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Regarding Pandemona's and caradoc's posts, yes there are a lot of alternative energy sources, and the amount of energy that we can draw from these alternative sources are increasing at a substantial rate as we develop and implement the technology. However, the amount of energy our cities and nations are using are also increasing as well.
Specifically at Pandemona's post, the energy sources you listed have some pretty significant drawbacks. I do agree that with enough funding, these drawbacks could essentially be eliminated via technological advancement... but that's with enough funding, which I doubt will exist for a long time.
Solar energy: highly depending on sunlight exposure and intensity. Disadvantageous for countries where the sun is not as intense (nearer the poles), where there is frequent cloud cover (much of Europe, especially UK), and is currently not very cost effective.
+ Show Spoiler +They also require vast amounts of land in order to be output the amount of voltage that would be required to travel over high voltage power lines. Vast amounts of land means you can't build them in or near cities, where land is expensive. You lose a LOT of electricity sending power over vast distances, and the only way to reduce these inefficiencies is by increasing the voltage. Or use better but more expensive conductors.
When most people think of solar energy, they think of solar panels, or panels of Photovoltaic Cells. PV technology is (in my opinion) the best solar energy technology, but it is also the most difficult to develop. R&D companies are throwing all they have at it, but we've only managed to increase our efficiencies from around <8% to around 18-20% at the same price point (correct me if I'm wrong, this is off the top of my head). Sure you could get an awesome solar panel with an excellent energy conversion ratio, but its price tag would go from the hundreds to the hundreds of thousands.
We've developed a bunch of different methods to get around efficiencies. We're using fields of mirrors to melt a huge ass block of salt, where the hot liquid would be used to boil water, steam turbine, etc. We've thought about collecting solar energy in space (where atmosphere wouldn't obstruct) and beam it down to earth in microwaves. And more practically, many new homes are being built with solar water heaters and solar convection heaters, where water and air are passed through black tubes in your roof, get warmed by the sun, before going into the water boiler or air heater. It saves energy as you're heating water from 35 degrees celsius to 100 rather than from 10 degrees to 100.
Wind energy: highly dependent on... you guessed it, wind. Wind turbines have the potential to produce a LOT of energy at their peak, but they're usually capped to prevent the motors from running too hot and burning out. Increasing the cap would only create extreme highs and lows of electricity surging onto the grid. The alternative to this is battery technology, where your peak electricity isn't wasted but instead put into batteries (or into a water tower), and when there are times of low wind, the grid can grab from the battery instead of the turbine (or release water to run a hydro dam). And while we're doing this, batteries still aren't as efficient as we'd like to think, and usually hydro dams are along rivers, which are in valleys, which don't have as much wind as hills.
Geothermal energy: The best thing about geothermal is that it's consistent and reliable. The bad thing is that it requires you to drill a deep hole in the ground. Many places in the world have frequent earthquakes, and geothermal wells can be easily damaged by a higher magnitude earthquake. In Canada, we have a thing called the Canadian Shield, which is a huge ass chunk of central and eastern Canada that is solid rock. Other countries have similar areas where surface soil only goes down 100m or so, and after that it's solid. Geothermal wells go down by the kilometers.
The main issue, in my opinion, is freelance contractors going around and drilling everywhere. There have been cases of large sinkholes created because contractors didn't do their geography/geology homework. There are even rumours of earthquakes being caused by drilling, but I haven't paid much attention to this so somebody else can say something about it.
Biofuel and ethanol: Fantastic if you're using bio waste, such as from organic landfills or liquified waste from the food industry. Not as good if you're planting fields of biofuel crops and using the harvest to make gasoline instead of food. Even worse if you're planting only fields of biofuel crops and nothing else because you want to make fuel, cue skyrocketing food prices. Also needs a lot of arable land (as you said in your post).
Hydrogen: Amazing, extremely clean, potentially extremely efficient... currently extremely not efficient and expensive and only has small-scale applications. The previous generation expected us to have fuel cells powering every flying car by now. O wait.
Algae fuel: I think this has potential, there are some downsides I can think of but none are really that significant.
Biomass briquettes: Being used in developing countries, I think it has good potential.
Biogas digestion: Also being used in developing countries, especially in South Asia, really good for helping poor farming communities get on their feet.
Floating wind farms: A more feasible version of the space solar energy concept, main difficulty is getting the electricity from its source to the cities, where deep sea cables can be difficult and energy loss over long distances is also an issue.
The thing that irks me is that all of the above technologies are very similar in development to what we've seen in microcomputing over the last half century. In my opinion the only thing that is holding us back is technological development, which requires funding and public focus.
Regarding happyft's post about the Ozone Layer. The Montreal Protocol that got the ball rolling for CFC bans was the first successful win for climate environmentalists, and probably will be the only one for a long time. A lot of us really can't appreciate how important stopping the depletion of the Ozone Layer was. There would be a lot of weird shit happening if we allowed that to keep going. And you thought that sunburn was bad.
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To people who still believe this global warming bullshit go watch "The Great Global Warming Swindle" http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-5576670191369613647 .
We dump so much shit into our environment and we actually start worrying on airborn particles that can be easily digested by plants and algea, hell, a simple volcano has so much more influence on it then we do, and even that the earth can take without much issue, climate has always gone in cycles due to the sun, we survived far hotter periods here in europe in the medieval era, and we're still a long way to go before we're there (based on the current rate of warming).
What causes much more problems to us is the massive pollution in the seas, the place where 80% of our oxygen get's produced and with less available land for grazing and farming due to the increased warmth it will become more and more relevant as our main source of food.
And sadly enough, both with general pollution or even the CO2 craze, most of the damage is done by third world countries that would most likely collapse if they did not have access to oil, coal and gas, often times the same can be said for dumping waste into the ocean, be it third world countries with irresponsible governments that use parts of their coast as a garbage dump, badly regulated companies or the poor quality of a transportation vehicles.
No idea why that fucktard Gore did this on CO2 when this is still just a hypothesis, and with the amount of research they've done into it that says a lot, if global warming was real, how can it be harder to detect then the Higgs boson?
Guess he couldn't have tried to attention whore with the oceans that actually do need help, if there's a lot of available data he can't claim whatever bullshit he want's anymore.
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THE REAL question should be like ...
IS THERE A LINK between co2 and temperature
The answer is its not
all other are simply bs
Last ive check the couple past winters were the coolest in the last 50 years need i go on?
Back in 2000s and al ghore's presidential run we got bombardise with bs like the eastern islands gonna be under water in the next 10 years and desperate residents on tv crying pls help us survive and other bs
Been there done that same ol bs with the solely reason to avoid the real problems aka polution poverty etc etc.
Btw do you really forget that easy twice the climategate ? Last ive check the consiuder that a crime cause the emails were stolen from officials and such thus emails were true
Lastly Nasa fired their lead climatologist some years ago , a hugarian one , name i dont remeber , when in his equation ( who predicts 100% the co2 behavior of mars and earth ) said it doesnt matter how much co2 is in atmosphere terms of rising temperature
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Hydrogen: Amazing, extremely clean, potentially extremely efficient... currently extremely not efficient and expensive and only has small-scale applications. The previous generation expected us to have fuel cells powering every flying car by now. O wait.
this is the one that is the most interesting to me, if only they could figure out how to break down H2O in an extremely efficient way, then we would be able to have TONS of energy for a long time, but like you said its so damn inefficient right now it's not even close to worth our troubles.
People at Chevron and Exxon have been trying to figure that out for years, if a company with that much money can't do it then it's pretty damn crazy hard to do, which stinks for us.
They are testing areas of CA that have magnetic highways, and the cars will be 6 inches apart going 80 mph, in their theory, if they could have the entire US highway magnetized then this would work great with our GPS abilities, but once again, at what cost?
It doesn't matter if global warming is real or not at this point, as he stated there is TONS of different ways to get fuel or energy, but if they can't make a buck off it, they won't do it. If it was so important for our government to save the world from climate change you'd think they'd force them to go to those resources.
I remember just a couple months ago a politician on the west coast trying to not get funding for a solar/wind farm, and it just seemed ridiculous but his point was that it was "too expensive" to run and get them up and running. People will just lie to save a buck, it's really sad.
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On July 27 2012 02:04 topoulo wrote:
THE REAL question should be like ...
IS THERE A LINK between co2 and temperature
The answer is its not
all other are simply bs
Last ive check the couple past winters were the coolest in the last 50 years need i go on?
Back in 2000s and al ghore's presidential run we got bombardise with bs like the eastern islands gonna be under water in the next 10 years and desperate residents on tv crying pls help us survive and other bs
Been there done that same ol bs with the solely reason to avoid the real problems aka polution poverty etc etc.
Btw do you really forget that easy twice the climategate ? Last ive check the consiuder that a crime cause the emails were stolen from officials and such thus emails were true
Lastly Nasa fired their lead climatologist some years ago , a hugarian one , name i dont remeber , when in his equation ( who predicts 100% the co2 behavior of mars and earth ) said it doesnt matter how much co2 is in atmosphere terms of rising temperature
dude, i agree 100% , but everyone on here apparently is in love with their tree out front making themselves too blind to actually read a post successfully on these forums
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On July 26 2012 20:46 Shady Sands wrote:
1) Geo-engineering: already mentioned, but I was thinking along the lines of massive iron seeding in world oceans to encourage algal blooms that suck up CO2.
Researched this as a project, iron seeding has potential where iron is the limiting nutrient. There are also a dozen other notable limiting nutrients that we could throw into the oceans and hope CO2 consuming stuff will grow. The cost effectiveness is debatable, in my opinion I don't think it's very worthwhile right now, but has potential.
The only issue with algal blooms is that they create a layer on the surface that completely blocks out sunlight and prevents oxygen from penetrating into the water. Thus you create deadzones where there's nothing alive there except algae thanks to plentiful plant nutrients. Also known as eutrophication.
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On July 27 2012 02:05 eits wrote:
I remember just a couple months ago a politician on the west coast trying to not get funding for a solar/wind farm, and it just seemed ridiculous but his point was that it was "too expensive" to run and get them up and running. People will just lie to save a buck, it's really sad.
Right now a lot of solar/wind require subsidies to make them economical, but they're closing the cost per kilowatt very quickly. A lot of estimates say that some solar/wind installations will reach parity with fossil fuel generation at the consumer end by 2015. Of course, then consumer price of energy might just fall, so it's complex, but it's reaching the point where it will be soon economical without subsidy.
I think that's just more evidence for the fact that we need to plough as much investment into this as possible-- you want to be ahead of the technology/infrastructure curve for renewables so you can sell tech/manufacturing capacity and save on infrastructure down the line-- it's just good public policy to transition this way.
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On July 27 2012 02:11 caradoc wrote:Show nested quote +On July 27 2012 02:05 eits wrote:
I remember just a couple months ago a politician on the west coast trying to not get funding for a solar/wind farm, and it just seemed ridiculous but his point was that it was "too expensive" to run and get them up and running. People will just lie to save a buck, it's really sad. Right now a lot of solar/wind require subsidies to make them economical, but they're closing the cost per kilowatt very quickly. A lot of estimates say that some solar/wind installations will reach parity with fossil fuel generation at the consumer end by 2015. Of course, then consumer price of energy might just fall, so it's complex, but it's reaching the point where it will be soon economical without subsidy. I think that's just more evidence for the fact that we need to plough as much investment into this as possible-- you want to be ahead of the technology/infrastructure curve for renewables so you can sell tech/manufacturing capacity and save on infrastructure down the line-- it's just good public policy to transition this way.
that's finally good to hear, but does this mean once we don't subsidize the wind farmers we should be expecting to see these across the US? I think we need to be getting this shit out asap but some people are hellbent on keeping us back, that'd be a huge step in right direction for us to have these at the very least in every state.
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On July 27 2012 02:14 eits wrote:Show nested quote +On July 27 2012 02:11 caradoc wrote:On July 27 2012 02:05 eits wrote:
I remember just a couple months ago a politician on the west coast trying to not get funding for a solar/wind farm, and it just seemed ridiculous but his point was that it was "too expensive" to run and get them up and running. People will just lie to save a buck, it's really sad. Right now a lot of solar/wind require subsidies to make them economical, but they're closing the cost per kilowatt very quickly. A lot of estimates say that some solar/wind installations will reach parity with fossil fuel generation at the consumer end by 2015. Of course, then consumer price of energy might just fall, so it's complex, but it's reaching the point where it will be soon economical without subsidy. I think that's just more evidence for the fact that we need to plough as much investment into this as possible-- you want to be ahead of the technology/infrastructure curve for renewables so you can sell tech/manufacturing capacity and save on infrastructure down the line-- it's just good public policy to transition this way. that's finally good to hear, but does this mean once we don't subsidize the wind farmers we should be expecting to see these across the US? I think we need to be getting this shit out asap but some people are hellbent on keeping us back, that'd be a huge step in right direction for us to have these at the very least in every state.
well one of the biggest issues in the US is that the grid is meant for distribution from central generating stations to small consumers. It is not designed for generation all over the place, and the grid infrastructure in many areas can't handle installed wind/solar generation. There would be a TON more renewable installations if the grid allowed more kind of many-to-many connections rather than being based around one-to-many. (if that makes sense)
But upgrading the grid is just good policy--- the spending on it will create work, and have a much better multiplier effect on the general economy than say military spending etc, and it paves the way for further economic development around renewables.
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On July 27 2012 02:20 caradoc wrote:Show nested quote +On July 27 2012 02:14 eits wrote:On July 27 2012 02:11 caradoc wrote:On July 27 2012 02:05 eits wrote:
I remember just a couple months ago a politician on the west coast trying to not get funding for a solar/wind farm, and it just seemed ridiculous but his point was that it was "too expensive" to run and get them up and running. People will just lie to save a buck, it's really sad. Right now a lot of solar/wind require subsidies to make them economical, but they're closing the cost per kilowatt very quickly. A lot of estimates say that some solar/wind installations will reach parity with fossil fuel generation at the consumer end by 2015. Of course, then consumer price of energy might just fall, so it's complex, but it's reaching the point where it will be soon economical without subsidy. I think that's just more evidence for the fact that we need to plough as much investment into this as possible-- you want to be ahead of the technology/infrastructure curve for renewables so you can sell tech/manufacturing capacity and save on infrastructure down the line-- it's just good public policy to transition this way. that's finally good to hear, but does this mean once we don't subsidize the wind farmers we should be expecting to see these across the US? I think we need to be getting this shit out asap but some people are hellbent on keeping us back, that'd be a huge step in right direction for us to have these at the very least in every state. well one of the biggest issues in the US is that the grid is meant for distribution from central generating stations to small consumers. It is not meant for generation all over the place, and the grid infrastructure in many areas can't handle installed wind/solar generation. But upgrading the grid is just good policy--- it's got much better effects on the general economy than military spending, and it paves the way for further economic development around renewables.
To make this work it sounds like we should do it in reverse. Make small consumer areas big energy resource areas with wind farms, and have some more farms that are closer to the city to ensure that the major ones also get energy, instead of just having all of our eggs in one basket (all energy from central locale)
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Pandemona
Charlie Sheens House51485 Posts
On July 27 2012 02:00 Not_Computer wrote:Regarding Pandemona's and caradoc's posts, yes there are a lot of alternative energy sources, and the amount of energy that we can draw from these alternative sources are increasing at a substantial rate as we develop and implement the technology. However, the amount of energy our cities and nations are using are also increasing as well. Specifically at Pandemona's post, the energy sources you listed have some pretty significant drawbacks. I do agree that with enough funding, these drawbacks could essentially be eliminated via technological advancement... but that's with enough funding, which I doubt will exist for a long time. Solar energy: highly depending on sunlight exposure and intensity. Disadvantageous for countries where the sun is not as intense (nearer the poles), where there is frequent cloud cover (much of Europe, especially UK), and is currently not very cost effective. + Show Spoiler +They also require vast amounts of land in order to be output the amount of voltage that would be required to travel over high voltage power lines. Vast amounts of land means you can't build them in or near cities, where land is expensive. You lose a LOT of electricity sending power over vast distances, and the only way to reduce these inefficiencies is by increasing the voltage. Or use better but more expensive conductors.
When most people think of solar energy, they think of solar panels, or panels of Photovoltaic Cells. PV technology is (in my opinion) the best solar energy technology, but it is also the most difficult to develop. R&D companies are throwing all they have at it, but we've only managed to increase our efficiencies from around <8% to around 18-20% at the same price point (correct me if I'm wrong, this is off the top of my head). Sure you could get an awesome solar panel with an excellent energy conversion ratio, but its price tag would go from the hundreds to the hundreds of thousands.
We've developed a bunch of different methods to get around efficiencies. We're using fields of mirrors to melt a huge ass block of salt, where the hot liquid would be used to boil water, steam turbine, etc. We've thought about collecting solar energy in space (where atmosphere wouldn't obstruct) and beam it down to earth in microwaves. And more practically, many new homes are being built with solar water heaters and solar convection heaters, where water and air are passed through black tubes in your roof, get warmed by the sun, before going into the water boiler or air heater. It saves energy as you're heating water from 35 degrees celsius to 100 rather than from 10 degrees to 100.
highly dependent on... you guessed it, wind. Wind turbines have the potential to produce a LOT of energy at their peak, but they're usually capped to prevent the motors from running too hot and burning out. Increasing the cap would only create extreme highs and lows of electricity surging onto the grid. The alternative to this is battery technology, where your peak electricity isn't wasted but instead put into batteries (or into a water tower), and when there are times of low wind, the grid can grab from the battery instead of the turbine (or release water to run a hydro dam). And while we're doing this, batteries still aren't as efficient as we'd like to think, and usually hydro dams are along rivers, which are in valleys, which don't have as much wind as hills. Geothermal energy: The best thing about geothermal is that it's consistent and reliable. The bad thing is that it requires you to drill a deep hole in the ground. Many places in the world have frequent earthquakes, and geothermal wells can be easily damaged by a higher magnitude earthquake. In Canada, we have a thing called the Canadian Shield, which is a huge ass chunk of central and eastern Canada that is solid rock. Other countries have similar areas where surface soil only goes down 100m or so, and after that it's solid. Geothermal wells go down by the kilometers. The main issue, in my opinion, is freelance contractors going around and drilling everywhere. There have been cases of large sinkholes created because contractors didn't do their geography/geology homework. There are even rumours of earthquakes being caused by drilling, but I haven't paid much attention to this so somebody else can say something about it. Biofuel and ethanol: Fantastic if you're using bio waste, such as from organic landfills or liquified waste from the food industry. Not as good if you're planting fields of biofuel crops and using the harvest to make gasoline instead of food. Even worse if you're planting only fields of biofuel crops and nothing else because you want to make fuel, cue skyrocketing food prices. Also needs a lot of arable land (as you said in your post). Hydrogen: Amazing, extremely clean, potentially extremely efficient... currently extremely not efficient and expensive and only has small-scale applications. The previous generation expected us to have fuel cells powering every flying car by now. O wait. Algae fuel: I think this has potential, there are some downsides I can think of but none are really that significant. Biomass briquettes: Being used in developing countries, I think it has good potential. Biogas digestion: Also being used in developing countries, especially in South Asia, really good for helping poor farming communities get on their feet. Floating wind farms: A more feasible version of the space solar energy concept, main difficulty is getting the electricity from its source to the cities, where deep sea cables can be difficult and energy loss over long distances is also an issue. The thing that irks me is that all of the above technologies are very similar in development to what we've seen in microcomputing over the last half century. In my opinion the only thing that is holding us back is technological development, which requires funding and public focus. Regarding happyft's post about the Ozone Layer. The Montreal Protocol that got the ball rolling for CFC bans was the first successful win for climate environmentalists, and probably will be the only one for a long time. A lot of us really can't appreciate how important stopping the depletion of the Ozone Layer was. There would be a lot of weird shit happening if we allowed that to keep going. And you thought that sunburn was bad.
Ok i understand that there not all amazing at the moment, take electric cars, they SUCK SO BAD at the moment but given 10 years i think they will be nearly there. Regards solar power, there is such a huge boost in solar panels on roofs in England at the moments its unreal, goverment initiative of reduced prices on them being fitting is helping i guess, and just in my little housing area lone (about 30 houses i see) 5 have solar panels on the there roofs. The sun doesn't have to be strong for them to take in energy it just needs to be out and not hidden behind a cloud, that could be for 2hours a day and it could be enough to do something, without the proper levels of what is needed for them to convert sunlight into energy we can't comment though i guess.
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On July 27 2012 02:11 caradoc wrote:Show nested quote +On July 27 2012 02:05 eits wrote:
I remember just a couple months ago a politician on the west coast trying to not get funding for a solar/wind farm, and it just seemed ridiculous but his point was that it was "too expensive" to run and get them up and running. People will just lie to save a buck, it's really sad. Right now a lot of solar/wind require subsidies to make them economical, but they're closing the cost per kilowatt very quickly. A lot of estimates say that some solar/wind installations will reach parity with fossil fuel generation at the consumer end by 2015. Of course, then consumer price of energy might just fall, so it's complex, but it's reaching the point where it will be soon economical without subsidy. I think that's just more evidence for the fact that we need to plough as much investment into this as possible-- you want to be ahead of the technology/infrastructure curve for renewables so you can sell tech/manufacturing capacity and save on infrastructure down the line-- it's just good public policy to transition this way.
Imagine being able to store the energy from the solar-wind farms indefinitely!!
Check this link out: Liquid Metal Battery
Dude has managed to create a battery capable of basically sustaining itself indefinitely. This "Grid-level storage" makes it so things that are deemed "inefficient" energy sources no longer become inefficient because the energy can be stored for massively long periods of time. Right now, the way the grid works, everything is in constant demand and constant supply. If someone hits a transformer down the street, your power goes out until they can re-establish that connection of power.
This guy and his idea really get me going, and make me incredibly excited for the next 20-30 years to transpire. If he can manage to execute this product correctly, electricity will be free, everything can go on the grid, and we'll be emission free. Thus, removing our fossil-fuel crutch, and helping reduce the carbon footprint.
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this is our current electical grid in the united states:
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=110997398
we can see 7 centralized locations throughout the United States Midwest/southern regions that link the entire nations electricity together.
Imagine every state having a minimum # of wind farms needed or they didn't meet the gov'ts regulation.
I hope one day I can make a map in ArcGIS that shows at least 75-100 wind farms minimum per state, and those states were running solely on those wind farms.
this would be a HUGE infrastructure change, which the US has been in dire need of change for the better part of a decade. We have a terrible infrastructure score, this could be a positive step into fixing that
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On July 27 2012 00:35 caradoc wrote:![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/768YP.png) Global growth of solar energy capacity ![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/LG00x.png) Global installed wind capacity, by year. A lot of the nice increases we see on these graphs are due to sustained public pressure towards funding for solar/wind infrastructure and for technological development so that the production and manufacturing of renewables reaches an economic level. These two trends are ones which give me hope that things aren't so bad that we should despair. But they aren't so good either that we should get complacent and think the problem solved, because in addition to continuing to invest in renewables, we need to actively work towards limiting / eliminating fossil fuel usage in whatever ways we can. tldr; the battle is neither lost nor won, ignore people that try to push the 'climate change is inevitable line, so lets just keep on doin like we're doin' -- that perspective originally comes from oil/energy companies PR folders.
What do those charts look like after Spain's huge solar scam trashed their economy and all of Barack's buddies closed up shop this year?
Here's a chart that isn't designed to create an illusion of amazing outstanding growth:
![[image loading]](http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2011/11/where-the-world-gets-its-energy.jpg)
Renewables is going to shrink even more as fracking and shales take off. Hoorah for US energy independence and great jobs and low energy prices and a growing economy!
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On July 27 2012 02:33 dvorakftw wrote:Show nested quote +On July 27 2012 00:35 caradoc wrote:Global growth of solar energy capacity Global installed wind capacity, by year. A lot of the nice increases we see on these graphs are due to sustained public pressure towards funding for solar/wind infrastructure and for technological development so that the production and manufacturing of renewables reaches an economic level. These two trends are ones which give me hope that things aren't so bad that we should despair. But they aren't so good either that we should get complacent and think the problem solved, because in addition to continuing to invest in renewables, we need to actively work towards limiting / eliminating fossil fuel usage in whatever ways we can. tldr; the battle is neither lost nor won, ignore people that try to push the 'climate change is inevitable line, so lets just keep on doin like we're doin' -- that perspective originally comes from oil/energy companies PR folders. What do those charts look like after Spain's huge solar scam trashed their economy and all of Barack's buddies closed up shop this year? Here's a chart that isn't designed to create an illusion of amazing outstanding growth: Renewables is going to shrink even more as fracking and shales take off. Hoorah for US energy independence and great jobs and low energy prices and a growing economy!
I did a huge semester long project on Hydraulic fracturing for senior year to be able to graduate, and damn, I'm so glad i live in Texas, where a large amount of Hydraulic fracturing is occurring. This is the next step in our energy consumption but i really hope we move off our oil teet someday and can make something more renewable in the near future.
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People are going to be so stunned a few years from now when the cause of global warming is discovered and it turns out to be + Show Spoiler +
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I haven't made up my mind on the subject. I feel that having a giant gaping hole in the ozone layer that continually gets worse can only be a bad thing, but as far as reducing emissions, there is no way to get the entire world to line up behind that and polluting still provides a comparative advantage ... Unfixable problem. I have a lot of faith That when warming becomes a truly worrisome problem, science will arrive to save the day (while hurling insults at us like a dentist whose advice is never heeded and who is nevertheless called upon to fix things at the 11th hour)
I would like to give the op some props though for being one of the few Tlers open minded and smart enough to change his mind when provided with compelling evidence and I'm going to be perusing some of those links myself.
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On July 27 2012 02:37 dvorakftw wrote:People are going to be so stunned a few years from now when the cause of global warming is discovered and it turns out to be + Show Spoiler +
thank you, someone with sense.
always thought it was kinda pompous and really arrogant of people to think, "We are strong enough to fuck up the entire world climate in the last 50 years, here's exactly how we did it, and theres nothing you can do about it approach."
the sun is way bigger than us guys, he really does have more of an impact than most people in this thread would like to admit.
good article didn't know they were trying to take this to the EPA, very nice :D
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On July 27 2012 02:37 eits wrote:
I did a huge semester long project on Hydraulic fracturing for senior year to be able to graduate, and damn, I'm so glad i live in Texas, where a large amount of Hydraulic fracturing is occurring. This is the next step in our energy consumption but i really hope we move off our oil teet someday and can make something more renewable in the near future.
Oh yeah, solar and nuclear are going to be dominant in about another half-century if we can just get government away from them and allow the same free market process that took us from 3 channel TV and party-line human-operator telephones to world wide global telecommunications in a few decades to work its magic in energy.
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On July 27 2012 02:26 Pandemona wrote:
Ok i understand that there not all amazing at the moment, take electric cars, they SUCK SO BAD at the moment but given 10 years i think they will be nearly there. Regards solar power, there is such a huge boost in solar panels on roofs in England at the moments its unreal, goverment initiative of reduced prices on them being fitting is helping i guess, and just in my little housing area lone (about 30 houses i see) 5 have solar panels on the there roofs. The sun doesn't have to be strong for them to take in energy it just needs to be out and not hidden behind a cloud, that could be for 2hours a day and it could be enough to do something, without the proper levels of what is needed for them to convert sunlight into energy we can't comment though i guess.
Oh I definitely agree, with government incentives and initiatives, renewables are a lot more feasible. In North America there's an industry that is booming right now, basically if you 'qualify' with a large enough roof (such as warehouses, industrial complexes or commercial buildings) they "buy" your roof to set up solar panels, and then pay you a % per month of the profit they get.
The thing is, these funding for these incentives aren't infinite. They are designed to boost the industry and encourage innovation and technological development. However, a lot of big companies are taking advantage of these programs and are finding loopholes to do the minimum possible to qualify for the bonus money but aren't participating in bettering the industry.
On July 27 2012 02:33 dvorakftw wrote:Show nested quote +On July 27 2012 00:35 caradoc wrote:Global growth of solar energy capacity Global installed wind capacity, by year. A lot of the nice increases we see on these graphs are due to sustained public pressure towards funding for solar/wind infrastructure and for technological development so that the production and manufacturing of renewables reaches an economic level. These two trends are ones which give me hope that things aren't so bad that we should despair. But they aren't so good either that we should get complacent and think the problem solved, because in addition to continuing to invest in renewables, we need to actively work towards limiting / eliminating fossil fuel usage in whatever ways we can. tldr; the battle is neither lost nor won, ignore people that try to push the 'climate change is inevitable line, so lets just keep on doin like we're doin' -- that perspective originally comes from oil/energy companies PR folders. What do those charts look like after Spain's huge solar scam trashed their economy and all of Barack's buddies closed up shop this year? Here's a chart that isn't designed to create an illusion of amazing outstanding growth: Renewables is going to shrink even more as fracking and shales take off. Hoorah for US energy independence and great jobs and low energy prices and a growing economy!
This was what I was trying to get at, thank you dvorakftw. I don't mean to be harsh on you caradoc, but the reality is that short term economic goals has priority over a long term economic future. While having a reliable renewable energy source is what everyone wants, governments would rather have the quick and cheap "cleaner" fossil fuels.
Also, I think Al Gore is a sensationalist. I appreciate his enthusiasm for the environmental movement, but a lot of the time he's giving some really bad publicity.
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