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Will Renewable Energy Ever Meet All Our Energy Needs?
Lasrick writes "Dawn Stover has another great piece detailing why renewable energy will never provide us with all our energy needs. She deconstructs the unrealistic World Wildlife Fund report (co-written by several solar companies) that claims renewables will be able to provide 100% of the energy needs of several countries by 2050. From the article: 'When renewable energy experts get together, they tend to rhapsodize about the possibilities, believing that this will somehow inspire others to make their visions come true. But ambitious plans to power entire countries on solar energy (or wind or nuclear power, for that matter) don't have a snowball's chance in Australia. Such schemes are doomed to fail, and not because of the economic "reality" or the political "reality" -- however daunting those may be. They are doomed because of the physical reality: It's simply not physically possible for the world's human population to continue growing in numbers, affluence, and energy consumption without trashing the planet.'"
Err... you do know that Australia has alpine areas right? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australian_Alps
Work smarter, not harder.
Until you define "needs", the question is pretty meaningless.
...next thread...
We have no choice. At least until the perpetual motion machine is perfected.
his article is sort of an IQ test: if you agree with him, you fail
for instance
quote "Take solar power.... In only one hour, the sun delivers as much energy to Earth's surface as humanity consumes in a year....astrophysicist Tom Murphy calculates that, even with an annual energy growth rate of only 2.3 percent, a civilization powered by solar energy would have to cover every square inch of Earth's land area with 100-percent-efficient solar panels within a few hundred years. "
I mean, do I really have to go thru all of hte problems with this one statement ?
'When renewable energy experts get together, they tend to rhapsodize about the possibilities, believing that this will somehow inspire others to make their visions come true.
Those aren't experts.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Why can't we just grow in affluence, and try not to grow in numbers or energy consumption?
Or is that where the political and economic "reality" arrives?
That is eventually the only answer things like this ever come up with. It is mainly because no one looks at the law of diminishing returns... And we get more demand, price goes and and people figure out a way to cut it... Works every time.
The summary cites solar, wind, and nuclear as not being able to power cities. This is due to the fact that cities need power when they need it, and can't wait for the power to be there intermittandly. Therefore, viable options fall under the designation "baseload" power (power that you can have whenever - and in most cases wherever), and the summary's mention of solar and wind are rightly not grouped in this category.
Incorrectly, however, the summary mentions nuclear, which is in fact a primary form of baseload power along with coal, gas, or hydro. Nuclear could, can, will, and does power entire cities, in fact, Chicago is roughly over 90% powered by Nuclear energy (rough statistic - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_power_stations_in_Illinois).
Renewable Energy can NEVER satisfy 100% of the total energy requirement to run the current human civilization.
However, if we deconstruct the way we use energy we would find that up to 80% of the energy we are using ended up in waste heat.
No matter it's in the industrial setting or electricity generation or even the fluorescent light bulbs that we are using right now, waste heat is generated.
If, and only if, we can get our technology to improve to the level that waste heat is minimized to, let's say 10% or less, then, we will see that we do not need that much energy input anymore.
This has a ripple effect ... The less energy we need, the less load on the electricity grid and the less need to construct power plant ... and so on ...
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
When I lived in Pennsylvania, I heated my home and my hot water with a furnace that used renewable biofuel. Those furnaces were recently banned in the state because they reduced revenue for gas and oil companies.
Now I live in a State that still allows residential use of renewable biofuel, and it is readily available and quickly replenished. Our energy bills are near zero, and we grow our own fuel on our estate. Fortunately there is not a big natural gas or coal industry here like there is in Pennsylvania, so hopefully we have nothing to fear from political influence from the big-fossil companies.
From TFA:
Even with an annual energy growth rate of only 2.3 percent, a civilization powered by solar energy would have to cover every square inch of Earth's land area with 100-percent-efficient solar panels within a few hundred years.
Well no shit. At an annual growth rate of 2.3 percent, we'll have a population measured in trillions on the planet in a few hundred years. If that's your metric, are you thinking that maybe we'll have enough unsustainable sources of energy to last us? Am I really supposed to be so fucking stupid that I can't see how bonkers the basic premise of this whole piece of drivel within a few seconds of starting to read it?
It should be obvious to anyone that you can't grow society forever without hitting some limit. Whether the limit is energy, or something else is rather moot. Talk about using all the energy in the galaxy is rather overboard.
So... at some point we have to stop growth. But there is no will anywhere to do so. Only when we run hard into the limits will growth stop, and then by necessity. So, all this talk about how we must change is itself just "visionary" fluff. There isn't going to be much actionary. We can't even agree on emissions to make much progress on that. He is asking for a lot more, and thus it is a lot less likely to happen.
It does make you winder... Why do the greens lobby so hard against SUVs when they would get more bang for the buck lobbying for assisted suicide.
Yes. Fast forward far enough and we're either extinct or running off renewables. Non-renewables are temporary, pretty much by definition. Stupid question.
http://www.withouthotair.com/ Great book which performs a detailed analysis and discussion about energy usage (written by a Physics Prof who is also chief scientific advisor to the UK Government's Dept of Energy), freely available for download as a PDF (Off-topic: he's also the author of a brilliant textbook on Information Theory, also available as a free PDF)
It has been a long time since we had a world war
They used to occur on a regular basis until ww2 put an end to the cycle
seeing as the "wasteful" sources are going to run out sooner or later.
Be seeing you...
The title of the summary "Will Renewable Energy Ever Meet All Our Energy Needs?" needs a definition of the group associated with "Our". Some countries with good local wind, hydro, geothermal, and solar resources and with stable population and industry might very well be able to balance energy consumption with renewable energy sources. Hilly countries near the equator, ideally with shorelines with sea breezes have great potential to close their energy loops. Frigid, flat countries near the poles - unless you're sitting on a geothermal hotspot, that probably isn't going to work out. If "Our" refers to "The whole of humankind", the answer to the question in the title is "Hell, no".
Left MS Windows for Linux Mint and never looked back!
Vote for Bernie in 2016!
I will be amazed if in 20 years any more than 50% of all these fiddly little generators are still maintained and working. Just look at what's left of the old wind farms in CA and HI. It would be nice if they kept them up though, to give my boy something to do when the new armies of H1B's finally take the entire tech industry back home with them.
Strange things are afoot at the Circle-K.
...on how you look at the problem.
Cover every roof in the United States with photovoltaics at today's efficiency levels and you'll generate roughly as much energy as the entire civilization consumes. And lots of places in the world have roofs other than just the United States....
But, though there's no problem with resource availability, there are two huge practical concerns. First, such a project would be massively expensive. Second, it generates electricity, which is not readily useable for transportation with today's infrastructure.
Neither of those problems are insurmountable. Though solar photovoltaics aren't cheap, they're not as expensive as many petrochemical alternatives being seriously considered, such as tar sands. That is, we might not be able to afford widespread PV adoption, true...but, if we can't afford it, we won't be able to afford anything else when the existing wells run dry.
(As a side note, we're already scraping the bottom of the oil barrel. Remember Deepwater Horizon? Imagine you're standing on the shore of the Colorado River in the middle of the Grand Canyon. A mile above you is the rim; that's how far below the ocean surface the wellhead was. Several miles above the rim is an airliner flying past. That's how far through solid rock the well was bored before it reached the oil deposits. That's how desperate we already are today for oil...loooooong gone are the days when you had to be careful in Texas with a pickaxe lest you start a gusher. Yes, we've got lots of oil left -- about half as much as the planet's total original reserves, in fact. But -- duh! -- we went for the easy-to-get-to, high-quality half first, and what's left increasingly fits the definition of, "dregs.")
The problem with transportation fuels is more pressing. At the very least, with enough input energy, you can extract CO2 from the atmosphere and turn it into fuel (via the Fischer-Tropsch process, for example) that you can put back into a tank to burn it again, so we have alternatives. The catch, of course, is that it takes a lot of excess energy to do so, and so won't be cheap.
TL/DR: Yes, we can run our society on solar power. No, it won't be cheap. No, we won't have any better alternatives. Yes, that means we're facing some tough times in the not-too-distant future.
Cheers,
b&
P.S. Even worse than the looming transportation fuel shortage is the looming petroleum-based fertilizer shortage. That double whammy is going to result in lots of people starving to death. b&
All but God can prove this sentence true.
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It's correct that we can't meet our growing energy demands with renewables. But to limit energy supply is also a dumb idea.
People really should stop worrying so much about it. We can meet our energy demand for the foreseeable future with nuclear, and nobody can tell what the world is going to be like 50-100 years from now anyway.
The technology is doable with current technology and works in reliable constant deep ocean streams which don't affect anything on land and darn near nothing in the ocean.
On a long enough timeline, all energy is renewable.
Once the next comet hits and wipes out humanity, it'll only be another couple million years until our graveyards turn into the next oil deposits.
This signature is false.
Cecil Adams of The Straight Dope answered the headline's question here.
Thank you, Edward Snowden.
"Arguments from authority are worthless." —Carl Sagan
Also, Insightful parent.
This is a classic case of weighting down an opponent's thesis with extra assumptions, and then using those assumptions to shoot it down.
The basic question is, "is it possible to meet the world's current energy needs using renewables?"
The question the author is answering is, "is it possible to to meet the world's energy needs using renewables, assuming continued exponential growth forever?"
The answer to the second question is obviously "no", unless you're an economist. But the author only attacks the "exponential growth forever" idea, and says nothing about the first question, which is far more interesting.
The question is, which is fundamentally the more powerful principle: Physics or economics?
Well, that's what Agenda 21 is all about
Funny, that's what capitalism is all about too. If you can't get money you can't consume, so you might as well go crawl in a ditch and die once automation takes over what you used to do.
No. The current status of renewable energy (geothermal, hydroelectric, wind, solar, etc.) can in no way support our current consumption habits.
Can a more widely implemented renewable energy/less-polluting energy infrastructure support a society that uses less energy? Likely. Or some of us are going to have to die to make room for the bigger consumers lest we all die.
The plan?
(1) Assume all fossil-fuel-burning energy plants will shut down in 50 years.
(2) Begin plans to install the most regionally appropriate renewable energy power plants to support those areas.
(3) Calculate the energy shortfalls and make plans to supplement with the most reasonable nuclear options (insert arguments about recycling waste, using thorium, etc.)
(4) Select a demo site, implement, learn, discuss, implement better.
Nah, the silly cynical tit didn't take into account; falling prices, increasing production, new tech to come, new manufacturing methods or anything that might've supported a position outside her tiny little mind.
She could've lived a century ago and slammed rollouts of coal fired generators producing electricity in rural areas.
Just another attention whore failing to make any REAL impact with her degree.
Nothing to see here, just a troll with a blog. Big Whoop!
*Repent!Quit Your Job!Slack Off!The World Ends Tomorrow and You May Die!
I do not think it means what she thinks it means. Her argument seems to come down to people will use all the energy they can and thus renewable will never work by simple virtue of other methods existing.
No, of course not. You may move on now.
"If something cannot go on forever, it will stop," -Herbert Stein
The absurd comment about ...with an annual energy growth rate of only 2.3%... reminds me of the population growth people a couple decades back who claimed that if the population keeps growing at this rate, by blah-blah-blah date the population of earth will be expanding at the speed of light.
Conclusion, population will not continue to grow at that rate, energy growth will not continue perpetually at 2.3%.
Of course we may want to influence *how* things stop. Stopping a car by applying the breaks is generally preferred over accelerating full-speed into a cliff.
~~~~~~~
"You are not remembered for doing what is expected of you." - Atul Chitnis
Any economic model that is not in line with the laws of physics is flawed. No matter how much you pretend otherwise, there is only so much gold in Fort Knox.
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
No, because there really is no such thing as "renewable energy". There also really is no such thing as "sustainability".
The world is a dissipative system. Stasis is impossible. Get used to it.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
...just as soon as all the non-renewable resources are gone.
Eventually, everything else will run out.
And then the 'renewable' sources will run out.
You just have to take the long term view. Really long term.
We always want to do more, not do less.
A more accurate synopsis of her argument is this:
"Since population growth and per capita economic growth are dependent on ever-increasing energy consumption, it is physically impossible for renewable energy to provide an indefenite supply of unlimited energy. Therefore, demand reduction is the only really-long-term answer."
While I actually agree with this position, it's freaking worthless. First off, the author's argument and the WWF paper are speaking to entirely different time scales. It's functionally equivalent to saying we shouldn't waste time advocating the use of seat belts because they don't protect pedestrians. Scope matters!
The second and larger issue here is that her counter-argument is just as reality-deprived as she claims the WWF paper to be. In her conlcusion, she states simply, "To which I say: Why don't we just not do it?" i.e. why don't we exert self-control as a species and stop growing. Stop adding to total population. Stop increasing per capita consumption. It simply doesn't matter how true that is on paper. I find it amusing that she name checks the Do the Math blog which has been linked on Slashdot previously. The blog is compelling and well-written. It also avoids the flippant suggestion that converting to a zero-energy-growth global society will somehow be as obvious as a Nike commercial. The "reality check" is that the reckoning over energy consumption will be painful. Death and violence are in the cards long before equilibrium is reached. Human beings have the capacity to plan for the future and execute on those plans, but the number of years forward we are motivated to act upon have finite congnitive limits. The climate change issue is a recent-but-not-exclusive example of these limitations at work.
There is of course an amusing logical fallacy in her argument as a whole. If we are to ever reach the equilibrium she seeks, whether that is by design or through painful reaction, that equilibrium would have to be completely fueled by renewable resources, since we must eventually run out of the non-renewable ones. Doh!
Still, I'm glad this got posted to Slashdot. Undeneath her specific arguments there is a clear undercurrent. "Physicists are smarter than all the rest of you because we deal with real stuff so all of you can suck it." That kind of attitude definitely belongs here.
See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_France
and http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/inf40.html
Now get off my lawn.
...if I knew it would cause this energy crisis!
So the point of the article is that it'd be very hard to scale up current renewable technologies (including nuclear) to cover all our energy needs, because of limited supplies of rare metals, etc. A fair enough point.
But then it dips into the more philosophical argument that if we keep expending 2.3% more energy every year we'll eventually run out of sunlight. But assuming a constant geometric increase in energy expenditures seems ridiculous. Especially when coupled with the concluding paragraph's assertion that the best solution is to eat less meat and drive less. Problem solved!
Here's the thing: human behavior is determined by economic realities. I live half an hour from work instead of within biking distance because houses are unaffordable in the downtown area - so I drive to work. I (probably) drink orange juice flown across the country from Florida instead of from here in California because global capitalism (and the incentives corporations have coerced from our government) make it "cheaper" to ship over some pre-pulped Florida's Best than to set up a factory here. If I can't afford to pay $80 for a shirt, I'll have to buy a new one in a few months because it's "cheaper" to have kids sew it together in Indonesia out of crappy materials and sell it at the Gap than it is for someone to make it here, out of quality materials by adult workers making at least minimum wage. So I get trapped in a cycle of wasting tons of crappy worn clothes and the fuel it takes to ship around the materials for NEW crappy clothes to replace them.
The "good" news: since we're at or near Peak Oil, the stuff's only going to get more expensive, so it'll gradually become less economically feasible to ship oranges across the country, or figs from Peru, or whatever. And at some point it'll be worth the cash for me to move closer to my work (or ride the smelly dangerous unreliable bus) rather than pay $20 a gallon to commute. And they won't save enough money underpaying Indonesian children to make it worth shipping fabric back and forth across the globe.
So overall, we're GOING to expend less non-renewable energy eventually, but we're all such short-sighted assholes it probably won't be until oil scarcity forces us to. So building renewables isn't just an eco-hippie priority; it's also about not screwing ourselves over in a decade or two when the Chinese are running on 50% solar (or whatever) and we're stuck paying through the nose to keep our gas cars and coal-burning power plants running.
If we want to help the environment in the meantime, why the heck wouldn't we invest in renewables AND in consumption-reducing infrastructure? Change around the Farm Bill and international trade agreements and all the other laws that corporations have paid for to make it easier for them to profit on the backs of poor people in other countries while making us fatter and more wasteful. (People eat more meat than they used to because it didn't USED to be cheaper to buy a double cheeseburger than fish or a head of lettuce.) Build some damn train tracks and buy some new buses so public transit is actually a viable option outside of Manhattan. And yes, stop building coal and oil power plants, if for no other reason than because they'll cost more than they're worth long before they're due to be retired. Give more tax credits for solar panels and insulation and double-pane windows. Tell people to properly inflate their tires.
But don't pretend that simply NOT building more power plants is a viable option. What does that do, exactly? Jacks up the price of electricity and gas, which the corporations and farms that use most of that electricity and gas will pay for with another tax writeoff, and which will further screw the growing lower class in the First World by making us pay an even higher portion of our income to keep our houses heated and our lights on.
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Just ask people that live off grid. If you reduce your consumption it's not that hard to meet your energy needs. The hard part is that it's impossible for you to create an alternative energy source other than electricity. Electric heat is highly inefficient, so you either need to stop building houses ultra crappy, like most homes built in the USA, and start building them right with a lot of insulation, proper eaves, proper siting, etc... or you buy 6 acres to fill with windmills and solar panels so you can heat or cool your craptastic McMansion built by a barely capable contractor that cut as many corners as legally possible.
If the home is sane sized is built properly and is properly placed on the site, you could easily generate all the energy you need for your own home within the space of the home. but only if the people living there give up their 90" Tv's with 3500 watt surround systems, incandescent bulbs, and keeping the house at 75 in the winter and 68 in the summer.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
There is a good clean safe technology to close the gap ..
and also clean up the nuclear waste that's lying around
That's IFR .. Integral Fast Reactor. Worked at Argonne for
years, cancelled by idiots including John Kerry, under
Bill Clinton. Again he is guilty. The last good study
by the DOE on Nuclear rated it #1. Read about:
http://www.skirsch.com/politics/ifr/DOEnuclearstudy.pdf
John Eadie [JE46] http://www.c-art.com `one of these days the dogs aren't going to eat the dog food' - Bill Joy
It's energy storage. Energy storage is the ultimate limiting factor on human civilization. Anyone that can crack the energy storage problem will be very, very wealthy.
The physics leads the economics.
The fun thing of this game is that the assumptions of this human were also wrong.
The world-population is not growing as fast as it has been and the numbers of people are going to decline in the future, if the housing is going to continue to be so expensive.
~ Best man at your service.
Stars and supernovas aren't quite a renewable resource, except possibly through initiating a new "big bang" and rebooting the universe. The universe ultimately uses energy and moves to increased entropy. New stars are formed, but the pool of matter and energy to form them from is limited; some is lost over time (think of loss to black holes, for example... no real way to recover matter once it reaches that state.)
If renewable energy doesn't exist, then the whole premise that any civilization--human or otherwise--could be powered entirely by renewable energy is moot.
If we can reduce the energy consumption of a device, it just means we get to use that energy for other devices, potentially more powerful.
Consumption of energy will still increase even if devices are made more energy-efficient.
Oil alone accounts for 160 exajoules of the world's energy budget a year (about 30 billion barrels of oil - a year). The book referenced in this wikipedia entry ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cubic_mile_of_oil ) explains it in terms that are easily understandable. Google and a calculator should do the rest.
We're literally out of gas by 2100 or thereabouts (Russia might still be fracking useful quantities but nobody else will be). While there will still be coal, natural gas and oil here and there, there won't be enough that's cheap enough, or with a high enough net energy to support a large scale industrial civilization. After that, those of us that haven't starved will be using biomass, wind, solar and hydro because that, as they say, will be that. There will. however, be many fewer of us to use it. Perhaps a LOT fewer, depending on how enthusiastic we are with nuclear weapons as tools of diplomacy.
Please do not read this sig. Thank you.
No
Actually Solar and small vertical wind turbines on every roof would solve a lot of current electrical problems. The power generated wouldn't cover the needs of a household, but it would seriously help to stabilize the power grid.
Sure we would still need nuclear or even coal plants.
Now if we could find a way to store high energy electrical charges from those devices it would be even better.
i thought once I was found, but it was only a dream.
If you have hydro you can store solar and wind generated electricity ...
Switching to renewable energy sources will be a snap once we stop subsidizing the oil and gas industry
Fixed that for you.
Funny how they're trying to corner the solar panel market at the same time
Actually the GOP expressly tries to KILL any green tech work here in America. We're actually helping the Chinese corner the market.
People in cars cause accidents....accidents in cars cause people
The argument postulates that the earth's energy consumption is going to continue expanding at 2 to 3 percent per year and the population is going to continue to increase.
There is some speculation that the population is not going to increase indefinitely and ignores the potential for advances in energy conservation.
The universe burns nearly limitless amounts of power. All we have to do is hang on long enough to figure out how to utilize them. The more solar and renewable power we can generate, the longer we can stretch the remaining fossil fuels.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
1. The assumption that humans must grow exponentially has been proven false. Ask China or India.
2. The assumption that renewable energy can not be stored has been proven false. Ask China, they project 70 pct storage of wind and solar using compressed air, or 50-70 pct using pumped water.
3. Some nations are already carbon neutral. The fact that you want excuses for your inaction, does not change that basic fact. In fact, in the US alone, if you considered the 12 fast growing states that have 60 pct of the US GDP which are switching to carbon-neutral alternative energy for 20 pct or more of their energy supply, you'd see it's acheivable. It would be too for Canada if you removed Alberta. Just look at BC next door to Alberta, which is already far further than we are, but has more oil and gas than Alberta has.
So, check out real scientific journals like Renewable Energy, or Energy Policy, or any decent journal in the real world, and you'll see it's just a bunch of lazy whiners that come up with excuses for why they don't want to change.
Adapt or Die.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
Too bad I can't mod you way, way up.
The biggest problems with renewables like solar and wind power is what happens when the Sun is not up and the wind speed dies down? What we need is aggressive technological development of electic batteries using safer dry-electrode lithium-ion packs, carbon nanotube ultracapacitors, and molten-salt technologies. That way, we can store up the energy generated by renewables so they can be used around the clock.
And that day is not so far off. Better get ready for it.
On the other hand, renewable is really abundant and not that hard to harvest. Transport is a problem, but DC lines currently under test offer huge benefits. Whether transport of hydrogen over long distances makes it is still not clear though. It does _not_ fit the economic landscape though, but that is a fantasy purely made by humans. A bit more pressure from climate change could do wonders.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
You don't trust scientists because a blogger with a degree in journalism writes a silly article?
You're weird.
The law of supply and demand is not out of sync with physics.
There was a group of experts who were invited to discuss the future of the city of New York in 1860. And in 1860, this group of people came together, and they all speculated about what would happen to the city of New York in 100 years, and the conclusion was unanimous: The city of New York would not exist in 100 years. Why? Because they looked at the curve and said, if the population keeps growing at this rate, to move the population of New York around, they would have needed six million horses, and the manure created by six million horses would be impossible to deal with. They were already drowning in manure.
So what happens? In 40 years time, in the year 1900, in the United States of America, there were 1,001 car manufacturing companies - 1,001. The idea of finding a different technology had absolutely taken over, and there were tiny, tiny little factories in backwaters.
It's not such a horrible argument for current fission reactors. They are a medium term solution - easily accessible uranium deposits will run out. It's a much poorer argument against all the different kinds of fission we can probably use... other fuel cycles, thorium, etc. It's a ridiculous argument against fusion. If you had practical industrial scale fusion and you were worried about your lithium supply you'd just get it from sea water.
You are a dolt, I know you are anonymous but please never post such idiocy again. I'm not going to defend the Agenda 21 comment, but will attack your Capitalism comment. Go read a book and learn something about economics. Every economy works where no income = no purchases. There is not a single exception to the rule going back to the bartering days. And don't even start with the Welfare check bullshit that normally follows. Welfare would still be money in exchange for goods, but the source of money would change.
Funny that Karl Marx and the rest of the Communist bunch bickered about how bad Capitalism was.. and look how they operate? With currency in exchange for goods. The difference is that of course "The Party" controls what goods are available and who can get what goods. But the use of money works the same. It is a requirement for any economy. And be honest. Communism and Party control is way more unfair than "Capitalism" (assuming Capitalism is being used in it's true form, not the monopolistic leech fest we see called Capitalism today).
If you want to attack the conspiracy theory, that's fine and dandy. But if you do so in the future, at don't use false economic statements (easily debunked false economic statements).
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
Breeder reactors and standard fission reactors as the core with every other energy generation method to augment... still the best option.
[RIAA] says its concern is artists. That's true, in just the sense that a cattle rancher is concerned about its cattle.
Where's my shipstone?
Problem is, physics says that there's only a small factor left in current technologies - Tom Murphy went through all of them. If some completely new technology is needed it won't be available before 20 years from now - in the extreme best case, assuming we find something tomorrow and start a Manhattan Project like effort.
thegodmovie.com - watch it
I'd even settle for eliminating tax payer funded subsidies for fossil fuels.
No matter how much you pretend otherwise, there is only so much gold in Fort Knox.
I remember years ago learning that there is about a ton of gold in every cubic mile of sea water. That's gold that isn't economically feasible to extract. But that just demonstrates that there's a hell of a lot of gold that isn't in Fort Knox.
I was wrong. Apparently there's about 25 tons of gold in every cubic mile of sea water.
Not necessarily. For example, water power is only weakly dependent on the weather and can be used to compensate. In fact, there is even a thing called a "pumped storage hydro power station" were water is pumped up in a possibly artificial lake during energy abundance. A main problem is that wind and sun can die down very quickly and the historic mechanisms still in use in today's grid do not cut it. But that is a technological problem that can be overcome, basically by better data communication and computer support for grid control. Today, it is largely still done manually, with 15 minute "planning intervals".
That is one of the main reasons the "smart grid" is such a huge topic among EEs: It is the basis for solar and wind power to become widely usable.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
No. FTFY.
Citing calculations that even at only 2.3% growth, solar will soon not be enough even if the whole planet is covered is just plain stupid: Long before that it will get impossible to feed people. And long before that it will get impossible to control diseases, unrest, etc. There are really only two models for a species that reaches the limits of its environment: Stop population growth or start to die off. The western world has already stopped growing some time ago, and that is not an accident. The rest will follow.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
The article is full of lies, damned lies, and murderous discourse:
As Derek Abbott has reported elsewhere in the Bulletin, nuclear power is not globally scalable because of the limited availability of the relatively scarce metals used to construct reactor vessels and cores, which appears to be a harder limit than the supply of uranium fuel.
Nuclear fission reactors are made of steel and concrete. Neither are particularly rare. The fuel is not rare either and exploration only began in full swing in the XXth century. Fast reactors, thorium, etc further make the notion that nuclear has hit some kind of a wall laughable. There are only 80 years known reserves of uranium left because no one has bothered prospecting for more. Why waste time doing it when you have so much of it for so cheap? In the 1990s many uranium mines closed because of the abundance of blended down nuclear warhead stockpiles from the former USSR. You couldn't give it away. Only now have these mines started entering in service again.
billions of rooftop photovoltaic systems, millions of jumbo-size wind turbines, hundreds of thousands of wave devices and tidal turbines, tens of thousands of concentrated solar power plants and photovoltaic plants, thousands of geothermal plants, and hundreds of hydroelectric dams. But the construction work doesn't end there, because population and living standards are expected to continue rising after 2030. At best, such a plan simply kicks the can down the road.
Try doing the math assuming 18% efficient solar PV power and place the panels in deserts where there is a lot of solar insulation and the land is worth next to nothing and see how much land area you need. You would be surprised. This efficiency is today regularly achieved by both silicon PV and CIGS and I would not be surprised if they managed to do it in other roll to print technologies as well. Wind can easily power 20% of current energy needs economically. The dams are useful for flood control and ensuring a safe water supply even if they did not generate any power. Making a global energy grid is as impossible as it was impossible to make a global communications grid.
astrophysicist Tom Murphy calculates that, even with an annual energy growth rate of only 2.3 percent, a civilization powered by solar energy would have to cover every square inch of Earth's land area with 100-percent-efficient solar panels within a few hundred years.
A few hundred years ago we did not have global maritime trade or steam engines. Or viable electricity for that matter. The Earth's land area is 1/3rd of its total surface area and there are other surfaces in the solar system besides that. This with current technology. With future technology we could be harvesting energy from black holes or anti-matter for all we know.
There's another way to approach the problem: start with supply instead of demand, and work backward from there. In his book Sustainable Energy -- Without the Hot Air, physicist David J.C. MacKay calculates how much energy could sustainably be produced in the United Kingdom with a massive expansion of existing technology. The total turns out to be less than the nation's energy consumption, which suggests to MacKay that the only path forward is to reduce demand -- through energy efficiency improvements, for example -- until it balances with supply. To which I say: Why don't we just not do it? Let's not build any new power plants except to replace old, inefficient ones. Let's not dig up all the oil. Let's not drive to work alone. Let's not eat meat every day. Let's not turn the thermostat up so high. Let's not buy so many things we don't really need. And above all, let's not accept continued energy growth as a necessary or even desirable way of life.
Yes let us freeze, starve, and stop having children while ignoring the prime directive of the natural world to satisfy some max
Gold? Seriously? Are you one of THOSE people? We have a fiat currency system. Gold has nothing to do with anything. There is no limit to the amount of money the U.S. can mint or print, but the practical limits are given by inflation and deflation.
A Good Troll is better than a Bad Human.
There comes a point of leveling off, though, where we become satisfied. That has happened in the Desktop computer market. People haven't really stopped using computers, it's just that there's barely any reason for the average computer user to upgrade regularly anymore.
We won't continually be needing ever more and more gadgets, much as the average tech twink headed to the shiney-things store at the mall might wish.
For one, TFA doesn't actually say that they will never provide that energy, it says they won't do it right now, which is obvious to anyone with half a brain. Pretty much the only people who believe they can are the last few remaining anti-nuclear hypocrites who believe that Climate Change is the biggest threat to human life on this planet and will cause demographic collapse but simultaneously think that nuclear power is worse.
Aside from that the article is full of the usual reduce consumption bullshit which fails to understand human nature. Even if we were to follow her advice and cut back out standard of living dramatically, the only way to actually reduce aggregate energy usage would be to say that everyone who doesn't live in a western nation has to keep the standard of living they have now. Efficiency is great, making things like public transport actually work is also great, the idea that people are going to voluntarily make significant reductions in their standard of living or that they should is idiotic. We can and eventually will be less stupid with how we use energy, but there are the better part of 6 billion people whose standard of living is worse than we had in the 19th century, they're not going to cut their energy use and we can't cut ours enough to offset theirs.
we have thorium for about 4,000 years of fission power. that should give us a wee bit of time to figure out fusion or just harvesting the Sun's energy with greater efficiency than the present. As for time needed to perfect thorium reactors, all that so-called "spent fuel" lying about can have 7x the energy extracted from it that we have thus far obtained. there is no shorage of energy on this earth, that's hysterical bullshit.
Maybe not kill, but limit current grow. No energy (renewable or not), physical space, food production and so on be able to cope with our needs if we keep growing at this rate. And keeping being dependant on non renewable energies will make far worse the problem when/if they fail.
Is not the next world war the one that worries me, but the weapons we will use in the one after.
If you study the past evolution of energy consumption in the US, it has been increasing continously, and that is despite equipments having been made more energy efficient.
But you probably know more than the agencies doing the statistics for the government I suppose.
what about things needing less power then the older stuff look at the new lights that use much less power then older incandescents.
That "reality check" need a reality check on more than snowballs; example: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grid_parity
Most of the world is heading in a few more years to being able to make solar power more cheaply than getting power from the grid (the parts that are not already there, like much of India).
I'm all for living within our current energy means in a reasonable way (and I abhor the pollution from mining and burning coal and oil), but she cites a calculation that projects exponential growth on Earth forward a few hundred years, calculates we will need to cover the whole Earth in solar panels (and then the Galaxy), and then concludes from that somehow that we should stay the way we are. That just does not seem to be a healthy emotional space to be in.
She's probably against self-replicating space habitats that can duplicate themselves from sunlight and asteroidal ore, too? Even if it would mean quadrillions of people could live in the solar system and the survival of some aspect of humanity might be better assured? From the 1920s by J.D. Bernal on that:
http://vserver1.cscs.lsa.umich.edu/~crshalizi/Bernal/world/
Maybe we should all move back to live in trees in Africa? Or maybe that is too "advanced" compared to flopping around in muddy tidal flats?
There are always at least four issues to a resource question:
* How much stuff do we "want" based on cultural expectations?
* How efficiently can we use what we have to make what we want?
* How should we divide all that up?
* How can we expand the scope of what we are doing to new types or resources or new areas to find them in?
That is the complexity of the issue and she stakes out a position without discussing the possibilities or why she prefers one over the other. There might be a case to be made in the direction she tries to go (e.g. the Amish may have an overall happier community-oriented way of life), but she did not make it.
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
I got to the part where she argues that renewable energy is bogus because, in a few hundred years, the whole earth would have to be plated with solar collectors, and gave up. Excuse me, but is she thinking that non-renewables like oil & coal will be sufficient under those circumstances? That's not an argument against renewables, it's an argument that the destruction of civilization is nigh.
The post loses all credibility when throwing nuclear into the mix as well. Just reads as yet another Malthusian catastrophe forecast.
Especially in light of the fact that there are energy net positive technologies under development to get our nuclear wast problem under control. Nuclear and alternative energies could very well wean us of fossil fuel.
There's been plenty of research done regarding collection of solar via orbiting power stations, and relaying it back to Earth via microwaves. Yes, there probably are some downsides regarding the energy balance of the planet (if you do enough of it), and after a while you'll cover the Earth in receivers or push the power of the microwaves to a level to cook us all, but by that point we'll all be dead anyway from other causes.
With the recent burse of companies pushing into space, this is no longer a fantasy.
âoeAny society that would give up a little liberty to gain a little security will deserve neither and lose both.
Once upon a time, before about two and a half centuries ago in point of fact, renewable resources did provide all of our energy needs. They kept our shelters warm enough to fight off hypothermia--our most important need. They allowed us to grow our food with the aid of solar powered animals--our third most important need. And with that food we had strength and energy enough to do what was necessary to secure clean water sources and/or make alcohol--our second most important need. So if survival of the species is what is meant by "needs" here, then experience would show that the answer is yes. Certainly, the renewable resources still retained scarcity enough to justify killing one another, as though we needed an excuse, but that has and always will remain true even when we are awash in cheap energy, massive industrial capacity, and so much food that price supports are used to ensure farmers have enough money to eat. But our species needs for survival were met by renewable resources.
But if "needs" is expanded to include everything we now do with the large quantities of cheap solar energy stored in fossil fuels, then the answer is no. We once had solar powered vehicles and farm equipment: i.e. horses, mules, asses, camels, and oxen. But since we want to go further in a day than those solar powered vehicles can take us--and most of us in the developed world, myself included, often need to do so in economies structured as ours--then we now seem to need non-renewable resources.
This is question begging. It will of necessity prompt debate, and that fruitless, so long as the key terms remain undefined. To define these key terms, however, may be the more uncomfortable problem. If, on the other hand, you tell me what "needs" means, then most else is simple calculation.
Someone writes in a journal for Atomic Scientists says that competing technologies cannot possibly supply the worlds power needs. And people are surprised about this.
Greentech Media recently had an article on how the feasibility of running just on renewables: http://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/how-about-99.9-percent-renewables.
PV is becoming cheaper per watt all the time, and they are also figuring out how to get energy on overcast days.
Some of the worlds best minds are busy trying to figure out how to build supercapacitors: http://singularityhub.com/2013/01/29/the-super-supercapacitor/ . Once they get those puppies up and running PV will take the world by storm.
> assuming Capitalism is being used in it's true form, not the monopolistic leech fest we see called Capitalism today
That is its true form. Capitalism asserts the same patterns over time.
One good asteroid harvest and the world's gold market crashes. 433 Eros!
shut up basilplug we know your song already.
*Repent!Quit Your Job!Slack Off!The World Ends Tomorrow and You May Die!
Question: Will renewable energy ever meet all our energy needs?
Short answer: Yes, because once we exhaust the no-renewable source, all we will have is renewable energy and our energy needs will adjust accordingly.
The total energy contained in sunlight is quite high. I think like 2 square miles of 100% sunlight capture would power the entire united stated at 100% efficiency cuz it's like 1600W per square meter or something.
If we can reduce the energy consumption of a device, it just means we get to use that energy for other devices, potentially more powerful.
Consumption of energy will still increase even if devices are made more energy-efficient.
That's a possibility. Another possibility is that there are only so many devices needed by a person.
Lighting, cooking, refrigeration, washing, cleaning, heating, viewing, communicating, listening, transporting, making, destroying, storing.
That's pretty much it.
Pervasive robotics is the only thing that could create a change in that model.
Anecdotally I've reduced the number of devices and increased efficiency over time. I've done that while adding four people to my family. That won't hold true for long as my children grow but gone are the days of having a device for everything. Now they are all combined into just a few high efficiency devices. A smartphone, laptop, tablet and TV are all that is needed. The TV is only used a few hours a day by the kids which will get less and less as they become more independent and social life takes over.
So fewer devices, more efficient energy use - even the appliances are far more efficient and really how many refrigerators can you use? Washer dryer? Dishwasher, vacuum cleaner, toaster, microwave, coffee maker. The list isn't that long and you soon run out of things to buy. Sure you upgrade for efficiency or features every 4-5 years but you just don't buy two coffee makers anymore, you get a Keurig and make a cup at a time regular or decaf or special roast or tea.
This trend will continue. The big cost is in the manufacturing of new stuff though. That's where the robotics make a difference in a good way (discounting the labor competition) as they are far more efficient than people. They can run at off peak hours, don't require lighting (infrared would work fine), dont need creature comforts or heated work spaces.
So if we can mature past the wealth based society, robots can do all the work and we'll have plenty of energy for strategic and creative pursuits.
A fool throws a stone into a well and a thousand sages can not remove it.
At the very worst, you just need something that could safely meet all of the energy needs of a planet's population for at least the lifetime of the planet's sun, plus whatever it takes to send the people to another planet to start using resources there.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
No, I'm not one of those people. I'm fully aware if the fiat nature of currency, and that banks create money by lending it to you primarily on their estimation of your capacity to repay it. Nevertheless, there are only so much resources available (be it gold, or oil, or brown cows that give chocolate milk) and any economic system that ignores that fundamental rule of physics is flawed.
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
Read that 2 % of Sarahas surface could supply all human's energy needs. 0.3 % of Sarahas sun could supply Europs energy needs.
Rethink and put military budgets into that project, convert sun energy into some different energy carrier and drive transport vessels from it and ship it to places.
Should be possible - just not with the bums running the show right now.
I like the notion that we're going to expand our energy consumption at a constant rate such that apparently, despite the massive amount of energy covering the entire planet in solar panels would net, it wouldn't be enough. But we're totally going to, what, run it off of coal and oil?
That made me remind of this comic.
"It's too bad that stupidity isn't painful." - Anton LaVey
Of course, it is absolutely impossible to synthesize oil or grow plants that produce oil. At the local supermarket the shelves labeled "canola oil" are all empty. There is no possibility that technology will ever change this situation.
Why are my fingers slimy after I eat peanuts?
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That's not generally true; it takes very large reservoirs to even out flow over the year, not to mention over drought years. Many hydropower systems only tap a small portion of the average available flow, because a fair portion of the year there is little flow. Where I live (southern New Hampshire) some streams go dry in August and some others are reduced to a trickle.
Contribute to civilization: ari.aynrand.org/donate
Would you mind pointing out the line item in Exxon-Mobile's annual report?
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If you study the past evolution of energy consumption in the US, it has been increasing continously, and that is despite equipments having been made more energy efficient.
But you probably know more than the agencies doing the statistics for the government I suppose.
It has not however been increasing at the same rate. In fact in NSW in Australia for the past few years energy consumption has actually dropped. This has put some power companies in a bad place since they were upgrading and building transmission lines which are just not needed at all since the demand hasn't risen as it was expected to.
It's also not a real law - it's a heuristic leading from human behavior. There have been plenty of weird instances in human history where changes in supply or demand didn't show the expected direct influence on the opposing factor. But there aren't local exceptions to physics, and there are fewer ways to artificially manipulate the terms in global energy equations than there are in even large economies.
You mean like government funding of the interstate highway system? Or the national power grid? Or the water systems?
Yeah those were all horrid disasters for this country.
If we don't subsidize our emerging industries...the Chinese will. And we will lose because the investment and breakthroughs won't be made here.
You are against the 40 BILLION a year the oil and gas industry get right? I mean we should just be letting them do their thing rather than weighing them down with government subsidies...right?
People in cars cause accidents....accidents in cars cause people
When ever I hear talk about renewable energy, they are always talking about peak capacity, they forget that at best a Wind Turbine only produced about 50% of its rated power on average. Too little wind, or too much, and they produce nothing.
But there is always one thing they forget, and IIRC that is the main energy consumer of them all: Cars. Or rather ALL transport that aren't done by rails. True, there are electric cars, but:
1. Limited range
2. They take a lot of time to recharge, though some are trying to get around that, the problem being that of building up the infrastructure before the systems can be put to use. This is nearly prohibitively expensive.
3. Batteries.
It must be silly season over at the good ol' BAS. First we get "bio-terror is impossible", and now this. I miss Hans Bethe.
Other posters have pointed out how silly it is to base any argument on hundreds of years of exponential growth. Yep, if that happens, and all other things stay the same, we're screwed. But clearly, all other things aren't going to stay the same. Even Malthus knew that argument is bogus.
Will population and concomitant energy use increase inexorably? Err, maybe not. There's a lot of demographic evidence that population growth slows, even reverses, as living standards improve and, especially, as women become better educated and control their own destinies.
Can solar (or nuclear) solve all our energy problems? Probably not, at least not without a lot of improvement in battery technology, because the energy density of hydrocarbons is so appealing. And there are indeed real resource issues that may put a crimp in massive production of electronics, solar panels, transmission lines, reactor vessels, you name it. For production on a significantly more massive scale, those issues need to be addressed. But scarcity relative to current practices is a strawman--as material costs increase, economic pressures generally yield optimizations. A lot of these look like issues because nobody has even tried to solve them, because material supplies haven't been an issue.
Is conservation important? Yah, you betcha. The cheapest energy of all is that which doesn't get used.
Is energy supply the compelling motivation for solar ? No, it's climate change and pollution. The longer we dither about renewables, the sooner we will face the massive costs for mitigating all the damage caused to date. We'll pay a lot of those costs eventually--the harm is too far along to cure itself. But at this rate, it's not our grandchildren, or our children, who will be paying for huge sea walls around Manhattan, it's us! The longer we can push off those mitigations, the easier they will be. That, to my mind, is the overwhelming argument for solar (and other low-emission) energy.
From the article:
We simply don't have an alternative to fossil fuels that can be rapidly scaled up, doesn't require a daunting input of raw materials and energy, and has a relatively low output of air-polluting emissions.
To which I say malarkey, bologna, and BS. This is an opinion, backed by no data. Here is a counter opinion. Which has data, which we like.
From that article:
NREL's research showed that one quad (7.5 billion gallons) of biodiesel could be produced from 200,000 hectares of desert land (200,000 hectares is equivalent to 780 square miles, roughly 500,000 acres), if the remaining challenges are solved (as they will be, with several research groups and companies working towards it, including ours at UNH). In the previous section, we found that to replace all transportation fuels in the US, we would need 140.8 billion gallons of biodiesel, or roughly 19 quads (one quad is roughly 7.5 billion gallons of biodiesel). To produce that amount would require a land mass of almost 15,000 square miles. To put that in perspective, consider that the Sonora desert in the southwestern US comprises 120,000 square miles. Enough biodiesel to replace all petroleum transportation fuels could be grown in 15,000 square miles, or roughly 12.5 percent of the area of the Sonora desert (note for clarification - I am not advocating putting 15,000 square miles of algae ponds in the Sonora desert. This hypothetical example is used strictly for the purpose of showing the scale of land required). That 15,000 square miles works out to roughly 9.5 million acres - far less than the 450 million acres currently used for crop farming in the US, and the over 500 million acres used as grazing land for farm animals.
The TL;DR version is that we could replace all car gasoline consumption in the United States with farms equivalent to 15% the size of the Sonora Desert, using land that you can't farm on anyways, which would be a 100% carbon neutral 100% solar solution.
The article also says:
Never mind the infrastructure required for transmitting solar electricity to all who need it, and storing some for a rainy day.
Biodiesel stores nicely even in the dark. See? Not a problem.
The person who wrote this article is simply unimaginative.
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
We have thorium for 4,000 years capable of powering the entire world sitting on the back lot of the copper mine nearby. Thorium is something we could not run out of in any reasonable future. I sincerely agree that all that spent fuel could easily be consumed if we'd just get molten salt systems running. Unfortunately, our energy policy continues to be run my government monopolies that have voted themselves the ability to block technological advances that make them less money than fossil fuels.
So far, the majority of government sponsored green tech has consisted of government loans to Democratic donors. Not the panacea they imagined from the returns.
So synthesizing uranium from seawater is somehow easier than shoveling the thorium waste into a ore refinement vat? Don't see it.
I agree with the title and the intent but the guy is very thin on logic. The way he extrapolates population, you wont be able to have solar panels because you need that spot for somebody to stand on.
Sure, things get more energy efficient from time to time, but we humans keep piling on the things we use energy for at a far faster rate. Evidence of this is the amount of energy Americans (who have the latest technologies) consume, vs the amount of energy someone in a 3rd world country (who does not have the latest technologies) consumes.
The enormous differences in energy use does not reflect advances in technology.. they reflect economic conditions.
"His name was James Damore."
I am constantly amused by those who sit around dreaming up reasons not to do something.
The two substantive arguments are nuclear is not an option because the world lacks material to build enough nuclear plants. It may not be an appealing option for other reasons but this aint one of them. When the cost of materials go up more money is allocated to increasing production. One need only look to the shale shit being stuffed into our refinaries and ultra deep oil wells being dug at enormous cost to see where there is a will and enough money on the line shit gets done.
The other argument is essentially a grade school lecture on compound interest taken to illogical absurdity.
First worlds per capita energy use is DECLINING due to efficiency gains. Aggregate growth rates are due to the rise of the rest with global population leveling off there is no reason to expect continued exponential growth of anything resembling infinity and beyond. The number of new people is a rounding error in terms of consumption due to the rise of living standards of everyone else.
Most of Australia is a sparsely populated desert at 1GW km^2 don't give me shit about there not being enough sunlight even if you can only get half of that out with a solar tower and only for a few hours a day.
At 1GW per KM^2 and millions of KM^2 of land area in Australia assume 10 KM^2 is needed per GW to account for effeciency and time of day.
Australia consumes about 190 GW.
You would need collectors of an area of 1900 KM^2... this is a massive area but still constitutes only %0.025 percent of the total land area of Australia.
Care to elaborate?
What is preventing solar power from exceeding 30% efficiency?
lack of energy? the people who need it most, die.
There was an unknown error in the submission.
This article is brain-dead and has an agenda that ignores reality. If the author wants to promote sustainability and reduced consumption, he should have provided information about that, rather than try to rake in unfounded pronouncements on what is physically possible.
First of all, bringing in the magic of compound interest is also stupid and irrelevant because we are talking about current civilization. You can't talk about population at exponential growth in 100 years without talking about the technology we will have a century from now.
Secondly, there is a lot of energy in our environment. Way more than we need. Anyone who says there is no way in the world solar power can do x is just being stupid, 1) because it limits receiving area to a circle 8000 miles wide, instead of considering the surface area of say, an 8000 mile high ribbon as long as the circumference of the Earth's orbit. And 2) because there is lots of other energy available, like all that molten lava under us. To put it simply, he requires solving the problem of a society in 3013 and ignores potential technologies like solar power satellites and alternative fuel generation?
Our technology is not yet at a sufficient level to take advantage of the energy around us, and because our society has grown to take advantage of oil which is easy to get a lot of using relatively low technology, we are having a crunch. The crunch is stimulating us to try to develop new technologies. We may have a decades long energy crunch in our immediate future, but pronouncing things are impossible is just plain dumb.
Its simply not possible for the population to keep growing period, and the rest is COMPLETELY MOOT. The fact that they've collapsed several conversations is logical sewage. If we could address energy, and natural resources, and geopolitical conflict, and the shear environmental catastrophe that would precipitate from an earth with twice its current population, the extreme probability that a super plague would almost certainly wipe us out couldn't be avoided.
The fact is, that part of addressing the 22nd century energy needs requires that we address the 21st century population problem. The good news is that once you bring education, medicine and birth control to a modern society, the population stabilizes in a generation and then even begins to drop. We have an exceptionally good shot and dropping the human population globally to just over half its current level by end of century if we reign in the religious zealots and help the emerging nations join the 21st century with all the benefits of a growing technology.
Ok, I haven't read TFA (hey, this is /.) but I've read a book addressing this topic: "Sustainable Energy — without the hot air", available for free on the web at http://www.withouthotair.com/ but well worth buying IMHO.
Nothing too surprising: renewable energy alone won't be able to address our current energy consumption level, so must be go with a reduction of our footprint (better efficiency when possible, but also less consumption too). Big problems are storage, and the large investments required to move to renewable in a big way. "Investment" here means money obviously, but also energy and that may create an "energy trap" if we don't anticipate enough the switch.
The author is a physicists at root. He doesn't address the economics of such a transition (big topic, but not his cup of tea) but focus on the physics part. This may be seen as a big limitation, and in a way it is, but the positive side is that he focuses on more solid ground where reaching a consensus based on core physics principle is possible (among people of good will at least). He's very good at illustrating in a simple yet solid way the opportunities and challenge of renewable energy sources. He also puts some boundaries on possible efficiency gains for different domains (transport, heating...) and this too is well explained and very informative.
Highly recommended.
At the end of the article it mentions one of the solutions to the energy crisis is to stop eating meat.
Sorry, but I don't quite get the connection. What does eating meat got to do with solar power?
Whilst technically not 'renewable', in reality as a source of large amounts of heat to provide domestic heat and probably a lot more, it has a vast untapped potential. Meanwhile those of us who live reasonably close to an ocean have the option of tidal power.
Not Fiat - more a Yugo, a Travant, or on a good day a Friday afternoon after a few too many drinks at the pub British Leyland Jaguar.
International oil and resource trading in US dollars seems to be what kept it alive under Reagan and is kept the dollar going in the crash a few years ago. Once the Norwegains, Arabs, Chinese and other big movers of US dollars decide to use something else it's screwed, but since there's now obvious alternative it keeps afloat.
There was a prediction of an upcoming shortage in the 1960s but a lot of things have changed since then with reactor design and resource discovery in the years since then that changed those estimates by at least an order of magnitude on both counts.
Your other points are correct.
I'm impressed with what India is doing with accelerated thorium, which has the nice side effect that it looks like it can start on thorium and consume expired fuel rods from uranium reactors and expired weapon materials. They've still got to build a prototype yet though.
That's a good example of where the author is using something that is unmistakenly true but incredibly misleading to the point where it may as well be a lie. Special steel alloys are used and are made in short production runs, meaning that they are "scarce metals", but there is not anything difficult to obtain in those alloys. There are far more "scarce metals" in a fertilizer plant (titanium alloy tubing, platinum catlysts etc).
There's a lot more than that in each of a couple of locations in South Australia and a few large deposits in Africa and Russia worth close to a century or so each as well. The 1960s estimate of uranium reserves is a bit out of date these days in terms of what reactors need as fuel and the size of the prospected deposits. Why go looking for it when there is so much? The answer is that copper, silver and gold sometimes ends up in the same ore.
They make steam. You can't change the size of the turbines or the capacity of the generator rotors they are hooked up to. That means big fixed sized units so not very good for covering peaks - which is why we have insanely inefficient things like jet engines hooked up to little generators for that purpose because they are still a better deal than firing up a big unit. In my country there's a flock of 1950s fighter jet engines at 20MW each that do that duty every now and again. It sounds insane but since they are at far less than takeoff loads and haven't had that many hours on the clock they still have a few decades of expected service life left. That's the sort of thing that wind, PV etc are competing with and not the big baseload units, which is why even China is buying a pile of windmills.
We handle energy like the national debt. It's always how can we get more without ever considering living within our means. The largest untapped resource for new energy is conservation. It's not as sexy as nuclear power or even tar sands because both give the illusion of endless energy growth. Easily two thirds of all power used is wasted. With existing technology we can make 50mpg cars. In truth the real number is more like 100mpg. Lighter cars running off gasoline vapor can hit that mark without major changes. Given the average mileage for cars right there 75% is being wasted. Back in the 70s we started that process before Regan scrapped it and encouraged waste. If we had started then and continued that progress we could have bought another 50 years on oil and reduced climate change. Large numbers of houses are poorly insulated and most people still use low efficiency light bulbs. Older refrigerators and washers and driers waste a lot of power as well as older AC units. Most areas have regulations against building high efficiency homes like earth shelter and hay bale. There's actually a fairly narrow definition of what a house is and it's not very efficient. Newer TVs and computers are getting more efficient, I'm going to evoked the hated name of Apple but their next generation iMac use very little power and have excellent sleep capabilities. To say we can't get most of our power from renewable sources is irrational. If you use high efficiency appliances and cover even half your roof with solar cells most places in the country you can easily get the bulk of your power. I'm not saying to go exclusively solar the study they were trying to debunk called for multiple sources which is the most sensible. FYI solar isn't the only source of energy. Wave power is actually mostly gravitational power. Geothermal has the potential for nearly unlimited power. I read that if we got a 100% of our power from geothermal we would not reduce the core temperature by one degree. Saying we have no option but fossil fuels and nuclear is ridiculous. We already get a lot of our power from other sources including hydroelectric. How about allowing people to put paddle wheels along major rivers? It's banned most places which is silly since a thousand water wheel wouldn't noticeably affect major rivers. In fact all forms of personal hydroelectric is banned most places. Power companies can pollute but sticking a wheel or turbine in a stream is illegal? Stop wasting energy and take the shackles off so more people who are willing and able to produce their own power are encouraged to do so. Every house that does this is one less you have to power with fossil fuels. What's the downside, fossil fuels hold out longer buying us more time. If we had encouraged people to do things like wind energy 30 years ago we might have pushed back the end of fossil fuels a couple of hundred years. I can put up a 200 watt home built wind generator for a few hundred bucks. That's 200 watt average power not peak. Ten would half power most homes and twenty would power most homes and they are dirt cheap to make. Just imagine if a few percent of houses had one roof top wind generator? We could close down a bunch of coal fired plants. It's like debt, start chipping away at the power problem and it'll go away on it's own.
Extrapolating By the third trimester, there will be hundreds of babies inside you.
...and landing a man on the moon is an impossible endeavor because it's rocket science and therefore can never be done...oh wait...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge's_law_of_headlines
Did you mount a military-grade, variable-focus MASER on an unlicensed artificial intelligence?
It's simply not physically possible for the world's human population to continue growing in numbers, affluence, and energy consumption without trashing the planet.
According to the TED video by Han Rosling, the population will level out at 10B persons. That is the number to plan for, we have reached peak childbirth at 2. http://www.ted.com/talks/hans_rosling_religions_and_babies.html, whether current energy consumption of non-renewables can be sustained with that many more people though is highly unlikely and we'll likely move by necessity to energy sources that we have hundreds if not thousands of years of (nuclear fission but hopefully fusion).
Probably because anyone can make grammatical errors. I try to re-read before posting and correct the errors I notice, but I am far from perfect. How come people like you use fallacy to attack arguments instead using facts or debate?
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
Star Trek made a lot of social statements over the years but there is one underlying fact that stands in our way of making such a world reality: the lack of the über power supply. Hell, even Ayn Rand in Atlas Shrugged had to create a free energy generator in order to make her version of utopia possible. Yet, today, our governments are packed with uninformed and misinformed Peter Principle people who think that simply by passing a law forcing people to use one form of energy over another, the science will simply step aside and allow it to happen. Of course, if we put on our conspiracy theory hats, consider how the world and society would change if free energy or at least a huge reduction in the cost of energy suddenly came to fruition. What are all the people who used to work in the fossil fuel or renewable energy industries going to do? And how would free energy affect nations whose entire wealth is dependent on the sale of energy? And would governments be able to control the citizenry when they don't have to pay for or ask permission to use energy?
Perhaps it's not as big a problem as you think.
I live on a man-made lake system with a nuclear reactor, where the upper two lakes are used basically as giant batteries. During the night when the nuclear station is producing excess power, that power is used to pump water from the lower lakes into the upper lakes. During the day when demand is high, water is allowed to flow back downhill through the hydro plants, producing the excess power needed to meet demand.
I see no reason we can't deploy similar technology today, using renewables to pump water uphill during the feast, and then using that stored energy when there is famine.
I miss RAH.
Why don't you do an end-run around the anti-fusion forces, then, and invent us a mass-converter. You'd make Heinlein happy.
"Beware, oh ye sinners! You who consume the flesh of beasts, you who buy trinkets of little worth, you who defile and despoil the Earth! Beware! Your times of joy and revelry will end! Suffering shall come, and pain, and torment, lest ye repent your sinful ways! Repent! There is no salvation in the sun! There is no salvation in the tides! There is no salvation even in the poisonous fires of the atom itself! No, none! No salvation but the cessation of your sins!"
That is the article in a nutshell. I could point out all the false premises (the most key being that anyone, anywhere, claims that *infinite* growth is possible -- it self-evidently isn't, and no one, not even the most utopian, claims it is), or the coy dismissal of "kicking the can down the road" (Hint: That's how humans solve almost ALL problems. It's like saying, "Well, if you're hungry now, you can eat, but what does that do? Tomorrow you'll be hungry again! You're just putting off the problem, not solving it! Stop being hungry at all!"), but I'm pretty sure the umpteen-hundred other posters have already done this. Demanding a solution that will work for the projected lifespan of the universe, and for infinite growth of human consumption, is setting an impossible goal, and she knows it -- she just hopes the readers will be too busy shouting "Amen!" and "Preach it, Sister!" to notice.
This is simply a fanatical fundamentalist railing at sin, and should be taken as seriously as every other such preacher.
It's not really 'weird instances'... you're describing Jeavon's Paradox
In a nutshell, it states that increased efficiency of a resource actually increases the depletion of said resource. e.g, as MPG of cars increases via efficiency, more people will accept longer commutes, resulting in a net increase in the use of fuel.
You stereotypers are all the same...
Europe != World. The only people affected by the Napoleonic Wars were those in Europe and north Africa. Most of the planet's population never even heard about them until the whole mess was over. What "world wars" do you claim existed before that? The British and Spanish colonizations perhaps? Atilla's conquests? I'm drawing a blank on anything else.
"Think about how stupid the average person is. Now, realise that half of them are dumber than that." - George Carlin
WTF? Any plant that grows in the ground gets its energy from the sun. So growing our own plants for oil is no better than using solar panels, and is probably better due to the fact that growing plants have to be processed into oil and then burned to get the energy out of it. Also, good luck finding a way to synthesize oil and getting more energy out of it then you put in (it's impossible).
the former usually fails and the latter succeeds
Baloney. Most new businesses fail.
"Think about how stupid the average person is. Now, realise that half of them are dumber than that." - George Carlin
Such schemes are doomed to fail, and not because of the economic "reality" or the political "reality" -- however daunting those may be. They are doomed because of the physical reality: It's simply not physically possible for the world's human population to continue growing in numbers, affluence, and energy consumption without trashing the planet.
The author is criticizing others for being dreamers and making over-claiming. This is exactly what the author is doing. Claiming that something is physically impossible is a pretty grand claim. I suppose he can define "trashing the planet" in a sufficiently vague way to save himself from being wrong, but that's beside the point.
The kinds of things that are ok to label physically impossible are violating physical laws like relativity and thermodynamics. In fact sustaining all of humankind on renewable energy is *exactly* the kind of thing that is *not* physically impossible, but merely very difficult in practice and possibly less economical and environmentally friendly than other solutions.
This is like when people use "literally" wrong. Example: "This author is *literally* eviscerating the English language and conventions of scientific discourse, by making claims like this."
\
Most industrialized countries are seeing their birth rates plummet (like Italy). People are also feeling a law of diminishing returns of more stuff. So, it is not clear our population or per-capita energy demands are likely to continue to grow that much. Not saying they won't (evolution argues fast growing subpopulations might expand and dominate) , but there are certainly counter trends to exponential growth. Nature has a way of turning exponentials into S-curves...
One the plus side, expanding into the galaxy could give humanity another 1000 years or so of exponential expansion. :-)
But here is an important point. As Julian Simon points out in "The Ultimate Resource", the human imagination is the ultimate resource, since it creates all other rsources (often by figuring out how unused stuff can be made into resources or existing stuff can be reorganized into better resources).
http://www.juliansimon.com/writings/Ultimate_Resource/
The USA once faced a "Peak Whale Oil" crisis in 1846. Yet we moved past that because someone figured out you could get a form of oil from the ground instead of just from whales. See:
http://io9.com/5930414/1846-the-year-we-hit-peak-sperm-whale-oil
If our population continued to grow exponentially, there would be quadrillions of people around to imagine new ways to deal with this issue of energy. I don't know what they might be in those four areas I mentioned (wants, efficiency, distribution, and availability). Or maybe it will be an innovation in some new area somehow. For example, maybe someone will figure out how to tap the zero point energy of the vacuum as both a source and sink of energy and matter? Or maybe someone else will figure out multiple universe theory, or some notion of our universe as a simulation.
I don't know for sure what it would be, or that someone would find it. But, are you willing to bet on your current conception of physics as being undeniable 100% accurate fact that sets hard limits for all time against the imaginations, research, and hard-work of many quadrillions of people (and sentient AIs) working together for hundreds of years? Are you willing to wager on that certainty to the point where, as with TFA where the author says essentially it would be better that all those quadrillions of people should never exist? Wouldn't that claim of omniscient certainty be an ultimate definition of self-centered hubris? Or at least, wouldn't it be "non-scientific", given scientists should always be open to falsifying their theories?
See also, as just one example from:
"They really ought to have known better."
http://zimmer.csufresno.edu/~fringwal/stoopid.lis
""Our future discoveries must be looked for in the sixth decimal place."
-- A. A. Michelson, 1894
[On the occasion of the dedication of a physics laboratory in Chicago, noting that all the more important physical laws had been discovered]"
See also Isaas Asimov's short-story "The Last Question", with the recurring line:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Last_Question
"INSUFFICIENT DATA FOR MEANINGFUL ANSWER".
Online here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ojEq-tTjcc0
You may well be right in the end. But there are a lot of uncertainties before then... And clearly there are a lot more obvious possibilities than TFA considers.
For example, Europe just issued a patent for for Francesco Piantelli's LENR process (aka "cold fusion"):
http://pesn.com/2013/01/24/9602268_LENR-to-Market_Weekly_January24/
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
Nobody wants a car that can only go where the roads are provisioned. What if I want to drive down an alley, or park my car on the lawn so I can wash it, or maybe take my SUV into the bush.
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
You seem to forget about capitalism reaching a "perfect state" before True Communism can break out.
(Dubious science, I know. Unfalsifiable according to Popper. But be fair.)
However, there is a tangible difference between socialism and capitalism; the former evens the playing field while the latter makes it uneven.
Historically it is tempting to compare capitalism with aristocracy and feudalism.
I don't know, but no communist text I have ever read indicates that no form of currency will exist. Currency is a convenient invention, but this invention is not what capitalism is about either.
It's to what aim and ideology the currency will be used, its role, that differs.
Disclaimer: IAN a communist nor a libertarian ("capitalist").
Defining Statistics and Social Research
However, there is a tangible difference between socialism and capitalism; the former evens the playing field while the latter makes it uneven. Historically it is tempting to compare capitalism with aristocracy and feudalism.
Your first sentence is exactly why I stated Capitalism in the ideal it was created with, and not what we see being practiced and called Capitalism. I get that my statement is unrealistic, however: What we have currently being called Capitalism is worse than what we called Mercantilism in the past.
Comparison: I could say something colored red was colored blue. Obviously you know this is false. If I took something like aquamarine and called it blue, you could see that I was at least close.
You sound like you have some knowledge, so I won't risk patronizing you by saying go read what the creator of capitalism said. We had regulations in place for 200 years to prevent what we see running rampant currently. It was not perfect, however AT&T was split up when abusing their monopoly powers, Standard Oil was split up, etc.. etc... Currently, most of those regulations are gone. Of the few that are left, they are not enforced (nor can they be enforced) due to corruptions to the Patent and Copyright systems which were supposed to prevent monopolization.
I don't know, but no communist text I have ever read indicates that no form of currency will exist. Currency is a convenient invention, but this invention is not what capitalism is about either.
I think you misunderstood the context of my statement. The person I responded to was complaining about the use of currency and blamed it's use (indirectly) on Capitalism. My statement was a correction and strong example of currencies use.
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
I just hate articles like this, Start off with "OMG Nookleyear is da Shitz! Everything else sucks".Apparently there will never be any discoveries of more efficient ways to make energy in any other technology. We're done, this is as far as we go, and we have discovered everything there is to discover.
I'm a proponent of Nuclear power. But this "great article" is a propaganda piece of crap.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
"What will happen when you finally occupy every planet in this galaxy?"
Captain Gorsid's puzzled eyes met Yoal's, then flashed to Veed, then Enash. Enash shrugged his torso negatively, and felt pity for the creature.
The man didn't understand, possibly never could understand. It was the old story of two different viewpoints, the virile and the decadent, the race that aspired to the stars and the race that declined the call of destiny.
"Why not," urged the man, "control the breeding chambers?"
"And have the government overthrown!" said Yoal.
He spoke tolerantly, and Enash saw that the others were smiling at the man's naivete. He felt the intellectual gulf between them widening. The creature had no comprehension of the natural life forces that were at work.
The man spoke again:
"Well, if you don't control them, we will control them for you."
From Van Voght's "The Monster/Resurrection"
Long answer http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge's_law_of_headlines
Casteism
Clean energy is abundant on this planet. That's exactly why the investors and governments don't want to use it. Eventually, there will be no gain for them, because the cost to produce clean energy will amount to almost nothing for the consumers.
70% of this word is covered by oceans, seas, rivers and lakes, which produce massive currents. If government aroud the world chose to use tidal energy plants on a planetary scale, combined with solar plants, geothermal plants (see Iceland, they want to export electricity), windmills and the recovery of gasses produced by natural waste, combine into a worldwide network, there wouldn't even be a debate about it.
Also, electricity would be abundant enough to massively produce hydrogen for cars.
Unfortunately, we do not live in a resource-based economy and the motives of investors, governments and other powers that be are anything but noble. They'd rather sell their sould to the devil and mess up this planet in spite of all the knowlege and the fact that there is no amount of money that could ever replace a ruined planet, not the mention the burden on future generations.
So articles like the ones in this post can be dismissed as sick propaganda.
You are right, and I have notably not read the works of Marx and Engels. Not sure if I'd like to, the history of commentary seems more interesting (take Althusser's ideological state, for example).
I remember reading that currency was invented (a number of times), but it actually took reading about it to make me understand what a great technology it is. The fact that currency is convenient is proved by its parasitic counter-examples, like how some cultures (e.g. the Spartans) controlled economies by making the unit of exchange so large and cumbersome great wealth, or wealth greater than what the higher ups approved, was practically impossible. Today I use digital currency 99% of the time, which is akin to "credits" in the Communist utopia in "Looking Backwards: 2000-1887" by Bellamy.
Defining Statistics and Social Research
Maybe "Mother Earth" wants quadrillions of her human children to go to the stars and to take all her other creatures with them?
Something I originally wrote on that two decades ago:
http://groups.google.com/group/openvirgle/msg/ac0ffaab1aa1c8ca
A letter from Gaia to humanity on the joy of expectation
Don't cry for me. When I let you evolve I knew it might cost the rhino and the tiger. I knew the rain forests would be cut down. I knew the rivers would be poisoned. I knew the ocean would turn to filth. I knew it would cost most of the species that are me.
What is the death of most of my species to me? It is only sleep. In ten million years I will have it all back again and more. This has happened many times already. Complex and fragile species will break along with the webs they are in. Robust and widespread species will persist along with simpler webs. In time these survivors will radiate to cover the globe in diversity again. Each time I come back in beauty like a bush pruned and regrown.
Be happy for me. Over and over again I have tried to give birth to more Gaias. Time and time again I have failed. With you I have hope. I cannot tell you how happy I am.
Your minds, spacecraft, biospheres, and computers give me new realms to evolve into. With your minds I evolve as ideas in inner space. With your technology I can evolve into self replicating habitats in outer space. Your computers and minds contain model Gaias I can talk to; they are my first children. Your space craft and biospheres are a step to spreading Gaias throughout the stars.
Cry, yes. Cry for yourselves. I am sorry those alive now will not live to see the splendor to come from what you have started. I am sorry for all the suffering your species and others will endure. You who live now will remember the tiger and the rain forest and mourn for them and yourselves. You will know what was lost without ever knowing what will be gained. I too mourn for them and you.
There is so much joy that awaits us. We must look up and forward. We must go on to a future - my future, our future. After eons of barrenness I am finally giving birth. Help me lest it all fall away and take eons more before I get this close again to having the children I always wanted.
(Paul D. Fernhout, Lindenhurst, NY 6/92)
===========
The preceeding is something I just scanned in from 1992, written while I was in the SUNY Stony Brook Ecology and Evolution PhD program (where I had gone to learn more towards simulating gardens and space habitats). I had learned there that it took about 10 million years to regenerate lots of biodiversity from a large asteroid impact event, and this had happened several times in Earth's history.
The following is a related statement also just scanned in of what inspired it written at the same time.
--Paul Fernhout (NY Adirondack Park, Oct 2008)
=================
If one accepted that modern industrial civilization has initiated a great die-off of species comparable to the one sixty-five million years ago, how should one feel about this?
Is overwhelming sadness and anger the best emotional response? On the surface it may seem so. Apparently modern civilization and the accompanying pollution and deforestation are pulling apart a tapestry woven over billions of years. Anger at the short sighted and narrow values driving industry may seem well placed. Certainly feelings of joy and excitement would seem out of place.
Here are a few thoughts that may affect one's feelings. High levels of biodiversity can be generated from very low ones in about ten million years. On the time scales of the earth this may not be a blink of an eye, but it is a short nap. To humans this may mean a great loss, but Gaia might barely notice. It has after all been only sixty-five million years since the last die off.
Not all species will be affected equally. A simplification will occur where the more specialized cre
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
Ah, I meant to post as myself, but checked the checkbox next to my name, which actually means "Post Anonymously". Someone should fix that.
Daniel LaLiberte https://www.facebook.com/daniel.laliberte
So, at some point, your descendants will have to learn how to live on renewable energy resources only. There really is no alternative.
[Footnote.] Strictly, it doesn't have to wait that long. When the energy needed to extract the last little bits of coal, oil and/ or uranium from the ground becomes greater than the energy that would be gained from that energy resource, then it is no longer viable, regardless of how much people are willing to pay for it. So, there will be oil etc left in the ground. But it won't be worth extracting. An unwelcome reminder for some people is that pipes in the ground a.k.a. oil wells do require maintenance and do corrode, so do not have an infinite lifespan to pay back the energetic investment that they represent.
Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"
Many people seem to still believe what they were taught 30 years ago about the population explosion. What was true then is no longer true - the world is changing rapidly, and one of the many ways it is changing is *reducing* our population growth.
Hans Rosling's videos are excellent, as well as engaging. I reference a couple others, and explore the issue of world population quite a bit more in this blog: http://globalconsensus.wordpress.com/2009/08/29/world-population-is-stabilizing/
Daniel LaLiberte https://www.facebook.com/daniel.laliberte
Another version: http://www.federicopistono.org/blog/isaac-asimov-the-last-question
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
This does not take into account that efficient use of energy may become one of our greatest resources, At present fuel for transportation is at a multi decade low. States thatdepend on gas tax for roads are having to look for new sources because fuel use has dropped to such a low. We've increase the efficency of our home to the point where it's no longer economical to consider geo thermal as an alternative as the payback at todays prices would be almost 50 years, With NG prices slated to go down (they are now at roughly 10% of what they were a decade ago) the payback would be even longer. If most tried to increase their heating and cooling efficency as wre have the fuel use would drop by a tremendous amount.
If the smallest interval for power distribution is only 15 minutes, that won't cut it in the world of renewables plus large-scale battery storage. They need to cut that down to one minute intervals for monitoring power distribution--now possible with modern communications technology.
That article does more harm than good.
First, it's extrapolating from one article's hypothetical projection about solar capacity to the incorrect conclusion that all the proponents of renewable energy have forgotten about energy conservation and Malthusian population limits.
Then, she's doing exactly what she accuses the renewables backers of: playing up only one possible improvement and ignoring the rest.
"Renewable energy advocates typically support conservation efforts, but they don't make reducing consumption their primary goal. Panicked by the urgency of the climate crisis, and rightfully so, their knee-jerk response is a "just do it" approach to technology. "Why don't we just build more solar panels and wind turbines?" they ask.
To which I say: Why don't we just not do it? Let's not build any new power plants except to replace old, inefficient ones. Let's not dig up all the oil. Let's not drive to work alone. Let's not eat meat every day. Let's not turn the thermostat up so high. Let's not buy so many things we don't really need. And above all, let's not accept continued energy growth as a necessary or even desirable way of life".
Her solution, in isolation, is as unworkable as any other single approach.
As long as the various evangelists for alternative energy strategies continue to undercut each other like this, instead of standing together to craft strategy that's actually workable, the pro-oil, pro-growth powers can just point and laugh at the lefty loonies, and little will change.
The correct question is, can we curb our appetites so that we can live within sustainable parameters, or are we just going to continue digging the hole deeper? Like so many other human civilizations through history managed to put themselves out of business with local ecological catastrophes, because they couldn't figure out how to stop doing stupid useless crap that was destroying them, like chopping down trees in order to erect giant stone heads, or using a 6,000 lb truck every time they need to move a 150 lb person a couple of miles?
Hell, what am I saying, we spend zillions of dollars a year in order to avoid eating vegetables and/or deal (not very successfully) with the negative effects of not eating them, then complain about the high cost of medical care. On behalf of future generations, I'd like to say "Goodbye advanced human civilization, it was nice knowing you, at least in history books."
Star Trek transporters are just 3d printers.
True; if we ever come up with a really good battery or equivalent (fuel cell, whatever) Everything Will Change.
Star Trek transporters are just 3d printers.
More a problem of small and/or mobile power storage. For the usual centralized giant power stations that we seem to be fixated on (despite the obvious handicap of dependency on the "grid" which has to be scaled up to meet absolute maximum power needs and is therefore excess capacity 96% of the time) at least we can store energy in vacuum housed magnetically driven flywheels, which can be amaxingly efficient, but have certain problems which make them better for use inside large concrete blockhouses than in a Toyota or an Ipod.
Star Trek transporters are just 3d printers.