It's a useful skill for a kid with an XO that needs a new screen or a new motherboard. Nobody is saying that this is going to unleash a tidal wave of computer repair gurus upon the impoverished nations of the world. It just means that these little machines are meant to be modular and easy to repair. This drives down the cost of owning the machines, since you don't have to send them back to the shop, or hire a tech guru to fix them.
Now, once they've replaced the defective component, then maybe they can find out about repairing two-cylinder engines.
A few counterpoints. First, corruption in many African countries is on par with that of many of the Middle East states we consider allies. China (our biggest trading partner) is only incrementally better. Transparency International has some interesting statistics.
It's also important to remember that corruption is often as much a product of a poor economy as it is a cause. Your country needs a police force, but your government doesn't have the money to pay them. It may make sense to look the other way while your force hits the population up for bribes. Government institutions up and down the line require funding in order to be effective. The Western world is wealthy enough to pay for those institutions. That's just one of the many reasons I'm in favor of debt forgiveness for the third world.
We could use our foreign aid dollars to push against corruption. I think that, despite all the chest pounding by the hypocritical Wolfowitz, we don't really do that. Instead, we push for hard-right values like small government and lowered trade barriers, whether or not it makes sense for a given country. We also add self-interested provisos that require a large fraction of aid money to be spent on U.S. goods and services, which is essentially a way of taking taxpayer money and putting it in the hands of the corporations. It seems to me that the recipient country would be far better off using the money to buy local goods and local labor.
I'm often confronted by people who think we should cut off all aid to Africa, because their governments (which are indistinguishable in their minds) are too corrupt to make use of it. So I tend to react when I hear people wanting to make corruption The Most Important Issue. I think that dropping agricultural subsidies in America would do more for Africa than all the anti-corruption windbaggery we've done over the last fifty years.
>> You have not actually rebutted my arguments. You've spewed insults and pointed out where my arguments were incomplete. You have not shown a single time that my assumption was wrong or that a conclusion that I made from of my assumptions did not logically follow. Better luck practicing!
You say these things as though they were a bug, not a feature. If I thought I might convince you, or learn from you, I might try. I don't, so I haven't, and I won't.
This is why I don't want to engage you in a meaningful way. You claim that social programs lead inevitably to totalitarianism is yet-to-be-proven at best. I could name a dozen countries which -- in my mind, at least -- have both stronger social programs and a more vibrant democracy than the U.S. has. The U.S. seems far closer to your ideals than, say, France, but if you ask me, the U.S. is closer to slipping into totalitarianism.
The idea that innovation can only thrive under pure capitalism is bunk.
The idea that government is a solely coercive institution is bunk, and inconsistent as well unless you're a true anarchist.
I'm bored with debating these things with people like you, people who can blithely spout falsehoods like, "History tells that any such attempt leads to a merciless totalitarian state sooner or later." The only thing I think I have to learn from you is how to effectively rebut people like you, and I'd like to think I have better things to do.
>>> Because everything is allowed to him who means well.
Lookin' at you, Dubya.
No, it's a good point, but one that ought to apply equally to capitalist or bureaucrat.
>> I outlined an argument (albeit rather abstractly) for not wanting to support your needs.
Yes, you were mercifully brief. But within that short ramble, you outlined the following principles:
1) Taxation is theft.
2) Social programs are theft.
3) It is a simple economic fact that the material benefits of innovation go to the innovators themselves.
4) Hard work is always rewarded with a good life, opportunities for advancement are ample.
4b) Therefore the poor are entirely to blame for their own circumstances.
4c) Therefore, the system that rewards "winners" so well has absolutely zero responsibility to the "losers".
5) "stealing" is spelled with two 'e's.
The first two points make you a libertarian nutjob. Three and four make you either deluded or simply uncompassionate.
The fifth point is not as entirely gratuitous as it seems, since the original point of this thread was that it would gain me nothing to try and reply to you.
>> You gave some blurb about a pulp fiction writer (who may or may not agree with me) being bad.
A pulp fiction writer who -- whether you're aware of it or not -- did more to popularize the whole "Mine, mine, mine!" philosophy than a million slashdotters pitching semi-coherent cookie dough analogies could ever dream of doing. Bow before her dessicated corpse, padwan, and beg her rotted bones for forgiveness for not giving Rand her due. Then she may give you the strength to become a tenth the selfish, arrogant blowhard that she was.
>> When did we get to the point where people like you feel comfortable calling people like me nut jobs?
For me, the moment came when I realized that "people like you" are generally people who want the world to be as vicious and selfish a place as possible. You want the world to be a cutthroat, dog-eat-dog, because secretly you fantasize that in such a world you'd be the fastest knife, the biggest dog. Only then would the world finally recognize the inherent superiority of people like yourself, and stop lavishing your hard-earned money on welfare for the "undeserving."
You misunderstand. That wasn't my counterargument. That was me saying that I think you're a complete nutjob who isn't worth arguing with. The implication is that no counterargument will be forthcoming.
Listen, Ms. Rand. It's been well over a decade since I last thought you had anything remotely interesting to say. Kindly shove off, go back to writing your self-indulgent, fictionalized treatises about the inherent superiority of the capitalist nobility. Or being dead. Or whatever the hell you're doing these days.
Well, the Bush administration is against the bill, so I suppose I ought to be for it.
I think journalists often use anonymity irresponsibly. It's not just used for whistleblowers exposing shady dealings and national conspiracies. It's also used to hide legitimate conflicts of interest from public view. In the run-up to the Iraq war,
Does anyone remember that time when a source on the Iraq war, who demanded that he only be referred to as a "senior administration official", came across as a bit of a Dick?
Anonymity shouldn't be used for trivial reasons, and it shouldn't be used to give those in power a soapbox for publishing self-serving disinformation. Hint: if you're interviewing an administration official who thinks the president is about to rush us into a disastrous war, anonymity might be right for you. If you're interviewing an official who wants to use anonymity to make his pro-war opinions sound like they're coming from a more legitimate and objective source than, well, him... the American people deserve to know how credible the source is.
The law itself is probably a good idea, but journalists have lately been willing to grant anonymity to clearly undeserving sources.
So long as we mouth the platitudes, reality can go hang, I suppose.
The only freedom being promoted in America these days is the freedom for rich people to get richer, and the freedom of the poor to fight with all the desperation and ingenuity they can muster for the crumbs that fall from the table.
Freedom from want? Freedom from fear? Archaic niceties we can no longer afford, not when they interfere with freedom to profit.
But when it's used as a buffer to pay for EVERY medical expense it turns into something that is nothing like insurance, and is a lot like a socialist economy.
Well, why not? The small-ticket items are usually the ones that delay or prevent big-ticket expenses from happening. If Bob decides to skip his yearly prostate exam to save a couple hundred bucks, and as a result adds $40,000 to the cost of his cancer treatment, then who benefited from making him pay for it himself?
Of course, take my comments with a grain of salt: I come from a country where all medical needs are fully covered. In such a system, doctors and patients and employers (and maybe even insurance companies) all have their goals aligned: to keep everyone as healthy as possible.
Not that the power grids of most industrialized nations could withstand the introduction of fifty or sixty million electric vehicles anyway.
Ours could. If we assume that the bulk of the fleet was being recharged at night, there is enough excess capacity to fuel... [places pinky to the side of mouth]... one... hundred... eighty... meeeellion cars.
The earthquakes associated with the process are tiny, and probably have nothing to do with tectonic plates. The idea of getting a volcano seems a bit farfetched, and anyhow volcanoes don't put out much CO2 at all. I think you may be thinking of SO2.
>> [...]even a small CO2 belch from an active site has been known to wipe out small towns.
[citation needed]
>> There seem to be a few indications that it may be no better for the environment than oil. I'd like to be wrong, but there it is.
More details, please.
>> There isn't a great deal more power to be had, at least not the 3000% increase that you are talking about.
Again, citation needed. Can you point me to research indicating that Minnesota (or heck, any state) is actually wind saturated? As in, something that specifically states they are already extracting a significant percent of all the wind energy that is economically harvestable?
I suspect that the primary reason for the low figures is a lack of people willing to put up the extra couple of cents per kilowatt hour needed to get more projects up and running. I suppose there might also be a lack of landowners willing to host windmills. But my understanding is that we could increase our production of wind turbines a hundred fold and not come close to running out of places to put them. Wikipediacites a report that claims that there is enough wind available to power our current needs five times over, without dipping into lower quality sites (read, offshore, or areas with less than 15mph average windspeed). And I really doubt there are many places you could put a turbine where it wouldn't pay back the original energy investment (outside downtown Baghdad).
Offshore sites often have nearly twice the wind speed. Since energy production goes up with the cube of wind speed, there is huge potential out there.
Why? Because they're scientists! If they made science easy and layman-friendly, then why would anyone pay scientists to do science?
Actually, I've been reading the MIT report, and my guess is that 100% is the amount of energy you could theoretically withdraw from the entire bedrock of the United States (drilling down to wherever the bedrock reached 350 degrees, cracking the rock to let water through, then pumping the hot water back up). 40% is the percent of the theoretical yield you could get by placing a geothermal plant on each square kilometer of the United States.
Thus, the 40% figure becomes a sort of theoretical maximum yield for calculating the supply curves. IOW, the figure was intended to provide a basis for an economic model, not to get laypeople excited.
What is your definition of "virtually inexhaustible"? Mine would be "more than enough to power current human activity for mind-blowing timescales". Which is a property that geothermal energy has. The total heat energy in the Earth is enough for about five billion years of current energy usage.
The numbers given aren't imaginary. They're just unachievable. My interpretation of the report is that the 40% figure would require a geothermal energy installation for each square kilometer throughout the U.S. The authors seem to think that, while geothermal is only viable in very limited geographical areas, the technology will rapidly improve to the point where all sorts of locations will be cost competitive. Once we get to the point where you could put an economical geothermal plant anywhere across, say, 1% of the continental U.S., then we have the option of replacing our entire baseload with geothermal.
Well just you wait until the Islamofascists declare their jihad and start suicide nuking their country right and left. Then how much use will their Neville Chamberlain-ing and appeasement be? And the US will be in no position to help because we'll all be nuked or living under the Sharia law of the Iranians. Why? Because as we all know the United States is the freest nation on Earth, and the Islamofascist jihad hates us for our freedoms. So of course they'll blow up the most hated countries first. Unless they play it sneaky and subvert Europe first through immigration, to use it as a base to launch their suicide nukers. But more likely, they'll just wait until the Democrats in Congress turn over control of the government to Osama, in the name of their twin gods of cultural sensitivity and affirmative action.
At least, that's how I understood it last time I tuned in to Rush Limbaugh.
There has been a lot of new development in geothermal. The report seems far more optimistic about geothermal energy than you are.
Their main reason for coming up with the ludicrously large "56,000 times over" figure was not to get people all excited, but to provide a basis for their supply curve calculations. IOW, to ask, "how much of this resource is available at a given cost (measured in cents/kWH)?" Looking at figures 9.18 and 9.19, I believe the green line indicates how much energy is available at the "break even" point for any year in their model. Which is to say that, given that some geothermal sources are less economical to recover than others, and given the expected state of geothermal technology in that year, how much geothermal energy is available that could economically replace any other new source of power?
Notice that the green line starts out pretty well at zero. Also notice the hugeness of the numbers on the left. 15,000MW, near the bottom of the graph, is about the total energy demand for the United States. So the basic story that graph is trying to tell is this: while geothermal may be limited to geological anomalies at the moment, the improvements in geothermal technology we expect to see over the next few decades will make it economical in vastly larger areas, to the point that we could choose to use it to serve as our primary source of power.
Minnesota for example is in a "wind corridor" and has ample wind generation equipment. It is still generating only around 3% of it's needs this way even though the local electrical utility has increased the payable price for wind generated electricity by allowing their customers to opt to pay more for wind generated power.
This proves nothing, especially since our primary power source (coal) is artificially cheap because coal plants don't absorb the costs of the CO2 they put in the atmosphere. If those externalities were internalized, then wind power would be more cost competitive. Also, this has nothing to do with how much wind power is actually feasible to harvest. If Minnesota were to one day decide, "Hey, $0.11/kW (or some other not-bad, but above current market rate price) is just fine! Let's use wind for everything!" there might or might not be enough good wind sites across the Minnesotan landscape to fulfill their energy demands. But the fact that wind isn't a major producer now proves nothing about wind power's viability as a bulk power source.
It seems from the MIT report, the $1,000,000 figure isn't the total costs of the geothermal plants, but to the amount of government subsidy required to kick off this steampunk revolution. I'm still trying to skim the report (300+ pages, in very layman-unfriendly verbiage), but my understanding thus far:
* Geothermal is currently underutilized. * This underinvestment occurs because there are cheaper alternatives (coal, nuclear, etc.) * The report predicts that in a "mature" industry (which would happen in about 20 years under their plan), electricity could be delivered for 3.5c / kWH, as opposed to the current 11.0c / kWH. (see Figure 9.5) * The report predicts that geothermal will become "competitive" (in the sense that the cost of installing an additional megawatt of baseload capacity is the same for geothermal as for the most price-competitive alternative) in about 11 years.
It's not clear to me that the authors are actually calling for government subsidies to speed R&D and installation. But they're definitely claiming that in the long term, geothermal has enormous potential, and will eventually become the best choice for new installed capacity.
To add some detail to the story summary, the estimate of the total energy reserves under the U.S. is calculated thusly:
The ultimate resource is virtually infinite, but inaccessible. That is, if it were possible to drill to depths where >350C heat stores were available, fracture the rock at that depth, and gain access to reservoirs created as a result, then all basement rock on the continent would be a source of EGS. As a practical matter, this is not likely to occur within the next 50 years, so we have arbitrarily limited the estimates
of available energy by assuming aggressive, but historically proven, learning and technology application scenarios.
That's a hell of a lot of mining. So they recognize that we'll never come close to extracting 100% (or even 40%) of the potential energy reserves.
Interesting. If we assume that the globe is in thermal equilibrium, then 45TW of energy must be being produced inside the Earth. So that's the most we could use "sustainably" (most conceptions of sustainability really aren't thinking about the billion-year time scales involved here).
Now, we can harvest much faster than that, because there is a lot of reserve heat that hasn't migrated to the surface (billions of years worth of current energy needs, according to the article). Extracting near the surface just speeds the rate at which energy is transferred from deeper levels. What long-term effects that sort of global cooling will have on our long-term geology is beyond me. My guess is, not too much.
It would take a very long time to cool the core significantly (given present energy usage). I'd be a bit more concerned about the effects on plate tectonics near the surface; we could certainly alter the temperatures of the first couple miles of crust if we made a concerted effort to do so.
The amount of stored energy in the Earth is huge, so worrying about draining the battery is probably useless. I'd be more worried about how individual geothermal stations alter the local geology.
I think the effects on atmospheric temperatures would be negligible. Most of the geothermal energy we'd be using would be displacing other sources of heat like coal and nuclear power. More important, all our energy usage is irrelevantly small when compared to the torrent of energy coming out of the sun. Because geothermal energy prevents CO2 from getting into the atmosphere, then that will help out enormously. The rest is just rounding errors.
"right now, electrical storage is better and cheaper than hydrogen will be in 20 years from now"
Is that on a per-unit weight basis? I'm very skeptical of hydrogen. To me, the only good argument I've seen is that hydrogen fuel cells can be quickly recharged in a way that batteries cannot. But I've heard there are some good, fast-charging capacitors in the works.
Which specific storage methods are you referring to?
You're wrong on several points. When you ask "why does something cost $15,000?" your answer is wrong. It's not $15,000 because it took $15,000 worth of inputs. It's $15,000 because that's what someone else is willing to pay for it! You really think that the CD you bought had $19 worth of inputs? It's ten cents worth of plastic and paper.
Energy from oil and solar are fundamentally different, economically speaking. Oil is theft. Consider: when we first mastered this whole technology shtick, we found ourselves on a planet with X trillion barrels of oil. We didn't create it; it was just something that was there, something that we could make use of. Of course, anyone over the next million generations of humanity could also find it to be a useful resource. But the first five generations are using up every drop of it. Obviously, the temporal logistics make it impossible for future persons to spend their dollars in present markets. If they could say, "Don't burn it yet! I'm willing to spend X to keep it available for my future use," then oil would be vastly more expensive than it is today. This goes the same for every non-renewable resource. Such resources are inherently priced artificially low.
Solar power, in contrast, is being trickled out at a basically constant rate until the sun goes nova. Each generation the same amount of energy falls on the Earth. If people don't set up collectors to snag the energy, it disappears forever. Future generations can't bid on our present solar energy, because there is no way to make our allotment available to the future. It's our energy, and we should be using it instead of oil.
The idea that subsidies only promote cost-ineffective outcomes is absurd, the worst sort of uninformed free market religious worship. Read this, and try to figure it out for yourself.
Slashdot Mirror
Here's the link you're looking for.
It's a useful skill for a kid with an XO that needs a new screen or a new motherboard. Nobody is saying that this is going to unleash a tidal wave of computer repair gurus upon the impoverished nations of the world. It just means that these little machines are meant to be modular and easy to repair. This drives down the cost of owning the machines, since you don't have to send them back to the shop, or hire a tech guru to fix them.
Now, once they've replaced the defective component, then maybe they can find out about repairing two-cylinder engines.
A few counterpoints. First, corruption in many African countries is on par with that of many of the Middle East states we consider allies. China (our biggest trading partner) is only incrementally better. Transparency International has some interesting statistics.
It's also important to remember that corruption is often as much a product of a poor economy as it is a cause. Your country needs a police force, but your government doesn't have the money to pay them. It may make sense to look the other way while your force hits the population up for bribes. Government institutions up and down the line require funding in order to be effective. The Western world is wealthy enough to pay for those institutions. That's just one of the many reasons I'm in favor of debt forgiveness for the third world.
We could use our foreign aid dollars to push against corruption. I think that, despite all the chest pounding by the hypocritical Wolfowitz, we don't really do that. Instead, we push for hard-right values like small government and lowered trade barriers, whether or not it makes sense for a given country. We also add self-interested provisos that require a large fraction of aid money to be spent on U.S. goods and services, which is essentially a way of taking taxpayer money and putting it in the hands of the corporations. It seems to me that the recipient country would be far better off using the money to buy local goods and local labor.
I'm often confronted by people who think we should cut off all aid to Africa, because their governments (which are indistinguishable in their minds) are too corrupt to make use of it. So I tend to react when I hear people wanting to make corruption The Most Important Issue. I think that dropping agricultural subsidies in America would do more for Africa than all the anti-corruption windbaggery we've done over the last fifty years.
You are entirely free to draw whatever conclusions you like.
>> You have not actually rebutted my arguments. You've spewed insults and pointed out where my arguments were incomplete. You have not shown a single time that my assumption was wrong or that a conclusion that I made from of my assumptions did not logically follow. Better luck practicing!
You say these things as though they were a bug, not a feature. If I thought I might convince you, or learn from you, I might try. I don't, so I haven't, and I won't.
This is why I don't want to engage you in a meaningful way. You claim that social programs lead inevitably to totalitarianism is yet-to-be-proven at best. I could name a dozen countries which -- in my mind, at least -- have both stronger social programs and a more vibrant democracy than the U.S. has. The U.S. seems far closer to your ideals than, say, France, but if you ask me, the U.S. is closer to slipping into totalitarianism.
The idea that innovation can only thrive under pure capitalism is bunk.
The idea that government is a solely coercive institution is bunk, and inconsistent as well unless you're a true anarchist.
I'm bored with debating these things with people like you, people who can blithely spout falsehoods like, "History tells that any such attempt leads to a merciless totalitarian state sooner or later." The only thing I think I have to learn from you is how to effectively rebut people like you, and I'd like to think I have better things to do.
>>> Because everything is allowed to him who means well.
Lookin' at you, Dubya.
No, it's a good point, but one that ought to apply equally to capitalist or bureaucrat.
>> Really? A nut job?
Too true.
>> I outlined an argument (albeit rather abstractly) for not wanting to support your needs.
Yes, you were mercifully brief. But within that short ramble, you outlined the following principles:
1) Taxation is theft.
2) Social programs are theft.
3) It is a simple economic fact that the material benefits of innovation go to the innovators themselves.
4) Hard work is always rewarded with a good life, opportunities for advancement are ample.
4b) Therefore the poor are entirely to blame for their own circumstances.
4c) Therefore, the system that rewards "winners" so well has absolutely zero responsibility to the "losers".
5) "stealing" is spelled with two 'e's.
The first two points make you a libertarian nutjob. Three and four make you either deluded or simply uncompassionate.
The fifth point is not as entirely gratuitous as it seems, since the original point of this thread was that it would gain me nothing to try and reply to you.
>> You gave some blurb about a pulp fiction writer (who may or may not agree with me) being bad.
A pulp fiction writer who -- whether you're aware of it or not -- did more to popularize the whole "Mine, mine, mine!" philosophy than a million slashdotters pitching semi-coherent cookie dough analogies could ever dream of doing. Bow before her dessicated corpse, padwan, and beg her rotted bones for forgiveness for not giving Rand her due. Then she may give you the strength to become a tenth the selfish, arrogant blowhard that she was.
>> When did we get to the point where people like you feel comfortable calling people like me nut jobs?
For me, the moment came when I realized that "people like you" are generally people who want the world to be as vicious and selfish a place as possible. You want the world to be a cutthroat, dog-eat-dog, because secretly you fantasize that in such a world you'd be the fastest knife, the biggest dog. Only then would the world finally recognize the inherent superiority of people like yourself, and stop lavishing your hard-earned money on welfare for the "undeserving."
You misunderstand. That wasn't my counterargument. That was me saying that I think you're a complete nutjob who isn't worth arguing with. The implication is that no counterargument will be forthcoming.
Listen, Ms. Rand. It's been well over a decade since I last thought you had anything remotely interesting to say. Kindly shove off, go back to writing your self-indulgent, fictionalized treatises about the inherent superiority of the capitalist nobility. Or being dead. Or whatever the hell you're doing these days.
Well, the Bush administration is against the bill, so I suppose I ought to be for it.
I think journalists often use anonymity irresponsibly. It's not just used for whistleblowers exposing shady dealings and national conspiracies. It's also used to hide legitimate conflicts of interest from public view. In the run-up to the Iraq war,
Does anyone remember that time when a source on the Iraq war, who demanded that he only be referred to as a "senior administration official", came across as a bit of a Dick?
Anonymity shouldn't be used for trivial reasons, and it shouldn't be used to give those in power a soapbox for publishing self-serving disinformation. Hint: if you're interviewing an administration official who thinks the president is about to rush us into a disastrous war, anonymity might be right for you. If you're interviewing an official who wants to use anonymity to make his pro-war opinions sound like they're coming from a more legitimate and objective source than, well, him... the American people deserve to know how credible the source is.
The law itself is probably a good idea, but journalists have lately been willing to grant anonymity to clearly undeserving sources.
So long as we mouth the platitudes, reality can go hang, I suppose.
The only freedom being promoted in America these days is the freedom for rich people to get richer, and the freedom of the poor to fight with all the desperation and ingenuity they can muster for the crumbs that fall from the table.
Freedom from want? Freedom from fear? Archaic niceties we can no longer afford, not when they interfere with freedom to profit.
The earthquakes associated with the process are tiny, and probably have nothing to do with tectonic plates. The idea of getting a volcano seems a bit farfetched, and anyhow volcanoes don't put out much CO2 at all. I think you may be thinking of SO2.
>> [...]even a small CO2 belch from an active site has been known to wipe out small towns.
[citation needed]
>> There seem to be a few indications that it may be no better for the environment than oil. I'd like to be wrong, but there it is.
More details, please.
>> There isn't a great deal more power to be had, at least not the 3000% increase that you are talking about.
Again, citation needed. Can you point me to research indicating that Minnesota (or heck, any state) is actually wind saturated? As in, something that specifically states they are already extracting a significant percent of all the wind energy that is economically harvestable?
I suspect that the primary reason for the low figures is a lack of people willing to put up the extra couple of cents per kilowatt hour needed to get more projects up and running. I suppose there might also be a lack of landowners willing to host windmills. But my understanding is that we could increase our production of wind turbines a hundred fold and not come close to running out of places to put them. Wikipedia cites a report that claims that there is enough wind available to power our current needs five times over, without dipping into lower quality sites (read, offshore, or areas with less than 15mph average windspeed). And I really doubt there are many places you could put a turbine where it wouldn't pay back the original energy investment (outside downtown Baghdad).
Offshore sites often have nearly twice the wind speed. Since energy production goes up with the cube of wind speed, there is huge potential out there.
Why? Because they're scientists! If they made science easy and layman-friendly, then why would anyone pay scientists to do science?
Actually, I've been reading the MIT report, and my guess is that 100% is the amount of energy you could theoretically withdraw from the entire bedrock of the United States (drilling down to wherever the bedrock reached 350 degrees, cracking the rock to let water through, then pumping the hot water back up). 40% is the percent of the theoretical yield you could get by placing a geothermal plant on each square kilometer of the United States.
Thus, the 40% figure becomes a sort of theoretical maximum yield for calculating the supply curves. IOW, the figure was intended to provide a basis for an economic model, not to get laypeople excited.
We're Americans, dammit! When we want pore space, by golly, WE MAKE PORE SPACE!
Really, they are working on ways to break up the rock. Both acid and mass quantities of cold water have been used.
The MIT Report is here. Reading the Executive Summary will give you a much more optimistic view of the future of geothermal.
What is your definition of "virtually inexhaustible"? Mine would be "more than enough to power current human activity for mind-blowing timescales". Which is a property that geothermal energy has. The total heat energy in the Earth is enough for about five billion years of current energy usage.
The numbers given aren't imaginary. They're just unachievable. My interpretation of the report is that the 40% figure would require a geothermal energy installation for each square kilometer throughout the U.S. The authors seem to think that, while geothermal is only viable in very limited geographical areas, the technology will rapidly improve to the point where all sorts of locations will be cost competitive. Once we get to the point where you could put an economical geothermal plant anywhere across, say, 1% of the continental U.S., then we have the option of replacing our entire baseload with geothermal.
Well just you wait until the Islamofascists declare their jihad and start suicide nuking their country right and left. Then how much use will their Neville Chamberlain-ing and appeasement be? And the US will be in no position to help because we'll all be nuked or living under the Sharia law of the Iranians. Why? Because as we all know the United States is the freest nation on Earth, and the Islamofascist jihad hates us for our freedoms. So of course they'll blow up the most hated countries first. Unless they play it sneaky and subvert Europe first through immigration, to use it as a base to launch their suicide nukers. But more likely, they'll just wait until the Democrats in Congress turn over control of the government to Osama, in the name of their twin gods of cultural sensitivity and affirmative action.
At least, that's how I understood it last time I tuned in to Rush Limbaugh.
Their main reason for coming up with the ludicrously large "56,000 times over" figure was not to get people all excited, but to provide a basis for their supply curve calculations. IOW, to ask, "how much of this resource is available at a given cost (measured in cents/kWH)?" Looking at figures 9.18 and 9.19, I believe the green line indicates how much energy is available at the "break even" point for any year in their model. Which is to say that, given that some geothermal sources are less economical to recover than others, and given the expected state of geothermal technology in that year, how much geothermal energy is available that could economically replace any other new source of power?
Notice that the green line starts out pretty well at zero. Also notice the hugeness of the numbers on the left. 15,000MW, near the bottom of the graph, is about the total energy demand for the United States. So the basic story that graph is trying to tell is this: while geothermal may be limited to geological anomalies at the moment, the improvements in geothermal technology we expect to see over the next few decades will make it economical in vastly larger areas, to the point that we could choose to use it to serve as our primary source of power.This proves nothing, especially since our primary power source (coal) is artificially cheap because coal plants don't absorb the costs of the CO2 they put in the atmosphere. If those externalities were internalized, then wind power would be more cost competitive. Also, this has nothing to do with how much wind power is actually feasible to harvest. If Minnesota were to one day decide, "Hey, $0.11/kW (or some other not-bad, but above current market rate price) is just fine! Let's use wind for everything!" there might or might not be enough good wind sites across the Minnesotan landscape to fulfill their energy demands. But the fact that wind isn't a major producer now proves nothing about wind power's viability as a bulk power source.
* Geothermal is currently underutilized.
* This underinvestment occurs because there are cheaper alternatives (coal, nuclear, etc.)
* The report predicts that in a "mature" industry (which would happen in about 20 years under their plan), electricity could be delivered for 3.5c / kWH, as opposed to the current 11.0c / kWH. (see Figure 9.5)
* The report predicts that geothermal will become "competitive" (in the sense that the cost of installing an additional megawatt of baseload capacity is the same for geothermal as for the most price-competitive alternative) in about 11 years.
It's not clear to me that the authors are actually calling for government subsidies to speed R&D and installation. But they're definitely claiming that in the long term, geothermal has enormous potential, and will eventually become the best choice for new installed capacity.
To add some detail to the story summary, the estimate of the total energy reserves under the U.S. is calculated thusly:That's a hell of a lot of mining. So they recognize that we'll never come close to extracting 100% (or even 40%) of the potential energy reserves.
Interesting. If we assume that the globe is in thermal equilibrium, then 45TW of energy must be being produced inside the Earth. So that's the most we could use "sustainably" (most conceptions of sustainability really aren't thinking about the billion-year time scales involved here).
Now, we can harvest much faster than that, because there is a lot of reserve heat that hasn't migrated to the surface (billions of years worth of current energy needs, according to the article). Extracting near the surface just speeds the rate at which energy is transferred from deeper levels. What long-term effects that sort of global cooling will have on our long-term geology is beyond me. My guess is, not too much.
It would take a very long time to cool the core significantly (given present energy usage). I'd be a bit more concerned about the effects on plate tectonics near the surface; we could certainly alter the temperatures of the first couple miles of crust if we made a concerted effort to do so.
The amount of stored energy in the Earth is huge, so worrying about draining the battery is probably useless. I'd be more worried about how individual geothermal stations alter the local geology.
I think the effects on atmospheric temperatures would be negligible. Most of the geothermal energy we'd be using would be displacing other sources of heat like coal and nuclear power. More important, all our energy usage is irrelevantly small when compared to the torrent of energy coming out of the sun. Because geothermal energy prevents CO2 from getting into the atmosphere, then that will help out enormously. The rest is just rounding errors.
Which specific storage methods are you referring to?
You're wrong on several points. When you ask "why does something cost $15,000?" your answer is wrong. It's not $15,000 because it took $15,000 worth of inputs. It's $15,000 because that's what someone else is willing to pay for it! You really think that the CD you bought had $19 worth of inputs? It's ten cents worth of plastic and paper.
Energy from oil and solar are fundamentally different, economically speaking. Oil is theft. Consider: when we first mastered this whole technology shtick, we found ourselves on a planet with X trillion barrels of oil. We didn't create it; it was just something that was there, something that we could make use of. Of course, anyone over the next million generations of humanity could also find it to be a useful resource. But the first five generations are using up every drop of it. Obviously, the temporal logistics make it impossible for future persons to spend their dollars in present markets. If they could say, "Don't burn it yet! I'm willing to spend X to keep it available for my future use," then oil would be vastly more expensive than it is today. This goes the same for every non-renewable resource. Such resources are inherently priced artificially low.
Solar power, in contrast, is being trickled out at a basically constant rate until the sun goes nova. Each generation the same amount of energy falls on the Earth. If people don't set up collectors to snag the energy, it disappears forever. Future generations can't bid on our present solar energy, because there is no way to make our allotment available to the future. It's our energy, and we should be using it instead of oil.
The idea that subsidies only promote cost-ineffective outcomes is absurd, the worst sort of uninformed free market religious worship. Read this, and try to figure it out for yourself.