energy & peak oil

[phuckphace]

itt we discuss the looming energy crisis & what to do about it

we live in a massively over-scaled, globalized world. we are addicted to growth (in fact, if we don't constantly grow, we face economic stagnation) and like all addictions, it's a hell of a lot easier to start than it is to stop. as of right now, petroleum is the most economically feasible source of energy, as it is energy-dense and usually requires little trouble to extract - indeed, in many places such as Venezuela it literally gurgles out of the ground. but of course, it's not always going to be that way, especially if current consumption trends continue (and they will). this leads to the obvious question, what should oil be replaced with, if anything?

the other "options" come with their own set of drawbacks.

Nuclear: one accident and boom! you've rendered your country and possibly adjacent countries into a nuclear wasteland. there's also the problem of what to do with all that waste.

Wind: far less energy-dense than oil, requires an area that is reliably windy (i.e. it can't be used everywhere) and noisy ass turbines. have you guys ever been to a wind farm? shit's deafening, yo.

Switchgrass: requires shittons of land to grow on in order to meet energy demands, rendering said land unavailable for food crops. like any crop, it varies in yield depending on environmental conditions, and also needs lots and lots of water. the areas where switchgrass could be grown feasibly are a lot fewer in number than the total land we have (U.S.).

if somebody tells you that peak oil will never be a problem because there are like 9000000000000000 gorillojoules' worth of oil in world reserves, remind them that oil which exists =/= oil which can be extracted in an economically feasible way. there's also a gorillion tons of gold and silver in the Earth's core, good luck getting to it though.

to me, this points to only one real solution: cut back on the complexity which renders continuous consumption necessary. I'd like to see a return to a country dotted by small communities who source most of their goods locally, places where you can walk/bike from your residence to wherever you need to go to buy your shit. a place where people are not socially pressured to own a fuckhuge gas guzzler for no reason. a place where people have the skills to produce many of the things they need by hand or the ability to purchase said items from local craftsmen, as people once did with say, horses & horse accessories (leatherworkers who made saddles, etc.)

this shitthatwillneverhappen is brought to you by my wishful imagination, thank you come again

[Gwen]

Obviously we learn from the previous generations, we should do what we have been doing currently and then blame it on the next generation and let them deal with the mess! Serious answer is that we should be putting subsides into alternative energies (My favourites being solar and nuclear).

[Stronk Serb]

Nuclear all the way. Make hydroelectric dams where possible.

[Vlerchan]

https://62e528761d0685343e1c-f3d1b99a743ffa4142d9d7f1978d9686.ssl.cf2.rackcdn.com/files/69695/area14mp/image-20150122-29885-1hgn509.jpg

I'll post a proper response when I get home from work.

[thegreatgatz]

You forgot to mention solar! All though not ultra energy dense, solar panels are convenient and don't take up that much space as they can be attached to rooves, etc. Furthermore, it leaves the least environmental footprint. The sun is almost unlimited. Solar Power. For the Win!

[Miserabilia]

I think the future of energy will be in organisms and manipulating organisms like cyan bacteria and algae as a form of energy creation that is not only envirement friendly but can also be used as future fuel and translates carbondioxide to oxigen.

[phuckphace]

forgot to mention solar

You forgot to mention solar! All though not ultra energy dense[...]

that's precisely why it's a poor substitute for petroleum, just like the other options. solar panels are very inefficient and even the best (read: most expensive ones) can convert only a small fraction of the sunlight they receive into usable energy. they are also inherently complex: they require backup batteries for nighttime and bad weather, and of course they're only practical in areas that receive a lot of sunlight per year. most of us don't live in deserts.

what happens if your zillion-dollar roof-mounted solar panel shorts out and dies? is there a QwikService shop down the street you can haul it to for repairs in a couple hours? no? okay then.

again, my point is that we use petroleum because it is a) easy to access b) can be converted to sufficient energy easily, and c) the technology required to use it is already readily available and cheap. a combustion engine is a piece of machinery, but it is still far less complex and more serviceable than solar panels. an engine will always work regardless of normal environmental conditions, and is reliable and serviceable in ways that the other alternatives simply aren't.

[Porpoise101]

Nuclear: one accident and boom! you've rendered your country and possibly adjacent countries into a nuclear wasteland. there's also the problem of what to do with all that waste.
.).

if somebody tells you that peak oil will never be a problem because there are like 9000000000000000 gorillojoules' worth of oil in world reserves, remind them that oil which exists =/= oil which can be extracted in an economically feasible way. there's also a gorillion tons of gold and silver in the Earth's core, good luck getting to it though.

to me, this points to only one real solution: cut back on the complexity which renders continuous consumption necessary. I'd like to see a return to a country dotted by small communities who source most of their goods locally, places where you can walk/bike from your residence to wherever you need to go to buy your shit. a place where people are not socially pressured to own a fuckhuge gas guzzler for no reason. a place where people have the skills to produce many of the things they need by hand or the ability to purchase said items from local craftsmen, as people once did with say, horses & horse accessories (leatherworkers who made saddles, etc.)

this shitthatwillneverhappen is brought to you by my wishful imagination, thank you come again
Ok well I am happy to say that they have developed a type of safer nuclear reactor using little uranium balls coated in carbon (at least that is how I understand it). So this reactor is supposedly more efficient and gives off less waste too. As with R&D it could take 20 years for anything to happen with this tech. Maybe they will figure out nuclear fusion soon [emoji38]

Also a good step towards your vision in the US is just getting a better train system and public transport. If Elon Musk gets his way in California then maybe we can get high speed trains in the next 50 years or so across the nation. Otherwise we can all chill on the moon.

[tonymontana99]

itt we discuss the looming energy crisis & what to do about it

we live in a massively over-scaled, globalized world. we are addicted to growth (in fact, if we don't constantly grow, we face economic stagnation) and like all addictions, it's a hell of a lot easier to start than it is to stop. as of right now, petroleum is the most economically feasible source of energy, as it is energy-dense and usually requires little trouble to extract - indeed, in many places such as Venezuela it literally gurgles out of the ground. but of course, it's not always going to be that way, especially if current consumption trends continue (and they will). this leads to the obvious question, what should oil be replaced with, if anything?

the other "options" come with their own set of drawbacks.

Nuclear: one accident and boom! you've rendered your country and possibly adjacent countries into a nuclear wasteland. there's also the problem of what to do with all that waste.

Wind: far less energy-dense than oil, requires an area that is reliably windy (i.e. it can't be used everywhere) and noisy ass turbines. have you guys ever been to a wind farm? shit's deafening, yo.

Switchgrass: requires shittons of land to grow on in order to meet energy demands, rendering said land unavailable for food crops. like any crop, it varies in yield depending on environmental conditions, and also needs lots and lots of water. the areas where switchgrass could be grown feasibly are a lot fewer in number than the total land we have (U.S.).

if somebody tells you that peak oil will never be a problem because there are like 9000000000000000 gorillojoules' worth of oil in world reserves, remind them that oil which exists =/= oil which can be extracted in an economically feasible way. there's also a gorillion tons of gold and silver in the Earth's core, good luck getting to it though.

to me, this points to only one real solution: cut back on the complexity which renders continuous consumption necessary. I'd like to see a return to a country dotted by small communities who source most of their goods locally, places where you can walk/bike from your residence to wherever you need to go to buy your shit. a place where people are not socially pressured to own a fuckhuge gas guzzler for no reason. a place where people have the skills to produce many of the things they need by hand or the ability to purchase said items from local craftsmen, as people once did with say, horses & horse accessories (leatherworkers who made saddles, etc.)

this shitthatwillneverhappen is brought to you by my wishful imagination, thank you come again

It starts with keeping the population under 500 million...

[phuckphace]

image (https://62e528761d0685343e1c-f3d1b99a743ffa4142d9d7f1978d9686.ssl.cf2.rackcdn.com/files/69695/area14mp/image-20150122-29885-1hgn509.jpg)

I remember seeing you post this before, but I'd like your opinion on the practicality of wind vs. oil. cost is of course only one factor - I can see wind possibly maybe replacing oil in certain limited applications/regions, but as for substantially reducing our oil use, I can't see it happening.

It starts with keeping the population under 500 million...

500 mil sounds good but how do we get there? also, what's the carbon footprint of Auschwitz 2.0? this is important

[Vlerchan]

I remember seeing you post this before, but I'd like your opinion on the practicality of wind vs. oil.
Wind v. Oil?

I don't see Wind ever becoming a major source: at this stage it's mature tech. and it's still quite inefficient.

Not to mention it's real expensive to set-up: at one stage I envisaged communities funding and maintaining their own farms but in hindsight that's just ridiculous. What would need to happen is governments - and I would imagine once it's a norm: Big Wind would control the entire sector: which would lend itself to further stagnation as tech.

Then it's the case that it's not too useful for a lot of countries. It makes sense for Ireland because we've the Atlantic: and a case can be made for the construction of energy islands. But for most countries it's a dead-end.

Not to mention the noise pollution and the things are just unsightly.

---

I'm more optimistic about the still-young solar power. The price of conducting energy has been dropping like a rock - it's expected to reach grid parity in something like 80% of US states in 2016 (http://climatecrocks.com/2014/11/11/here-comes-the-sun-lead-follow-or-get-out-of-the-way/) - the last decade and then batteries are undergoing technical leaps.

Not to mention that developments in the design means that solar panels are going to become a lot more versatile - i.e., panels that have a film-like design, already being produced. It's feasible that we could pave our roads in solar panels - and further feasible that we could use this to charge electric cars on the go: I can recall a physics teacher in high school offering a demonstration on using magnets to enable that.

I haven't even begun the opportunities that 3D printing would present. The scale of solar power means that it's possible for small entrepreneurial individuals to develop them from the off - but introduce 3D printing and everyone and their grandmother could manufacture them.

They also don't make noise and don't look like shit.

[soundtrack] (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BpqOWO6ctsg)

[ndrwmxwll]

water to hydrogen (using solar) fuel cells are the future, mark my words
silicon and sodium, people, silicon and sodium.

[Microcosm]

Solar panels will probably be the future once they develop to an efficient state like vlerchan said.

I think nuclear energy could work if we had strict rules and regulations on how it's used.

[tonymontana99]

I remember seeing you post this before, but I'd like your opinion on the practicality of wind vs. oil. cost is of course only one factor - I can see wind possibly maybe replacing oil in certain limited applications/regions, but as for substantially reducing our oil use, I can't see it happening.



500 mil sounds good but how do we get there? also, what's the carbon footprint of Auschwitz 2.0? this is important

Maybe that Agenda 2030 we've been discussing brings down the global birth rate even further because they'll be more busy working and getting all the shekels and gibmedats instead of thinking about kids to support them in their old age. Post industrial society when?

[northy]

water to hydrogen (using solar) fuel cells are the future, mark my words
silicon and sodium, people, silicon and sodium.



That may be, but where does the energy to create the hydrogen from electrolysis come from? Burning coal? Oil?

The only other way to extract hydrogen is from oxidising oil, this creates co2 and hydrogen. But this is a limited source and is less efficient than directly burning oil.

[phuckphace]

I keep hearing that 3D printing is going to be *it*, that magic technology that will let us do this that and the other thing. just like 4G/LTE was supposed to bring us TOTALLY UNLIMITED ULTRASPEEDS and machine guns were supposed to make war obsolete. you can count me as a cynic on the matter.

someone posted a video last year talking about solar panels on roads. it's one of those "flying car/sex robot" ideas that gets bandied about at TED talks by people who do more jaw-wagging than thinking. sure, we're totally going to pave all 100 gorillion miles of our roads with electronic circuitry at tremendous expense, roads which are of course going to be covered by shadow-casting traffic during most hours of the day. all solar panels are vulnerable to the usual drawbacks that I mentioned earlier, like cloud cover/weather conditions. dirt, mud, snow and ice. add on top of that the amount of cash required for constant maintenance. theft? vandalism?

Elon Musk is that rich guy that has to have the most expensive, useless toys on the planet. it's like somebody gave a 13 year old an allowance of $10,000 a week and told him to have a ball.