60 replies to this topic

[aug]

Emax, on Feb 5 2009, 09:08 AM, said:

So - two kids, huh?

Nope, two ex-wives.

[mthornton]

Emax wrote
I want to see financial concentration on earth-bound fusion: huge output, very little waste product (if any). In previous posts, I have suggested that this take place somewhere where there are no people - where no one wants to be - some place like Antarctica. Fusion-to-electric / electric-to-electrolysis of seawater / use the hydrogen, release the oxygen to the atmosphere. This will happen.

But the thing is : that "energy" is the biggest single world commodity. Control of commodities is power, and that's what it is really all about. So whoever controls the limited availability of the technology to make fusion happen... at any scale, will have vast power. It would seem tom me a bit naive to think that if/when fusion technology becomes mainstream, that it will not be limited and thus extremely expensive. This applies to any technology.

Imagine if you took all the money the oil-companies made & channelled it towards fusion research, we would have real progress. (silly, I know)

Um... I'm on wife #3, with lots of little semi-wives in between.

M

[Emax]

mthornton, on Feb 6 2009, 06:27 PM, said:

Emax wrote
I want to see financial concentration on earth-bound fusion: huge output, very little waste product (if any). In previous posts, I have suggested that this take place somewhere where there are no people - where no one wants to be - some place like Antarctica. Fusion-to-electric / electric-to-electrolysis of seawater / use the hydrogen, release the oxygen to the atmosphere. This will happen.

But the thing is : that "energy" is the biggest single world commodity. Control of commodities is power, and that's what it is really all about. (1) So whoever controls the limited availability of the technology to make fusion happen... at any scale, will have vast power. It would seem tom me a bit naive to think that if/when fusion technology becomes mainstream, that it will not be limited and (2) thus extremely expensive. This applies to any technology.

Imagine if you took all the money the oil-companies made & channeled it towards fusion research, we would have real progress. (silly, I know)

Um... I'm on wife #3, with lots of little semi-wives in between.

M

1. Well historically, just where has all original technology - that is to say, innovation - come from?

2. Initially expensive, perhaps - but inexhaustible (as far as we are concerned). Anything produced through technology costs more than something that is "harvested" - hell, gasoline costs more than crude oil.

Solar?
Solar energy density at the earth's surface is 1.4 kW per square meter. Today's photovoltaic conversion efficiency is around 25%. 1400 x .25 = 350 Watt (per sq. meter).
The total world-wide generating plant, in 1995, produced 2.9 terraWatts (2.9 x 10 followed by 12 zeros). The estimated world-wide electrical demand by the year 2050 is around 300 QUADS (3 x 10 followed by 15 zeros... Watts). You do the math for the land area needed to satisfy even the present demand, let alone the future need - you can even assume that photovoltaic efficiency will increase to 75% (as the optimists claim). It's a God-awful amount of space.

https://ssl.catalog.com/~ultimax.com/whitep...rs/2001_3b.html

The sun's radiation falling on this planet is responsible for every source of energy there has ever been - but it has been stored-up over a very long period of time... and we're using these stores up far more rapidly than they can possibly be produced. We're not sunk yet, but we will be at some point in time. The fusion notion simply takes a queue from the sun's own engine - the engine, in fact or the known universe. Duplicating this process (at a distance closer than 150 million kilometers) may be our only salvation - but unless we can arrange a direct electrical conversion, this too will contribute to global warming... but in a different way.

This post has been edited by Emax: 07 February 2009 - 09:26 AM

[k2skier]

The future will hold many different types of energy, not just one. It will be a combination of solar, wind, wave (moving water), crude and newly engineered energy sources. But first, we must all start using less.

Common sense and sustainability.

[Emax]

k2skier, on Feb 8 2009, 09:17 AM, said:

The future will hold many different types of energy, not just one. It will be a combination of solar, wind, wave (moving water), crude and newly engineered energy sources. But first, we must all start using less.

Common sense and sustainability.

...and under the "common sense" category, let's please include population control. We can either control it ourselves (the nice way) - or it will control itself (the hard way).
It seems ironic that the real key to energy sustainability and a "human-friendly planet" is right between our fingers: it's the tongue on our collective zipper.

[mthornton]

Emax, on Feb 7 2009, 09:34 AM, said:

1. Well historically, just where has all original technology - that is to say, innovation - come from?

2. Initially expensive, perhaps - but inexhaustible (as far as we are concerned). Anything produced through technology costs more than something that is "harvested" - hell, gasoline costs more than crude oil.

Solar?
Solar energy density at the earth's surface is 1.4 kW per square meter. Today's photovoltaic conversion efficiency is around 25%. 1400 x .25 = 350 Watt (per sq. meter).
The total world-wide generating plant, in 1995, produced 2.9 terraWatts (2.9 x 10 followed by 12 zeros). The estimated world-wide electrical demand by the year 2050 is around 300 QUADS (3 x 10 followed by 15 zeros... Watts). You do the math for the land area needed to satisfy even the present demand, let alone the future need - you can even assume that photovoltaic efficiency will increase to 75% (as the optimists claim). It's a God-awful amount of space.

https://ssl.catalog.com/~ultimax.com/whitep...rs/2001_3b.html

The sun's radiation falling on this planet is responsible for every source of energy there has ever been - but it has been stored-up over a very long period of time... and we're using these stores up far more rapidly than they can possibly be produced. We're not sunk yet, but we will be at some point in time. The fusion notion simply takes a queue from the sun's own engine - the engine, in fact or the known universe. Duplicating this process (at a distance closer than 150 million kilometers) may be our only salvation - but unless we can arrange a direct electrical conversion, this too will contribute to global warming... but in a different way.

I read the above link, as well as a couple other papers, but then my brain began to liquify & ooze out my ears. Good stuff, although for the immediate future (my lifetime) I don't think there will be a timely solution forthcoming via solar sails.

We reside on top of a vast source of energy. But our technology to transform geothermal energy directly into electricity is crude at best. I've been thinking lately about using heat-pumps to recover IR loss from my pad-mount distribution transformers (or any waste-heat producing equipment or process), and this has led me become curious about our existing, very limited heat-pump technology.
Perhaps our governments should bail-out General Motors only under the condition that they develop us each a nice affordable back-yard geothermal generator (electrical or hydrogen generating) to plug our new GM-Volt or hydrogen powered vehicle into. I'd buy that! To be more specific... a General Motors that is restriced from fossil-fuel based power.

Asimov once wrote a story upon a society that developed very efficent large-scale underground thermopile electrical generation, using geothermal as the base energy source. Do you think our friendly oil-company supported governments would support research into the required technology? I use this idea only to illistrate that, even if it were practical, the answer would be "NO" unless there was a very large amount of money in it for them (the oil companies). But maybe Obama is different from Bush. Maybe there is a glimmer of hope.

[Emax]

Geothermal is an excellent candidate - and, yes, the current technology level is abysmal. Making (very stinky and corrosive) steam to drive generators seems like the hard way - as anyone who has driven through the Washoe valley between Carson City and Reno can testify. If the accessible heat is intense enough, thermopiles could work - but their output is (currently) very limited.

Earth has a mostly liquid interior - a very hot one. Right now, it's not clear to me whether this is residual heat (from the dawn of time) or if it is in some manner self-sustaining. It's hard to say just how unique Earth is among all the other known planets - but we do know that not all we have examined have hot cores. Were they always like that or did they get that way - and if so, how?

I have seen no estimations of the energy content of our core - but to be sure, it is immense... probably beyond imagination. But if it is not self-sustaining, tapping its energy will surely cool it at some rate. Probably, we needn't care - we'll all be long gone before that could happen. It could even be argued that cooling some parts of the accessible magma would be of great benefit: the huge Yellowstone caldera comes to mind.

What happened to "Project Mole Hole"? Way back in the sixties (my favorite era), an effort was being considered to drill a hole to near magma depth - presumably to tap the boundless energy there. Maybe the drill melted - but we could get around that problem now with lasers.

All of this is very expensive - and I agree that General Motors should be forced to solve the problem... before Toyota does it on its own.

[mthornton]

Good comment!
"All of this is very expensive - and I agree that General Motors should be forced to solve the problem... before Toyota does it on its own. "

If the Japanese (or CERN or whomever else) can develop alternative energy technology, so that it's better than oil, they will be in a good position. If they are smart enough to limit both the technology and the energy itself as a commodity, then they will, deservedly, become the next superpower.

'Occasionally sit around the lunch-room at the end of the day, watching a bottle of rum diminish, solving the worlds problems. Wonder if they do that in the white-house?

[Andoman]

Emax, on Feb 8 2009, 01:32 PM, said:

What happened to "Project Mole Hole"? Way back in the sixties (my favorite era), an effort was being considered to drill a hole to near magma depth - presumably to tap the boundless energy there. Maybe the drill melted - but we could get around that problem now with lasers.

They've been working on it in russia it's called the kola superdeep borehole project. However, with the impressive the title and all, the deepest they've reached was something like 7.5 miles below the earth's surface. With the continental crust being approximately 20 to 30 miles thick (Estimated) they haven't even made it to the half way mark. I agree they need to utilize the Dr. Evil shark mounted laser system to get down deeper.

[simiski]

Back to the topic, more good reading.


http://www.isthereglobalcooling.com/

[k2skier]

simiski, on Feb 12 2009, 08:46 AM, said:

Back to the topic, more good reading.


http://www.isthereglobalcooling.com/

There's always some nut jobs trying to say the sky isn't (or as it appears to the human eye) blue.

There is no debate that were warming, none. The only question is how and why were warming.

The bigger issue to quality life on this planet will be a lack of clean drinking water, this will take us out before we warm to death, or possibly food shortages from overpopulation and an ever-changing food growing area from climate change.

[Emax]

k2skier, on Feb 12 2009, 10:25 AM, said:

There's always some nut jobs trying to say the sky isn't (or as it appears to the human eye) blue.

There is no debate that were warming, none. The only question is how and why were warming.

The bigger issue to quality life on this planet will be a lack of clean drinking water, this will take us out before we warm to death, or possibly food shortages from overpopulation and an ever-changing food growing area from climate change.

...the bottom line...

[ccslider]

OVERPOPULATION

Emax, on Feb 12 2009, 11:25 AM, said:

...the bottom line...

Back in the 60s, Paul Ehrlich authored The Population Bomb which predicted mass starvation due to agricultural shortages. From Wikipedia, "The book deals not only with food shortage, but also with other kinds of crises caused by rapid population growth, expressing the possibility of disaster in broader terms. A "population bomb", as defined in the book, requires only three things:

A rapid rate of change
A limit of some sort
Delays in perceiving the limit
..."

So here we have the ingredients for the current population problem relating to global climate change: increasing global average temperatures as evidenced by polar ice sheet melting, receding glaciers, and species extinction (eg: Costa Rica's Golden Toad), the limitations of the comfortable carrying capacity of the planet Earth, and the delay of perceiving the limit as evidenced by, among others, the stated skepticism and arguments of some in this thread.

[mthornton]

ccslider, on Feb 12 2009, 11:49 AM, said:

.... and the delay of perceiving the limit as evidenced by, among others, the stated skepticism and arguments of some in this thread.

You miss the point somewhat.... there is no skepticism.
Of course there will be a population bomb & vast global upheavals... of course there will be mass extinctions due to climate change. This is all old news. (very very old) The point that much of society seems to be missing, is we are faced with 2 choices. 1) adapt 2) don't adapt . I think Darwin figured out that it's the spieces with the capacity to rapidly adapt, that will survive in the long run.
And um...We gotta quit shitting in our own bed... we gotta get off that oil-drug.

M

[Callao]

I have finally finished an analysis on temperatures in the 12 Midwest states after hearing an NBC news story (in June) saying that the area has already increased in temperature over seven degrees. As I did in my Utah analysis, I chose rural sites, one in each state for a broad look at the region. For more information on my methodology, or for a copy of the 37 MB Excel data file, just PM me.

 Midwest Ave.JPG (37.31K)
Number of downloads: 28
 Midwest 5-yr.JPG (36.11K)
Number of downloads: 28

[WBSKI]

What about temperature extremes? I have heard recently that climate change might be more about extreme weather and temperatures which would definitely go with what we experienced in Vancouver (very cold snap for 2 weeks followed by record high temps this summer). Your graphs are interesting though.

[k2skier]

And I could cherry pick a couple of cities that could show a rise or decline in temperature, it's global mean temperature; that's what the issue is.

Nice site...it's all about common sense and sustainability...

http://www.argo.ucsd.edu/


We are increasingly concerned about global change and its regional impacts. Sea level is rising at an accelerating rate of 3 mm/year, Arctic sea ice cover is shrinking and high latitude areas are warming rapidly. Extreme weather events cause loss of life and enormous burdens on the insurance industry. Globally, 8 of the 10 warmest years since 1860, when instrumental records began, were in the past decade.

This post has been edited by k2skier: 19 August 2009 - 03:22 PM

[WBSKI]

k2skier, on 19 August 2009 - 03:21 PM, said:

And I could cherry pick a couple of cities that could show a rise or decline in temperature, it's global mean temperature; that's what the issue is.

Nice site...it's all about common sense and sustainability...

http://www.argo.ucsd.edu/


We are increasingly concerned about global change and its regional impacts. Sea level is rising at an accelerating rate of 3 mm/year, Arctic sea ice cover is shrinking and high latitude areas are warming rapidly. Extreme weather events cause loss of life and enormous burdens on the insurance industry. Globally, 8 of the 10 warmest years since 1860, when instrumental records began, were in the past decade.

This website is pretty great data wise too for the arctic ice cap:
http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/
Fortunately a record low ice extent has probably been averted this year but there is still far less ice than the median amount.

On a totally unrelated note:
We just replaced our refrigerator which was over 20 years old and the new one which is the same size uses 1/3 the energy of our old one! I am not saying everyone should go out and buy a new fridge of course but just think in 10 years most people will have a significantly more energy efficient fridge which amounts to huge energy savings because they are one of the biggest energy users in the home. No stand up fridge can beat this though: http://mtbest.net/chest_fridge.html (that uses about 1/10th the energy of even a new energy star certified refrigerator!

[k2skier]

yes, nsidc is awsome

[Callao]

k2skier, on 19 August 2009 - 03:21 PM, said:

And I could cherry pick a couple of cities that could show a rise or decline in temperature, it's global mean temperature; that's what the issue is.

Cherry picking? Actually, all the sites I have ever analyzed have appeared in this forum. I didn't leave anything out, and I certainly didn't "cherry pick" based on results. If I analyzed it, it appears here. Simple as that. If you don't like the results shown in the graph, well gee sorry.

Just so you know, my original question in this last analysis was "How much has the Midwest warmed?" Because in post #1, I show clearly that Utah has warmed. Turns out the Midwest is different. Don't ignore the data because you don't like it. That would be stupid.

Just like you say though, this is just the Midwest, not the world. Unfortunately, I don't myself have the resources to do a similar analysis on world temperatures. So will you do it? You know how I like numbers. Glacial retreat, NBC, and polar bear activity are hard things to interpret, but numbers are pretty straight forward. Give me the numbers, give me the graph, and I can tell you how much it warmed.