Honestly, down here in Berkeley the fire was no big deal. Couldn't even smell it in the slightest bit.
Honestly, down here in Berkeley the fire was no big deal. Couldn't even smell it in the slightest bit.
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No, cut subsidies to new energy tech to create a free market (:cryingeagleOriginally Posted by Evelgrivion
and let the market decide.
But keep paying for oil subsidies etc to protect them.
To be fair, it is much more efficient to run an electric car off mains electricity generated from fossil fuels than to burn them in your own car.
Heh, I'm home for the summer so I'm pretty close to this thing. Those fuckers interrupted The Daily Show with one of those loud, screeching public warning programs on the TV. I didn't smell anything but the smoke was easily visible.
Natural gas is stupid cheap right now in America, and there is an absolute glut of it. In fact, it is uneconomical to drill for it right now because it is so cheap. It is also much cleaner than coal; that is the solution for energy going forward.firstly because it's not green, never was.WHY DO YOU HATE GREEN ENERGY
secondly because its all handwaving and smokes and mirrors without considering what the ultimate effects are, there's now 7 billion people on this planet, if we are going to provide enough power for all of them to live what we would consider a "comfortable life style" here in the west (ie, jettison the whole "consumerism" as the incredibly wasteful and unimaginably pointless construct it is) there's not going to be enough to go around without building more nuclear plants.
i would expect them to be placed in relatively safe areas, with strict running times and the kind of oversight reserved for nuclear weaponry.
the biggest danger there is with "going nuclear" is when "we suck bollocks power co." decides to cut costs on their aging reactor facilities by lowering safety or running them beyond their designed and projected lifespan.
Look at the stock price of coal companies lately, lots of them are losing money and some are going bankrupt because natural gas prices have pushed down the prices of coal.
Going forward for how long? I've seen estimates that the over-abundance of gas will only last for a couple of decades or so. We're in the same situation that we were back in the 1980s; after an energy crunch, a glut has driven down energy costs to near nothing, and it's threatening to kill a nascent alternative energy industry, which will ultimately be the only viable interim energy source so long as we don't want the ice caps to melt. Now is the right time to be investing in low to no polluting energy sources while we can depend on a cheap interim source. Going forward, we're going to be in trouble if we don't exercise forethought and build that new energy infrastructure while the time is right.
Ideally everyone would be running solar powered everything, with electric cars and solar heating their home water, and solar panels over every open concrete parking lot. Of course there exists no suitable sustainable technology right now that can meet future energy demands[citation needed] so we're stuck with nuclear and fossil fuels until the next big energy revolution.
We don't know how much natural gas we have (or oil for that matter) because more is constantly being discovered and new technology allows for new discoveries. Natural gas could potentially last us over 100 years. But, even if it doesn't, we do have enough to use it as a bridge fuel before the next "big thing".Going forward for how long? I've seen estimates that the over-abundance of gas will only last for a couple of decades or so. We're in the same situation that we were back in the 1980s; after an energy crunch, a glut has driven down energy costs to near nothing, and it's threatening to kill a nascent alternative energy industry, which will ultimately be the only viable interim energy source so long as we don't want the ice caps to melt. Now is the right time to be investing in low to no polluting energy sources while we can depend on a cheap interim source. Going forward, we're going to be in trouble if we don't exercise forethought and build that new energy infrastructure while the time is right.
I know that nuclear plants are prohibitively time intensive because it takes something like 20 years to build one. Not the case for natural gas power plants.
The switch is already taking place. Last year coal accounted for 45% of power generation in America, next year it is only going to represent 36%. That change is mainly attributable to natural gas.
The current scenario is all well and good so long as there is work taking place to find a proper non-fossil fuel solution. So far as I can see, the opportunity that natural gas has opened up is being spent to maintain the comfortable status quo, rather than invest in future energy sources. Granted, there are a few new nuclear reactors being built, but they aren't exactly a one for one replacement to existing dirty energy sources.We don't know how much natural gas we have (or oil for that matter) because more is constantly being discovered and new technology allows for new discoveries. Natural gas could potentially last us over 100 years. But, even if it doesn't, we do have enough to use it as a bridge fuel before the next "big thing".Going forward for how long? I've seen estimates that the over-abundance of gas will only last for a couple of decades or so. We're in the same situation that we were back in the 1980s; after an energy crunch, a glut has driven down energy costs to near nothing, and it's threatening to kill a nascent alternative energy industry, which will ultimately be the only viable interim energy source so long as we don't want the ice caps to melt. Now is the right time to be investing in low to no polluting energy sources while we can depend on a cheap interim source. Going forward, we're going to be in trouble if we don't exercise forethought and build that new energy infrastructure while the time is right.
I know that nuclear plants are prohibitively time intensive because it takes something like 20 years to build one. Not the case for natural gas power plants.
The switch is already taking place. Last year coal accounted for 45% of power generation in America, next year it is only going to represent 36%. That change is mainly attributable to natural gas.
Your argument would have made sense 70 years ago, before we (Germany) figured out how to make jet fuel from coal on a massive scale.Sensing sarcasm.
In defense of trying to preserve our fossil fuel supplies: it is proven that we are having a decline in the petrol that is being found in deposits, and while we might like driving and cheap ways to produce energy (coal plants), the petrol should be prioritized for jetliners and other massive transports - once the fuel runs out, we won't have the same access to rapid travel until we find alternative fuels for jets.
Sort of depends on what future energy demands are though ...
In principle they could be less than those of our present society. Not likely in practice short of major and probably not very pleasant social change, but possible in principle.
If you assume business as usual, only trying to be sustainable, then you're very likely right though.
See e.g. http://www.civil.uwaterloo.ca/maknig...%281999%29.pdf
N.B. the linked paper is talking about all resources, not just energy, and frames it in the context of population in a way I don't much care for, but it has the virtue of being a fairly authoritative attempt to quantify sustainable energy systems in the context of energy use for food and other wider relationships. The main constraint, given the nature of many of the renewable options and the energy/food system relationships, tends to be availability of land. Most sources that try to talk about sustainable energy fail to deal with these relationships in any systematic way, which is why despite its many flaws, I think the paper above is still quite useful as a guide to what 'business as usual only sustainable', which is what he's assuming, looks like quantitatively. He's definitely not assuming everybody lives in low-energy, permaculture eco-villages within walking distance of 90% of their food and over 50% of their energy production systems or he'd no doubt get much better, but arguably less politically achievable, numbers.
The author (who is a very good scientist, but evidently unsophisticated about politics) calculates that humans could live sustainably with about 2 billion global population and an 'EU average' standard of living.
Obviously, under capitalism where you need 2-3% year on year growth to prevent various sorts of crisis from occurring, this might be a bit of a challenge and my personal view is, until you've got an answer to that problem, talking about population limits as he does, makes little sense and encourages Malthusian nonsense.
That said, the quantitative stuff in the paper cited is still useful to get a feel for the scale of the problem and the relationships between different resource types, like conflicts between land use for energy systems vs. food systems.
Last edited by Sykes; August 8 2012 at 06:20:48 PM.
To power the worlds energy needs you can put solar panels in a section of the sahara desert and have enough energy to sustain everything. The problem is that the materials you need for that are not available on earth in such quantities.
Wind energy is fine and dandy but they also have a lot of issues with scaleability. I.e. the wind turbines currently in use are at the moment the largest feasable design simply because of structural limitations with the building materials.
Biofuel can work but we are running out of phosphor which gets used up in the fertilisers. The worlds easy phosphor access will arguably run out long, long before the fossil fuel reserves.
Nuclear fusion is the way of the future but it is barely energy positive in experimental reactors. It will take some time and :science: before they can work on economically viable scale, just throwing money at it is not enough.
Finding places to put radioactive waste is imho a very small price to pay for nuclear fission energy.
Last edited by Pacefalm; April 9 2011 at 9:52 PM.
The main problem with that is that copper wires aren't efficient enough to carry that energy anywhere useful, the maximum distance you can transmit electricity with economical (<10%) nevergy loss is somewhere around 4000km with AC and around 7000km with DC if I remember rightly. This is also the reason why you can't build hydroelectric dams anywhere you want with a sufficient tidal range.
Example:The Bay of Fundy in Canada has an insane tidal range, if you put a hydroelectric dam there it would probably supply a very significant percentage of the power needs of an average nation. But it's not worth doing because no-one lives near enough to it to make it economically viable.
It's also the reason why nuclear facilities tend to be located near large settlements despite the historical implications.
So yes, it all comes down to material science really.
Time to switch to silver!The main problem with that is that copper wires aren't efficient enough to carry that energy anywhere useful, the maximum distance you can transmit electricity with economical (<10%) nevergy loss is somewhere around 4000km with AC and around 7000km with DC if I remember rightly. This is also the reason why you can't build hydroelectric dams anywhere you want with a sufficient tidal range.
Example:The Bay of Fundy in Canada has an insane tidal range, if you put a hydroelectric dam there it would probably supply a very significant percentage of the power needs of an average nation. But it's not worth doing because no-one lives near enough to it to make it economically viable.
It's also the reason why nuclear facilities tend to be located near large settlements despite the historical implications.
So yes, it all comes down to material science really.
room temp superconducting ceramic more likeTime to switch to silver!The main problem with that is that copper wires aren't efficient enough to carry that energy anywhere useful, the maximum distance you can transmit electricity with economical (<10%) nevergy loss is somewhere around 4000km with AC and around 7000km with DC if I remember rightly. This is also the reason why you can't build hydroelectric dams anywhere you want with a sufficient tidal range.
Example:The Bay of Fundy in Canada has an insane tidal range, if you put a hydroelectric dam there it would probably supply a very significant percentage of the power needs of an average nation. But it's not worth doing because no-one lives near enough to it to make it economically viable.
It's also the reason why nuclear facilities tend to be located near large settlements despite the historical implications.
So yes, it all comes down to material science really.
this is why we need gun control
a shining beacon of quality posting in a sea of awful posting
If the oil refinery had a gun this wouldn't have happened?
I, too, want a ponyroom temp superconducting ceramic more likeTime to switch to silver!The main problem with that is that copper wires aren't efficient enough to carry that energy anywhere useful, the maximum distance you can transmit electricity with economical (<10%) nevergy loss is somewhere around 4000km with AC and around 7000km with DC if I remember rightly. This is also the reason why you can't build hydroelectric dams anywhere you want with a sufficient tidal range.
Example:The Bay of Fundy in Canada has an insane tidal range, if you put a hydroelectric dam there it would probably supply a very significant percentage of the power needs of an average nation. But it's not worth doing because no-one lives near enough to it to make it economically viable.
It's also the reason why nuclear facilities tend to be located near large settlements despite the historical implications.
So yes, it all comes down to material science really.
Liquid nitrogen temperature, rare-earth free, ceramic superconductors already exist, in the form of Bismuth strontium calcium copper oxide. It is superconductive up to 108 kelvin, but the reason it isn't used for much is because it's ceramic. A ductile, cheap, LN2 temperature (77 kelvin or more) superconductor is what's needed to revolutionize energy transfer.
Last edited by Evelgrivion; August 8 2012 at 07:24:59 PM.
Such a thing is at least plausible, unlike a room temp superconductor.
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