places. Oil's value is in its energy density, not necessarily as energy generation.
...Mars is also undergoing global warming...
Mars is not warming.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
There is so much BS going around about alternative energy sources, but we could make a big difference now. I haven't ever owned a car that got less than 25 MPG, and I work half of my time from home; when I don't, I often ride a train. I doubt there are many alternative energy advocates that are close to my carbon footprint,
I have never owned a car, puto!
(For the most part, you don't really need to, in Finland)
"The agriculture ministry is not in charge of Gundam" - Japanese ministry official.
A salt-melting (or any other kind of process) plant would need to run 24/7 to be profitable
I'm not so sure about this. If the energy prices are low enough, I expect some type of business will pop up to take the place of the "toasters". Silicon or hydrogen production, or even something like fish or poultry farming and freezing, can be done almost anywhere, even with a periodic energy source such as excess wind power.
"I assumed blithely that there were no elves out there in the darkness"
The big four (wind, solar thermal, tidal and geothermal) do not use resources different from f.i. the car industry. These kind of statments, arguments, discussions are either a lame offensive by the fossil fuel industry, or just the ramblings of a moron.
Another thing to consider is that the term "sustainable" may be used of things that are actually unsustainable.
Usage: km/h for speed (kilometers per hour); kph for very slow impulses (kilopond hours).
The fact that Mars also seems to be getting warmer and that solar output has been MEASURED to be increasing is not mentioned at all by the IPCCC at all
Why should the IPCC say anything about Mars, Mars is not warming.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
You have no assurance at all that tech will solve everything. There might very well be a limit intrinsic to our environment on how much power we can produce. Fusion may never ever come. Saying that human innovation is invincible is akin to sit on your behind and wait for things to sort themselves out by somebody else. "somebody will find something". Yeah right. A good planning is one that take into account only today's technology. You can always react as a contingency if a new tech comes up and make everything obsolete, but you cannot base your planning on it. I posted the same argument not too long ago. The mod which modded you insightful are on crack. Past progress don't mean future progress will be sustained. Past problem solved by progress don't mean future problem will be solved by tech.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
It was not in the 70s and the predicted end wouldn't be in the 90s.
The future oil production was *very* accurately predicted by M. King Hubbert, in the 1950s. Compare this graph plotted in 2004 with this one, which was created in 1956.
Considering all the variations both in consumption and in production, such accuracy in a prediction of 50 years in the future is truly remarkable.
I don't know about Texas. but the Dutch wind turbines can be stopped (blade angle set to zero + mechanical brake) this is done regularly for things like storms, maintenance, etc. and I'm sure they could do it if they didn't want the electricity for a while.
I think it only happened once, due to some transport cables being down for maintenance. If producing more electricity than can be transported is a regular problem in Texas, they should invest a bit more in there transport cables.
This will not work, because terrorists could dig those things out and make dirty bombs. In the coming ten to twenty years that threat is very real.
It's not good science to say that it is very likely that one action causes another effect when "the precise details are not clear yet". It would be another matter if a controlled experiment could reach this conclusion, but we have only one earth, so it is not possible to say with any degree of certainty that increases in the levels of atmospheric CO2 have contributed to changes in the climate, or that they will cause changes.
The claim that CO2 has lead to changes in the climate is a hypotheses that has not been proven (or tested). More experimentation is necessary to draw a meaningful scientific conclusion.
Here are the facts:
1) CO2 is a known greenhouse gas which exists in extremely low concentrations in our atmosphere, so the hypothesis that increases in CO2 concentrations will lead to climate change is reasonable.
2) The climate has shown small changes over the last several decades, but these changes are poorly understood and have only limited effects on the earth's population.
3) CO2 concentrations are rising because of the combustion of fossil fuels. This process is the fundamental power-source for all modern technology, and without it billions of humans will face extreme adversity.
I think given the facts, it is pretty clear that we should not stop burning fossil fuels. Anyone who would suggest otherwise has questionable motives, in my opinion. Don't get me wrong. We should look for alternatives and implement them where appropriate. And we should not waste our natural resources such as we do today (especially oil, it is much more valuable than our treatment of it would imply). But mandatory caps will not do anything good.
So it is hopeless, then? We might as well give up and die? Rubbish.
All this says is that
- we have to find some better solutions. Which is fair enough, since we've only just begun trying in the last few decades.
- it would be a lot easier if we at the same were able to cut down on our wasteful lifestyles.
It does unfortunately take a while to get up to speed with new solutions to things, but we have done it before. So easily available resources are running? Well, fortunately we may be able to find cheap alternatives - I don't know the details, but it seems carbon nano-tubes are involved. That is not going to dry up anytime soon, I think.
Still, we have to cut back, not just on emissions and other pollution, but on wastefulness. Fortunately this is one area where we can make huge strides forward quite easily in the West.
In a way both the reactionaries, who are doing their best to pretend they don't know climate change is happening and is caused by ourselves, and the doomsdayers are a symptom that we have made our lives far too easy. One thing the current economic crisis ought to teach us is that we can manage with far less than we thought, and that we can feel good all the same. And you know what? There is something incredibly satisfying about overcoming big problems; just after WWII people felt they could overcome just about anything - you see it in films and literature, and even in advertising from the 50es and 60es. But as life got easier, each generation lost that confidence in themselves and the sense of community, and now we don't think we can tackle our problems.
I'm old - as I grew up the last rationings were abolished - so I know what we can achieve. We have to believe in ourselves, which is something quite different from having delusions of grandeur.
No there really isn't any agreement on this. As the first sentence was so wrong I didn't bother to read the rest.
The big problem with the transmission lines was there were some idiots insisted it was perfectly safe in all circumstances, which was bullshit, so now we have people who think if you are close enough to see them you have problems - which is also bullshit. Greed drove one power company somewhere to build short towers and not have an easement in the 1970s which kicked all this off. The people who live close enough to be able to run unconnected lighting by induction could be in trouble living in that spot 24/7 - but if it's far enough away that you only get the same induced current that everyone else gets in a house on the grid it is a completely different story.
Agreed. Anyone getting less than 35 mpg like a lot of European/Asian cars do should not consider themselves to be helping with solving the problem.
Follow me
IMHO it's not so important where the stuff comes from (unless it's air freighted) , it's how much energy that went into making it, which means the highly processed stuff that has typically bits shipped from all over if going to lose every time but it's all the processing that is the important factor. Exceptions are stuff like out of season fruit shipped by air from the other side of the world - when you compare that to local vegetables there would be a large difference in energy consumption. However for something like a banana or orange that has been at sea for weeks it's not likely to differ by much.
I'm beginning to wonder just what IS in those deadzones.....
Little to no oxygen. Which I think is a more immediate problem than acidification.
If we have documentation about alkaline runoff - there ought to be more documentation about acid runoff.
It's not so much there would be acid runoff, not because of CO2 at least. CO2 is an acidic oxide, which water will absorb. On land though plants will use it to grow.
Oh, something I just recalled. You know how some people say "let's plant more trees"? While CO2 boosts the growth of some trees, it slows the growth of other trees. And guess what plant loves CO2? Poison ivy. It grows faster with higher CO2 levels.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
between 1940 and 1980 the world actually did have a cooling trend, even though we were pumping out CO2 the whole time.
Citation please.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
any climate scientist who isn't in agreement suddenly finds he has no govt funding
For the 8 years that ended a couple or weeks ago who ran government, in the US that is?
If your final results don't support the underlying theory that the sponsor wants proved, then that sponsor doesn't use you the next time. Same deal for "independent" pharmaceutical research.
This is especially true of hemp, medical marijuana, research. What's worse, is that for this research you have to have government approval.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
Even if these people make a sustainable power source of some sort using solar or wind or waves, ultimately it's not sustainable due to population growth.
Ever more people will demand ever more power, until we curb the people count we're stuffed.
I live in Melbourne, Australia. Yesterday was the hottest day in recorded history, here.
The bigger point is - they don't call it "global" warming for nothing. What happens in your back yard (in winter) is only part of a big picture. When the globe warms, a lot of things happen. It doesn't just warm up by 1 degree everywhere equally. Some places get a lot warmer, some places get a little bit warmer. Some places get colder. Some places get colder in winter and warmer in summer. To get the big picture you have to add up all the "local" effects. When this is done, the picture is actually very clear - the world is getting hotter.
Polar caps are melting, putting pressure on the polar bear population. Being the alpha predator of the region, this will remove the ecosystem's ability to keep prey species in check, causing far-reaching problems elsewhere.
...welcome our new seal overlords.
I don't mean to sound wiser than you, but this argument reminds me of Robert Anton Wilson where he says something to the effect of;
To say that we've run out of resources is ridiculous, because resources are only the things our civilization has figured out how to make use of in our lifetime. It's an intrinsic act of perceiving something as a resource, not the other way around.
There are several kinds of "giant toaster". A good one is a pump storage scheme which can take electrical energy and use it to pump water up a hill converting it into potential energy. It's also possible to just feather back most wind generators very quickly (relative to typical conventional generators). You could also divide water into hydrogen and oxygen, but that's not yet economic because electricity costs too much. Now if someone really was willing to pay to take away electricity then it would become worthwhile. There should be no problem with an oversupply of wind energy for any competently run national electricity grid which has the basic levels of redundancy and over-capacity needed for safety and extreme weather conditions.
=~ s,(.*),<sarcasm>$1</sarcasm>,g if any_point_you_wish();
1. It won't "run out". Production will peak and it'll become more expensive as production declines.
2.As it and oil becomes more expensive, a larger and larger proportion of the economy will be dedicated solely to producing energy.
Lets say you go to Saudi and suck some oil from the ground. You get 100 times more energy back than you put in. Now lets say you go to Canada and try to turn some "tar sands" into oil. That's like trying to suck the oil out of asphalt. You'll be building nuclear power stations just to provide the heat to do it. You might get 2-3 times more energy out than you put in.
This is why it's a big problem. You end up spending all your time and energy producing energy.
Deleted
I'm sorry, but there is no nice way to say this.
The problem is not global warming, WHICH IS NOT HAPPENING. People like you are the problem because these people (as a group) DEMAND that useless and damaging action be taken based on a false conception.
Fortunately a growing number of scientists are daring to oppose this new global warming religion. Unlike the "facts" you cite, this fact is undeniable.
'sustainable' power does not mean iridium, palladium, zirconium, stupidium and whatnot. it consists of innumerable alternative energy sources.
one of which, is SUN, and a possible other, in future, is cosmic rays. you dont need to sustain these, they just are.
is it possible that the article may be trying to portray the new drive for alternative energy in a bad light ?
Read radical news here
Don't you love the impartial scientific tone here?
TFA is wrong in so many ways. It says solar cells are made from one of the most common materials on earth, but because you can make even more efficient solar cells from extremely rare materials, it's not sustainable?
Cover the rooftops of the world with 25% efficient solar cells and we'll have more energy than we know how to spend (although I'm sure we can find something). 50% efficient solar cells are only worth it if they're less than twice as expensive.
But even beyond that, Indium solar cells are only unsustainable if they actually use up the Indium and stop functioning after that. If they don't use up the Indium, they are perfectly sustainable. It's just that the capacity is limited by the amount of Indium we can find.
Hurrah.
Your ideas intrigue me, I would like to subscribe to your newsletter.
The only ways I can think of to "exhaust" (i.e. permanently destroy) a stable chemical like platinum element would be either putting it into a particle accelerator and splitting the atomic nuclei with something like fast neutrons, or shooting it into space. Everything we do it it in a fuel cell is chemistry (electron hull physics). We may have to recycle it from used cells (which might require energy), but it's not "exhausted".
Actually you're the one who missed my point entirely. My whole point was: storing energy (by melting salt or using any other kind of mechanism) is a process that needs an expensive plant. Running this kind of operation is not part of the power company's best interests. What the hell, even thermoelectric plants (the ones that generate the power being sold) are avoided entirely by this kind of company, who prefer to "outsource" the ownership and operation of these processes to a more competent enterprise.
You can't expect a wind-power-distribution company to start building giant thermoelectric/hydroelectric storage plants just for the sake of not wasting precious mother nature energy sources. It's just a business to them: if wasting energy by heating the nearby river costs less to them, that's what they'll do.
Most people simple don't know how much a plant with the sufficient capacity costs to build and run. Their operation needs to follow hundreds of safety, environmental and union regulatons, and the maintenance itself of the kilometers of tubes, cables and support infrastructure will cost (after 10 years) more than the initial implementation itself. And these plants need to run 24/7 because stopping and starting most processes is an energy-expensive (and cash-expensive too, and also maintenance-expensive, as the plant will degrade itself a little bit at every start-up process) operation.
That's why most thermoelectric plants run 24/7, even at periods (0-5AM) where the power wasted to the environment (through the boiler/tubing walls) is higher than the power being sold (at extremely low prices) to the consumers. They just can't stop their giant machine.
People love to propose lab benchtop solutions to giant infrastructure issues. Unfortunately, things are not that simple in real life.
That's only possible if the government dictates the use of this kind of mechanism. Otherwise, the power company will simply do whatever they want to do, meaning "whatever costs less". Not wasting power is the concern of an individual, not of a profitable company.
But turn the question around: does driving a less fuel efficient car, keeping your lights on in the bathroom do something GOOD for you?
If so, how?
And how do you know that it will be good for someone else to have the bathroom light on when they're sitting in the dining room?
1. the world is run by the people with the most money
2. oil companies have lots and lots of money
3. whenever someone comes up with a solution to eliminate the need for oil they buy the patent and burn it... this goes for everything (cars electricity, heat, ect)why do you think hybrid cars still operate mainly on the gas engine and not mainly an electric with gas generator
Most scientists when they have good science behind their differing views put these proofs in a properly reviewed journal.
Besides which, what scientist would use "the religion of global warming" as a tag line? Ad hom attack as the headline???
Not a scientific discourse.
You can tell that a rock will fall to the ground without really knowing how gravity works, there's been a long time in which it wasn't known how exactly gravity works (and hell, we're still not entirely sure) but people still managed to utilize gravity in their daily lives. It's entirely possible to determine the outcome of something without understanding the exact mechanics.
Also noone ever suggested to stop all oil drilling and burning, just to try reducing the output. Quite a few countries are managing that without wrecking their economy. There are many ways to reduce the output that don't hurt the economy much but obviously cost a bit of money to do (e.g. installing smoke scrubbers to reduce the pollution outputted by a factory) so without any pressure they're not going to be done. Reckless behaviour like China is showing certainly is cheaper to do but it does fuck a lot of stuff up.
Justice is the sheep getting arrested while an impartial judge declares the vote void.
Were they trying to run the careers of those medical practicioners who said "hang, on feet aren't all that important"?
Because that is what the denialists say climate scientists are doing. They say that all the work is a fraud and lies.
Your example wasn't a lie, was it.
Now, if the climatologists aren't lying, then there IS an AGW problem. And the work to be done isn't being stated by the climatologists (unlike your podiatrists "have a foot checkup") is it. So why are you stalling?
I do not take the liberal media to be a reliable source of information.
The above post is a survey of the scientific literature, not the "liberal media". If you want to read the modern scientific literature, browse through the latest issues of Nature Geoscience, Journal of Climate, Journal of Geophysical Research, Geophysical Research Letters, Climatic Change, etc. You will notice a conspicuous dearth of articles claiming "it's all natural".
I need to read from someone who has nothing to gain by saying its so.
And yet, when confronted with scientific research, I'm sure you will claim that "they're only saying that to get grant money". Which conveniently excludes virtually all the actual scientific experts on the planet.
We are not on mars or the other planets, yet they are warming at a rate proportional to ours.
This is false. And if it were true, it would DISPROVE your claim, because different planets warming from a common cause should warm at different rates, given the differences in their atmospheric heat capacities, lack of oceans, distance from the Sun, etc.
So and sane minded person ought to be able to look at this and think, "hmm, I see a pattern here, and humans are not in this equation".
That's one of the most ridiculous of all skeptic arguments. Not all planets are warming, and not all planets are warming globally. When you actually get down to looking at what's going on at each planet, they have nothing to do with each other. Mars had a shift in dust storms which altered the amount of sunlight reaching the southern hemisphere. Jupiter's equator is warming and its poles are cooling, due to shifts in convection patterns. Pluto is experiencing summer. And so on.
There is a sun which has increased sun spot activity and an increased number of solar flares and cosmic dust. All of which attribute to the increased temperature.
Not particularly. Solar irradiance and cosmic ray trends have been pretty unchanged for 30-50 years, right when the modern global warming took off.
It has definitely cooled this winter with record low temperatures.
Global warming doesn't predict that every year is warmer than the year before. While this winter has been cool relative to some recent winters, due partially to La Nina, even the coldest month of winter is (globally speaking) still warmer than anything on record until at least the mid-1990s.
Two of those things that are in abundance everywhere on the planet is the air and the sea.
Another potential source of energy is gravity. What goes up eventually goes down and can produce energy. Of course, making something go up requires energy as well, but nature offers materials that can assist in lifting things up...
Let's take, for a moment, that the article's claims about limited indium and platinum supply are correct. Big deal. These are metals and are recoverable. This is one of the reasons that catalytic converters in cars are usually cut off the exhaust systems and recycled (mostly for platinum, palladium and rhodium). A sizable fraction of these metals is obtained by recycling already. As the price goes up there will be incentive to recycle more and more items containing platinum-group metals.
just that it is a greenhouse gas.
I think it utimately is in their best interests to develop a storage system, however complex. I don't know of a sigle wind or solar operation that would be profitable in the USA without massive government subsidies. The truth is frankly we are not wealthy enough as a nation dispite what the politians would have to think to be so wasteful.. This is we can't run around building gernerating plants of inadequate capactiy that don't fill our need for constant power because its green and it feels good.
The people doing green energy right now are the worst kind of snake oil salesmen. The have something that could be real, could really work, and rather than be upfrount about the problems and seek solutions they present the idea as the solution. Solar, Wind, and tidle power are only workable to do in the contect of power being availble for traditional sources. Solar and wind plants can't handle peaks in demand power must be generated elsewhere and povided to customers; they can't handle peaks in supply so the excess has to get burned off what the TFA is about. So really these things don't work at all without a big nasty, coal, gas, or nuke plant to back them up. The energy they do produce is not even economical without the government handouts.
As a society we need to do the engieering and solve the storage problem so we can handle the peaks and use these things productively. Until thats done we should not be building them at all outside of the experimental test stations to work on the solution. We keep wasteing time and money so people can feel better about being green.
Keep the lights on with coal today and use the green energy money to get the RandD done se we can actually have renewable power tomorow.
Repeal the 17th Amendment TODAY! Also Please Read http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
What about AC alternators like used in cars, they don't use magnets. Instead they generate their own magnetic field by means of an electromagnet powered by a small DC (starting) current after which the system feeds itself. You can control output power more easily too.
To be fair, the conservation movement often attacks conventional energy and material sources in a similar manner. You'll see claims of "in X years, we're screwed because we'll run out of Y", without any assumption that once the price of X goes up, it either becomes conventional to extract X from non-conventional or marginal sources, or else a substitute for X will be used instead.
The most sensational sources seem to predict the resulting fall of civilization (or something equally as daft) because of this.
Sensationalism sells. Its boring to hear about how the current extraction infrastructure and known reserves for foobarium aren't enough to meet predicted future demand and thus alternative sources or alternative materials will be used in the future. Its more exciting to hear how critical technology relies on foobarium currently and predict the end of the world as we know it because current foobarium supply won't meet future demand.
It's a shame this happens because it desensitizes us to major problems with resource depletion. We're so busy reporting every tiny wackjob's claim that we're horribly, completely and absolutely screwed that the real problems start to get lost in the chaff.
First sentence is incomplete, and really does not help any arguments in the rest of the post. Some scientist agree that man-made CO2 is contributing to global warming and others just as strongly disagree. Starting a discussion on renewable energy and the technical, environmental, or economic reasons for and against it can stand in it's own right. Referencing a hot political topic in the context of stating your problem really diminishes the effort thoughtful responders put into the discussion with the chaff of political sentiment a /. type forum is famous for generating.
As a suggestion, start a post discussing whether the globe is warming or not, by what mechanisms that is happening, and the completed and reviewed studies that support your argument. Then you can follow with the impact humans are having on those mechanisms and what can be done to correct that type of disturbance. And for this post you can simply ask. "When we look at renewable energy sources for domestic power and transportation, proposed solutions often require metals or other materials that are in limited supply, like for instance indium and platinum. It would seem from this that they are not as renewable as they first appear. Are any of the proposals currently on the table truly renewable and if not, then is there something on the horizon that might be?"
If it is cheaper for them to waste the energy rather than store it, then perhaps energy hasn't gotten expensive enough yet.
But as other resources for energy production such as coal become more expensive, whether by legislation enforcing "externalities" on the players for whom they belong (for instance, banning cheaper mountaintop removal mining techniques or requiring large amounts of environmental cleanup be borne by the mining company), or pure market forces, there is a tipping point where it is cheaper to store energy rather than waste it.
I think you are missing the point that the other, non-sustainable measures must and will get more expensive, and so what is profitable will change. by the very definition, if it's not sustainable... it's not sustainable. right? so we need something else, that is sustainable, so we can.. you know... sustain it. long term.
the current model of allowing non-sustainable industries to simply ignore the costs they are inflicting on the rest of us has got to stop. We don't build wind power in a vacuum; this is about a long term shift to get us to a sustainable energy model.
It's possible that it may take a government mandate, but I don't think it will be simply to require storage. It will be in the form of finally making unsustainable energy cost something more like it "should". of course that's a pretty subjective word. But if an industry is spewing mercury into the environment, I don't think it's too much to ask that they be required to clean it up. and yes, there is always the "but what abouts CHIANA??" but you can't do anything without first leading by example. Then we can put tariffs on their imports until they play ball, since their mercury is poisoning us too.
Do you know what the average height in the Netherlands is? Yet Dutch carparks don't look like American ones..
"resources that could dry up in 10-15 years
Sounds like it's worth a little research. Thanks.
Normally I ascribe all life to intelligent design, but in your case I'll make an exception.
There's also a 8000-pound donkeykong in the house, and is what the 10-15% of that human overpopulation do with their lives.
I'm in my mother's house right now.
Out of the window there's a parking lot and a small park.
When I was ten (1988, not 1888) every sunday there were around forty kids playing soccer in the park, and a dozen of cars in the parking lot.
Today, just 20 years later, there are around 80 cars in the lot, and no kid playing outside (guess they're all home toying with their consoles, pc and sat tv, even if it's sunny and warm today).
Until we deal with the fact that us 1stworld-ers MUST COLLECTIVELY fking change our ridiculous ultra consumeristic lifestyle, none of the rest is anything but posturing.
(and yes, I know I'm part of the problem, sitting here warm on the couch with my laptop and wi-fi)
wow, you are my hero...I better shut the f up now, I wish I could be half the eco-warrior you are.
What an interesting religion global warming is... one in which scientific data and theories are put to the test and, if they hold up to scrutiny, are accepted by the scientific community at large until a better, more accurate model can replace them. The IPCC report would be a good place to start, but I suppose nothing will convince you that you are mistaken.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Indium is used in IZO (Indium ZInc Oxide), which the article is undoubtably referring to. It is used for the capacitors for switching LCD pixels on and off. This belongs to a class of materials called TCOs (Transparent Conducting Oxides). Much research is ongoing to replace IZO. You don't need a lot of Indium for these thin layers, but it is expensive. (used to work for a company depositing these layers onto the LCD glass).
Complicated III-V solar cell stacks don't necessarily need In. And there are a variety of conventional cells that don't need any rare materials.
In short, the article is about grabbing readers attention and not really about getting facts nailed down and providing a proper perspective.
As it happens, we have one (1) known occurrence of similarly abrupt increase in CO2 level. At the end of the Permian, a volcano system known as the "Siberian traps" set huge coal beds afire (think pacific "ring of fire" meets middle east oil fields). A large percentage of the worlds coal was burned in a geological eye-blink.
The was immediately followed by the Permian mass extinction, the largest mass extinction event in the worlds history, when pretty much every living thing on Earth died and only a handful of species (think things like cockroaches) had enough surviving members to struggle through.
--MarkusQ
Water vapor produces a positive feedback element-- the hotter it gets, the more water vapor in the atmosphere, and the higher the water-induced greenhouse effect.
But, seriously, does that necessarily follow? One could also argue that the more water vapour in the air, the more clouds there are, which could conceivably increase the albedo.
Of course. The original comment was about the greenhouse effect-- that is, infrared absorption-- of water vapor, so that was what I was talking about. As for other feedback effects, the post you quote continued: "But it's just one of many feedback effects, positive and negative."
Since the top of clouds over 18,000 feet are almost all ice, and not water vapour, and ice has a very high reflectivity, it's at the very least arguable to say that the two effects might offset.
Yep, that's the "negative feedback effect" mentioned.
Note, however, that the negative feedback effece reduces temperature increase from the greenhouse effect, it doesn't eliminate it. (because if it eliminated it, of course, the feedback itself would be zero.)
Of course, maybe they don't; I don't profess to have any data one way or the other. I'm just saying this is the type of reasoning that drives me nuts; it could be true, it could be false, but the AGW crowd takes one side, doesn't always provide data, or ignores data that refutes their position, and calls anyone who disagrees with them a nutter.
Well, let's see, what would be the correct approach? Maybe, do a detailed physics-based computer model, and validate it with detailed measurements? That is what climate scientists do. That's pretty much their job description.
And is what the deniers don't do. And don't even try to do.
...I'm skeptical of AGW because I've read so many forecasts ("Tuvalu will be completely underwater in three years! Antarctica is melting!", etc.) when...
Again, as I said previously, the characteristic failing on that side is not bad physics, but is a tendency toward hyping worst-case scenarios. Which I find almost equally annoying. There's a cherry-picking process here, though-- the press picks up and hypes the most extreme predictions, so if there's, say, ten thousand predictions, the single one that's wacky gets amplified, and the more moderate voices get ignored. Have you actually read the IPCC report? Not the popular media reports and the biased analyses from people with opinions, but the actual documents from the IPCC? If you're talking about predictions, this is the place to start, not whatever hype-of-the-week you got from scrolling around on the internet.
It's amazing to me how many people want to throw rocks at the IPCC report and how few want to bother to actually read it. It's not the place to go for all the details (although it does have extensive bibliographies), but it's a good place to start, and written at a tutorial level.
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
For the planet's sake, those of you of child-bearing age, please rush out NOW and get yourself and your loved ones a vasectomy or a tubal ligation. I know you will be fighting your sub-human urge to reproduce, but our doom is imminent if you don't.
*** Don't be dull.***
You can establish the existence of gravity through a program if controlled experimentation, so that is an extremely poor example. A better example may be homeopathic medicine, or medicine in general, where procedures are often performed that are poorly understood and have not been proven to be effective through rigorous controlled experimentation.
"installing smoke scrubbers to reduce the pollution outputted by a factory"
This is not the same as eliminating CO2 emissions. Also, people are suggesting that we stop all oil drilling and burning, or nearly all of it. Regardless, mandatory caps are an extremely poor choice, because they make no effort at all to establish the merit of CO2 generating activities, but rather aim only to put an arbitrary limit on emissions. Also, I get the impression that you did not read the last paragraph of my comment, so you should go back and read it.
ets say you go to Canada and try to turn some "tar sands" into oil. That's like trying to suck the oil out of asphalt.
Another problem with the tar sands is that it's water intensive.
You might get 2-3 times more energy out than you put in.
That's true with corn ethanol as well. According to Corn Ethanol: The Great Boondoggle the only reason corn ethanol returns more energy than what is used to produce the ethanol is because the plant material left can be used as animal feed. The New Economy says the Energy Returned on Energy Invested, EROEI, for sugarcane is from 8 to 10. Exploring the Ethanol Debate also says sugarcane returns 8 units per unit used. Unfortunately I didn't find the EROEI on Switchgrass. Is Ethanol the Answer to the Energy Dilemma? goes this.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
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While there is extensive evidence that Earth is experiencing global warming, all we know about Mars is that we observed that one spot on the planet is warming. That's a long way from observing global warming on Mars. Even if Mars was undergoing warming right now, Mars is a very different planet in a very different orbit than Earth. For a few examples, Mars has no oceans and not much atmosphere, giving its climate little thermal inertia, so that it is more heavily effected by changes in the amount of sunlight reaching the planet, which varies much more than it does on Earth due to Mars' higher orbital eccentricity.
To paraphrase TFA:
The really expensive solar cells that no one uses anyway aren't renewable.
The fact that plain old silicon solar cells are inefficient doesn't matter. In the larger scheme of things, the only thing that matters is the cost per watt. Efficiency only matters in unique applications that require maximum energy output for a given area, like spacecraft. There's plenty of area for the the rest of us to use conventional silicon.
The "hydrogen economy" is well known by now to be hopelessly inefficient. We don't need hydrogen fuel cells; platinum doesn't matter.
The same goes for ethanol -- it's a total scam, and most of us realize that now.
Nothing else to see here. Move on.
Indium is used in IZO (Indium ZInc Oxide), which the article is undoubtably referring to.
Indium Tin Oxide (ITO) is little more commonly used in solar cells. Zinc Oxide's a little more transparent a short wavelengths, though. And you don't need very much indium in ITO (it's really indium-doped tin oxide).
...Complicated III-V solar cell stacks don't necessarily need In. And there are a variety of conventional cells that don't need any rare materials.
True enough (although many III-V compounds do use Indium; it is a group III element, after all).
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
straw men of nuclear waste
Nuclear waste is a straw man?
Take the automobile; since 1975, there have been 1.5 million deaths in the US from car accidents.
I was almost one of them, however while I survived I am now disabled. People also die from falling in bathtubs.
And, if there's been one constant trend with technologies of all kinds over the last 30 years, it's the rapidly decreasing time from a technology's introduction to the time when it's adopted by a significant percentage of the population.
I whole heartedly agree. Not only does technology advance but it also gets cheaper. For instance cell phones are leapfrogging landline phones in much of the world. Though landlines don't cover Africa many Africans have cell phones.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
The stimulus package could have been easily passed, even with every Republican in Washington opposing it.
Thing is is Obama campaigned on bipartisanship. So it makes sense he'd try to get Republicans to approve the stimulus package.
Now, I'm not saying I support it, I actually oppose it.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
That is a combined idle load of 1,000,000,000 or 1000 Mega watts. This is the amount a large sized nuclear reactor can produce. If all of the inefficiencies of our system were accounted for we could cut a lot of waste and unnecessary pollution.
And what part of the total power production in the US is that 1GW?
According to Wikipedia, in 2004, the power production in the USA was 3.35TW. So, 1GW of idle power made 0.03%.
Personally, I don't care that much who causes global warming - because the benefits of reversing global warming do not currently outweigh the costs.
So you're willing to pay the people of Tuvalu and Bangladesh if their land is flooded then right? You're also willing to pay for another New Orleans and higher insurance too?
I think we should carry on studying global warming (so that we can start to predict what will really happen), and keep on our normal path of technological progress. By the end of the 100 year time frame used by the reports
I agree more research needs to be done, but I also think something needs to be done before those who did not create a problem have to pay for it. Also what research I've seen says that if atmospheric CO2 levels are not stabilized by 2050 it will be too late. That's 40 years away.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
Similarly, twenty years ago large scale wind power was impossible. I remember reviewing some articles on the issues (essentially, the worst case arm loading/normal arm loading ratio was too large to make windmills of reasonable mass). Now the US has massive windmill projects.
None of this required any laws to get passed. No one had to be forced into anything. The future just arrived slowly and unpredictably, like it always does.
Actually laws were required, utilities had to be forced to buy power from small systems owners, you know all those net metering laws.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
from TFA:
"the most advanced "renewable" technologies are too often based upon non-renewable resources"
No, that's wrong.
Some technologies (solar cells) are require scarce materials in their construction. These materials are not used up to generate power. These materials don't have to be renewable. It doesn't matter that these materials are scarce, except from an economic point of view. And, most likely, these materials are used in a renewable way. When these constructions need to be replaced, can be recycled and the scarce materials can be re-used.
assignment != equality != identity
Oh so high and mighty, Mr. "I don't drive a truck so I'm better than you". Did it ever occur to you that there are a significant number of people that actually need trucks even if only part of the time? And not everyone has the money to have multiple vehicles so they could drive something more economical when they didn't have to, say, haul things around?
It's great to be on your high horse, but when you need a new water heater or washer and dryer in your place, you need to get a truck to haul it. Better hope you don't have a yard or want to add on to your house, either... oh, wait. You just consume and pay other people to have trucks to do things for you and act smug because you don't have one.
Get over yourself. Not everyone who owns a truck is part of the problem.
My blog. Good stuff (when I remember to update it). Read it.
Nuclear power is our best bet.
1) We have hundreds of years of uranium even without reprocessing, and thousands if we do use reprocessing to recycle the fuel.
2) "Considerable" in the sense that you don't want to do it with your pinky finger, sure. But uranium mining is still *very* energy-positive. Even without petroleum, it could be done with biodiesel or electric equipment.
3) By the definition of half-life, the most dangerous substances have the shortest half-lives. After a decade cooling down in a tank, nuclear waste is safe enough to handle (briefly), and can be safely buried without worry. Radioactive materials either have a long half-life, or are dangerous, not both.
4) Of course a nuclear plant is expensive. But it's worth it. Each one produces a huge amount of power.
it is an USA problem (and probably China), that requires their industries to make a change.
That was true before but "China overtakes U.S. in greenhouse gas emissions". At the same tyme "wind power in China is developing rapidly and receives particularly strong government support."
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
I knew that would get responses like this. So you're saying you use twice or three times as much fuel every day, so that once every few years you can haul something? Sounds reasonable. I guess I'm silly for renting a truck for those occasions.
And there aren't many of those Explorers out there with wheelchair mods on them that I've seen.
You obviously haven't heard of concentrated solar thermal/electric power. All it takes is some concrete and steel, glass (SiO2), maybe aluminum for mirrors, and optionally molten salt for storage.
The salt can store power for hours, so some people are even calling it solar baseload.
(T>t && O(n)--) == sqrt(666)
Aggressively switching away from current fuel sources is extremely expensive, and potentially crippling to the economy.
Alternative energy isn't really that much more expensive than conventional energy. "The coal, oil and gas industries" get subsidies as does nuclear power. And please note that those links aren't from an environmentalist or alternative energy organization but from the Individual Liberty, Free Markets, and Peace CATO Institute. The second link is an article first published in the business and investment magazine "Forbes".
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
The Jackass that thought of turning FOOD into FUEL ought to be shot.
And shot again for giving farmers taxpayer money to grow fuel instead of food.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
I'm 6'3", 300 pounds, 40" inseam and I fit fine in a Prius. If they added a few inches, I would be ecstatic; and as a matter of fact, with the 2010 version, they are doing just that.
Why not believe in God just to be sure you're going to heaven even though there is no data either way?
The problem with Pascal's Wager is in deciding which "God" to believe in. Do you believe in Reform Judaism's God, Shia Islam's God (and switch one?), or Wicca's Goddess? Pick the wrong one and you can be just a screwed as not believing in any of them.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
Jeremy Clarkson of Top Gear fame, seems to have fun in a Ford Fiesta here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1KXYoLEikas
Turns out he's exactly 6"5' too. According to Wikipedia anyway
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeremy_Clarkson
lately I've been hearing 'global climate change' rather than warming.
I don't know if this is why climate change is being used instead of global warming but there's a good reason to use climate change. Global Warming makes it sound like it will warm up everywhere. However while the average temp will rise not everyplace will get warmer, some can actually get colder. Extreme weather conditions can also increase. Rainfall patterns can change so an area that is now wet can dry and what is dry can flood.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
Today's article by James Lovelock in The Sunday Times basically says don't sweat it (geddit?!) - because no matter what we do now, it's too late to avert the onset of a massive "heat age."
It's unclear whether he thinks the heat age will completely wipe out mankind by about 2050, but he's certain that our population will be decimated. He makes some interesting comparisons with wartime Britain and what will have to happen along the way.
But who cares? I mean really - it's not as if the human race has actually achieved anything much of any real note during its brief tenure of this planet. So I for one will continue to cook on gas, have a blast and book flights to Barbados as often as I can.
"And the meaning of words; when they cease to function; when will it start worrying you?"
...you never heard of the word "recycling".
You know... you can recycle indium and platinum quite nicely.
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
Well, the people on the planet now (including us) did not create the problem.
We, and I include myself in that, maybe making things worse. As someone once said, "if you're not part of the solution you're part of the problem."
At the moment, the idea is to determine what the best course of action is. To me, it seems like the best way to handle the situation is to get as much low hanging fruit as possible (change light bulbs, etc, etc) in the short term. Things like this reduce energy usage and also don't really add an economic cost.
As happened to me, many others are finding out making some changes actually saves them money.
In the long term, switching to nuclear power would probably be the best way to go.
I haven't been convinced nuclear power is needed never mind the best way to go. Some say it's needed as a baseload, however geothermal energy [pdf warning] might be used as a baseload as well. And without subsidies nuclear power wouldn't be profitable. The Free Market CATO Institute has this article from the business and investment magazine "Forbes" on "Why conservatives should join the left's campaign against nuclear power", "Hooked on Subsidies".
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
Seems to be the working plan for our government these days, doesn't it?
Yeap, give hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars to those who created a financial crisis.
Something I just thought of, what if those billions had been used to build solar and wind farms? How many jobs would be created? Mind you, generally I oppose subsidies but if they are handed out I'd rather see the money get into the hands of working blue collar stiffs.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
More importantly:
>Although it belongs to "rare earth metals," neodymium is not rare at all. It constitutes 38 ppm of the Earthâ(TM)s crust.
From Wikipedia. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neodymium
Also, as far as indium has been concerned: I have no source, but I've heard that thin-film solar panels are so thin that you could cover the entire planet with them and use up less than 10% of the available indium. The fact that thin-films can also be made from other materials than indium (but not as cheaply) adds to the case that TFA is mindless FUD from the OPC's SOBs.
If it was profitable to do this, someone would already doing it. Hell, if it's such a simple idea you could start up a business yourself and melt salt when the electricity price is negative. Unfortunately, having a salt melting plant sitting idle for 99% of the time doesn't make up for the 1% of the time you can store energy.
On the other hand, with increasing amounts of uncontrollable energy sources and falling energy storage costs, it will be profitable at some stage. We're just not there yet.
Insanity: voting in the same two parties over and over again and expecting different results
Billy can you run next door and get a cup of molten salt from Mrs. Smith? We're all out. There's a dear.
The world you experience is only a close approximation of reality.
If it was profitable to do this, someone would already doing it. Hell, if it's such a simple idea you could start up a business yourself and melt salt when the electricity price is negative. Unfortunately, having a salt melting plant sitting idle for 99% of the time doesn't make up for the 1% of the time you can store energy.
On the other hand, with increasing amounts of uncontrollable energy sources and falling energy storage costs, it will be profitable at some stage. We're just not there yet.
Actually, there are a number of pumped storage systems deployed. The power they produce is expensive, but they follow a strategy of buying when prices (and demand) are at their lowest and selling high. Classic economics. These molten salt plants will fit in the same category and, presumably, follow very similar commercial strategies, though I've not seen what the cost-profile of the technology is.
"Little does he know, but there is no 'I' in 'Idiot'!"
They are NOT agreed.
Sure they are, as Oreskes already showed back in 2004. And don't come back with the ridiculous (and unpublished) Peiser study, which even Peiser has eventually conceeded was wrong.
Look dude, now (2009) that even Lindzen has canned the skeptical rhetoric, it can be positively stated that "scientists are agreed that we must cut carbon emissions," without fear of contradiction, at least from anyone even moderately well informed.
Better to be despised for too anxious apprehensions, than ruined by too confident a security. --Edmund Burke
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While I agree that reducing dependence on oil has some nice tie-in benefits for geopolitics and national security, reducing dependence on coal doesn't really, because we have a whole lot of it domestically (as does China). Unfortunately, it's by far the largest greenhouse-gas problem: there is far more CO2 left in our coal reserves, if we burnt them, than in the entire world's remaining oil reserves. And it seems like any replacement for domestic coal is likely to be either foreign or more expensive or both.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
"Energy can be transformed (changed from one form to another), but it can neither be created nor destroyed."
I'd like to buy homeland for our 10 million people. http://twitter.com/mahadiga
http://www.syntheticgenomics.com
The idea of a microorganism that eats toxic waste (or perhaps infected peanut products) and yields hydrogen is an attractive energy source to me.
However, many people are queasy about artificial life forms since that Mary Shelley novel.
That's still the wrong question.
http://www.energybulletin.net/node/47833
We are Turing O-Machines. The Oracle is out there.
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So put together your own study and include all the people you know should have been in the first one. We'll wait here.
The argument all along has been that the scientists with the most to gain from government action -- through grants or regulation or whatever -- are the ones most likely to agree on anthropogenic climate change.
Who's been making this argument, specifically? Because I've never actually heard it made by anyone, I've only heard people like you vaguely cite it.
Build a man a fire, he's warm for one night. Set him on fire, and he's warm for the rest of his life.
For someone who's actually interested, do some research on hemp as an alternative energy. It can also be used for clothing, medicine, and for your own enjoyment!
I can easily find tons of information about the Industrial Revolution related spike.
Kindly point me to information about the spikes you mention.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
I will let the people in Canada, Greenland and some flooded Islands close to disappear that they are imagining all those glaciers and ice melting (gosh, they are a bunch of idiots, to expect that things that haven't changed for thousands of years continue to be the same, how illogical people they are).
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
If 10% of the history of this planet is not a sample big enough (or most importantly: relevant enough, since Earth not always had an atmosphere similar to the one we have now) then any meaningful discussion is beyond the realms of posibility.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
For a suitably large grid, such as that being proposed in the US, wind can provide some 30%+? of it's capacity as baseload (as it's always blowing somewhere you see). From a British report IIRC.
For solar thermal, such as from this company: http://solarheatpower.veritel.com.au/ It is possibly to have some thermal storage. In this case they are planing on some extra 11hrs? worth.
Those straws are getting harder to grasp at ....
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
It is great science to get something right in general terms, even if you are missing the details.
A very apologetic Charles Darwin writing in his Origin of Species about exactly that is the best testament to this.
Same thing with climate change: we know the generalities, not necessarily all the exact details, that does not mean that the main conclussion is wrong ....
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Neodymium? For turbines connected to an AC grid, I understand it is standard to have a 3-phase induction generator (no magnets). It's cheaper that way. Failing that there are always other options (hint: fancy fixed magnets are new, but the electricity grid is old).
First of all, the phenomenon is referred to as global climate change, second regions in the poles, where all the ice is, are hotting up.
You may not believe it, but the evidence is overwhelming, it is just lazy fucks like you that keep grasping at the most stretch of straws...
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
There is not such a thing a global warming, and I think you know it.
The phenomenon is global climate change, because, well, climate will change, too soon for us to be able to do anything about it.
In some places you will get colder weather (the UK may see the Gulf Stream disappearing, which would make weather colder, it is not as cold as in similar latitudes only because of this).
It is also to be noted that in the past the UK used to have snow storms around once every 5 years, this storm has not been since for 18 years.
How you square that with your derided circle is up to you.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Before that you should have seen 2 or 3.
SOme people juggle with logic affected by their wishful thinking ....
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Do you prepare for all possible imponderables in your life?
Assuming we lose 2 days or economic output every 20 years, is it justifiable to spend millions for equipment you will use once every 20 years?
It makes no sense to me to even think about being prepared for such unusual eventualities.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
You can die of breathing too much oxygen or drinking too much water.
Substances that would be otherwise benign become prejudicial under certain circumstances.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
There was never such agreement.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Somebody seriously claiming that less demand for something will actually increase its price.
Only in Slashdot.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
I will let know all those people that in the last couple of decades have died in war zones or from starvation.
If we are such innovators then how it comes we can stop killing each other and distribute food to all?
Maybe we are not as clever as you think we are.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
So we should do nothing and then wait for the weak to die off.
Much more humane than to pull all together and ensure the fewest possible amount of people suffer.
Do some of you ever studied logic or ethics?
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
But if you can't be bothered to check a dictionary we can't do much for you and you wilful ignorance.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
It is very energy intensive, which is why it makes no money anywhere.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Thanks for your kind offering.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
On the PBS a program indicated that the earth will be warmer by 8C degrees by 2040. At my age, I don't care, as my life expectancy is lower. So, my generation has left you a legacy. No crops in the mid-south in all above hemisphere countries (Includes Texas, and the wheat belt), and central Europe. Of course, there will be progress to use genetics to produce hardier grains. So we continue the Bush legacy to destroy our future.
Leslie Satenstein Montreal Quebec Canada
Um, guys, there's this thing, it's full of rocks, debris, and umm, other planets. While we argue about whether or not global warming is real and if we have enough platinum for solar cells, it's full of minerals and ores waiting to be picked up.
It's called the solar system. You get there with rockets. Look into it.
Once every "few years"? Try every "few days". I have a big yard, lots of flowers and vegetables and such, and that takes a lot of supplies and work. I also do my own work on most things in my house, and move my own furniture. Just bought a new couch the other week, had to use a truck to get it to the house.
Just because you live in a loft apartment and have a Prius doesn't make you better than people that live further out, and it doesn't make you more environmentally conscious. Your living situation is built on the work of people who DO use trucks.
Fortunately, I'm lucky enough to be able to afford an efficient commuter car and a truck, so I use each as it's most efficient to do so. But your attitude smacks way too much of the "I don't even OWN a tv" syndrome. I reiterate, get over yourself, you yuppie twit.
My blog. Good stuff (when I remember to update it). Read it.
After all, we all know that the the oil reserves will last forever!
So you say we need some super special metals not found on this planet?
Asteroid mining anyone?
Reading a bit too much Mein Kampf have we?
You'd better check what you're drinking
Making ice, melting salt, and running pumps are methods for storing energy (like a battery) so when you are making too much power you can save up the excess and extract it later when you are producing too little power. -- http://www.sibecolog.ru/
Or maybe power storage plants are extremely expensive to build and maintain. If you compare the price of X wind mills with the price of the necessary power storage plant, you might find out that this is a technological problem, not something related to the price of coal.
Energy conversion (coal->electric, high-voltage electric->low-voltage, etc.) is cheap. Energy storage is expensive. Can you imagine the size of a thermal battery (less efficient than a car battery) for a city the size of NY? You would need hundreds of square kilometers worth of hot salt lakes. And to make things worse, the salt would probably get cold before its energy is actually needed. If you actually try to store the salt at insulated pressure vessels, you'll find yourself wasting billions of dollars on recipients used to save a few dozen million USD worth of energy.
That's why petrochemical plants never "store excess steam". They just simply open a valve and let it go to the open air. The boiler has a planned power setting for each time of the day while momentary excesses are simply thrown out. Why? Because the equipment needed to store the power is more expensive than the power itself.
I don't know what you're talking about.
It might be in OUR best interests (I doubt that, but...), but it's certainly not part of theirs. If it costs more, they won't build. Period.
About the rest of your message, I agree with it: It's time we stop doing things just to feel good about them. We need actual results and actual planning. Is not good to have stupid politicians approving stupid projects just because the concepts behind them are trendy.
WHERE THE HELL DO YOU PUT THE WASTE?
Ummm... why not "sequester" it, along with all that CO2 that is supposed to be magically sequestered in those DEEEEP UNDERGROUND MYSTERIOUS CAVERNS for the next 20,000+ years or whatever?
Remember: when greenies ever ask you this, just throw a bit of CO2 sequesterization dialogue back at them.
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- aqk
F U
I'm about the same size as you, and there are lots of small cars that I can fit into, including the Nissan Sentra, Toyota Yaris, Mini Cooper, Infiniti G35 Coupe, and the previous generation Scion xB (which being a box, has an incredible amount of room inside). Of course, there are others I don't really fit into, or thanks to the popular sloping rooflines - I can fit into but can't see out of very well. If you have a car show close to where you live, I suggest you go to it and check the different cars out.
let me try again. what we are doing now is cheap, but not sustainable.
we will need to transition to sustainability. or collapse into ruin, eventually, by the definition of sustainability.
This may mean that energy will get more expensive. However, it is entirely possible to store some energy for some period of time and we are not talking about year long energy storage here: we're talking about time-shifting a load until, say, the next day. that's a big, pumped reservoir. a big task but not undoable.
while it is certainly not profitable or feasible with other, cheaper, unsustainable energy sources around, we will have to tackle this sort of technology at some point, like it or not. it is better not to wait until there is no other choice and it is too late.... such as, in the next worldwide boom cycle.
Hydrologically, Lakes Michigan and Huron are one body of water.
Maybe they are hydrologically.
By the data you submit,
"Volume of Michiga/Huron: 4,920 km^3 (Michigan) + 3,540 km^3 (Huron) = 8,460 km^3"
and "Volume of Lake Baikal: 23,600 km^3",
Lake Baikal has almost 3 tymes the volume of water.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
Corn Ethanol? uses more energy to produce than it provides.
No, corn ethanol's EROEI, Energy Returned on Energy Invested, is about 1.5 or 1.6 to 1 or 1.2 or 1.5 to 1, about the same as oil sands. While it does make more energy than the energy required to make it, it doesn't even double the energy. Brazil gets from 8 to 10 units per unit of energy used from sugarcane.
PV
PV's produce as much energy in 5 years as it takes to make. PVs are warrantied for from 10 to 30 years depending on the manufacturer, so over their life they produce more energy than they need for manufacturing.
Wind - sure if you're lucky to live where it's windy and you use energy in the spring and fall (you don't).
Wind blows year round not just in the spring and fall. Wind also blows in a lot of places. As the Picken's Plan details the Rocky Mountains alone have enough potential wind energy to provide the 48 continuous states in the US with energy. That's not all though, the Wind Energy Resource Atlas of the United States gives wind's potential in other parts of the US. The Pacific Coast from British Columbia to Southern California has an abundance of potential, along with Southern CA eastward to Texas. In the east the Appalachias and Cascades have good potential as it does off the coast between Cape Cod and Cape Hatteras.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
It's not profitable at all. It has nothing to do with coal or petroleum. If you compare the price of building a Wind farm and the price of building the needed storage plant, it is still not profitable. That's the equation. It has nothing to do with classic energy sources.
ok: I get what I was missing in what you were saying. I'm not so sure it must hold true in all cases, but at least I get what you are saying now. Sorry to be so dense.
The problem with equalizing subsidies is that its impossible to do.
That's one reason why subsidies are bad, they favor some things over others, whether good or bad.
Subsidies for PV are universally higher than for wind. There is a national database of subsidies for renewable energy - you can check any state. DESIRE is the name I believe.
Yea, I've got DSIRE bookmarked though I haven't gone through all the states and what they provide. The federal incentives listed don't have either solar or wind individually. Individual states list solar and wind separately and together. However it doesn't say what the incentives are or how much is offered. The individual links would have to be clicked then all of them added either by hand or with a spreadsheet. To go through every state and add them up could take some hours and I doubt many people including you have done that.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
LOL yes, I guess I am a yuppie twit, since I'm not impressed. The stereotypes you're dragging out are entertaining, though. As are your arguments- if you're changing your furniture and your shrubs every few days, you really need to learn some discipline, but I doubt it's true. Too funny, man.
If the companies that sell X have access to a 15-year supply, they aren't going to spend money looking for more. As a result, anybody who looks at known reserves and doesn't understand the reality described in the previous sentence is going to run around yelling "ONOZ WE'RE GONNA RUN OUT OF X IN 15 YEARS OMG!!!1!"
/. If the government wants us to respect the law, it should set a better example.