Green Technology

Discussion in 'General Science & Technology' started by anaadi, Jul 21, 2015.

  1. Russ_Watters Not a Trump supporter... Valued Senior Member

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    Both of those are wrong, which is why this idea that civilization is nearing a precipice is flawed. The vast majority of what we use energy for is not limited by thermodynamic efficiency (and fancy technology to improve it), but by limitation of waste. Because only a tiny fraction of our energy output goes for useful work, we can make (and have made) vast improvements in the energy intensity of our lives/economy. And many of those choices even save money in the capital cost and don't require new technology. Cars, for example; exactly 100% of the energy used by a car is wasted, which means there is no limit to the energy reduction potential of cars. Hybrids? Half. Electrics? Another factor of four reduction or more. And if push came to shove, most of our driving needs could be fulfilled by scooters or eliminated by moving closer to where we work. Those might not be that desirable, but they are a far cry from civilization collapse.
     
    Last edited: Sep 17, 2015
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  3. spidergoat pubic diorama Valued Senior Member

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    I didn't say civilization would collapse. Civilization is rather primitive by definition compared to modern life. But yes, we will move closer to work, and the work we do will change radically. Consumer culture will die, and life will tend to revolve around growing food. No matter how efficient a car is, it's still a car, a huge expenditure in metals and plastics that's shipped halfway around the world.
     
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  5. spidergoat pubic diorama Valued Senior Member

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    You don't know that. Peak oil might have occurred in 2010. No one said civilization would collapse, just that it would be the beginning of the end for consumer globalist society. Civilization just means growing crops with domestic animals and subsequent division of labor.
     
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  7. billvon Valued Senior Member

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    Since production did not peak in 2010 - by definition, no, it did not.
    Given that we had a "consumer globalist society" going back to the days before oil fired transportation, I'm not worried. (If you want an example of this - look up the history of IPA.)
    It means a lot more than that.
     
  8. spidergoat pubic diorama Valued Senior Member

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    We will only know in hindsight. Anyway, US production peaked, new oil discoveries have peaked, and world production will peak soon. There have been some delays with fracking and tar sands, but it is going to happen. It can't not happen.
     
  9. spidergoat pubic diorama Valued Senior Member

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    Not on the same scale. Sail power is slower and an economy based on sail or steam won't be anything like what we have been accustomed to. Goodbye Walmart for one thing.
     
  10. billvon Valued Senior Member

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    I agree. But looking at 2010 from 2015 is hindsight.
    And is now rising again.
    They are rising now again as well.
    Yes, tight oil production will peak as well, probably in about 30 years. That's a much longer runway than we had to deal with the increase in oil costs. And since tight oil varies greatly in terms of extractability and quality, the tail of that peak will be a lot flatter (more compliance in the demand curve.)
    Wal-Mart cares not whether the cheap stuff it sells takes 4 weeks (freighter) or 8 weeks to arrive from China.
    However, other stuff will be scaled back. Airline travel will become more expensive as fuel prices rise, so fewer people will fly, at least until airliner technology catches up with higher fuel prices.
     
  11. spidergoat pubic diorama Valued Senior Member

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    Peaked means the point of greatest production. Rising is irrelevant. It will never reach the same peak again.
     
  12. billvon Valued Senior Member

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    From Wikipedia:
    "Peak oil, an event based on M. King Hubbert's theory, is the point in time when the maximum rate of extraction of petroleum is reached, after which the rate of production is expected to enter terminal decline."
    The old assumption was that once peak oil was reached, it would decline and would never be able to rise again. We've proven that wrong. I expect the US to produce as much as it needs over the next few decades, minus cheaper imports, plus exports to countries like Japan. As prices rise, that amount will reach a peak, then decline as other sources of energy (like solar) become cheaper. That will provide a natural market-based transition to our next source of energy, much as we saw with the wood to coal transition and the coal to oil transition.
     
  13. spidergoat pubic diorama Valued Senior Member

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    I don't think there will be a smooth transition. There are no solar trucks, construction equipment, commercial airliners, or container ships. Nothing can out-compete light sweet crude, which means that every other alternative translates into a contraction of the economy. With contraction comes capital scarcity.
     
  14. billvon Valued Senior Member

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    Solar trucks: http://insideevs.com/scania-testing-electric-big-rig/
    Electric construction equipment: https://www.hitachi-c-m.com/global/environment/showcase/motor_driven.html
    No commercial airliners (yet) but here's the first step in that direction: http://www.airspacemag.com/flight-today/the-electric-airplane-34986164/?no-ist
    Got something even better than oil or electric for that: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NS_Savannah
    Tight oil already is out-competing it. (For proof, check the current oil prices.)
    Your post reminds me of this piece - an imaginary conversation from about 150 years ago.

    =================
    Peak wooder: We are so f*cked. Where are we going to get enough wood to meet demand? Everything we do -- our entire society is based on wood. We'll collapse without it.

    Cornucopio: We'll switch to coal.

    Peak wooder: Oh, yeah right. And monkeys are gonna fly out of my butt. You f*cking idiot. Our whole economy is based on cheap wood. Wagons, housing, tools, transport, shipping, cooking, packaging, heating, blacksmithing, furniture. We're doomed without it. Do you have any idea how foul coal is? And how far you have to go to get it? Where are you going to get the wood to move all that coal? For God sakes, wood just grows out of the ground, and you're proposing that we dig into solid rock for that filthy substandard junk? You need to up your medication. Do you have any idea how many people its going to take to dig those holes? And how are you going to make their houses, and keep them warm, and get them to the job without wood? What are you going to make their shovels and wagons out of? The only reason those people can dig coal now is because they're subsidized with cheap wood!!! And even supposing that you could marshal all those people you need to do the digging, you'll just hit water, and then it's game over. You can't bail out the water because YOU NEED WOOD TO MAKE THE F*CKING BUCKETS. Sorry man, but coal is nothing but a bunch of wishful thinking. You're pinning all your hopes on it because you're afraid to face the fact that our wood-based society is doomed. The stupid, myopic wood party is over and the hangover is going to be killer. There is simply nothing which can replace the convenience, versatility and cheapness of wood.
    =================
    http://peakoildebunked.blogspot.com/2006/03/262-wood-to-coal-transition.html
     
  15. spidergoat pubic diorama Valued Senior Member

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    The arrogance of someone who has never known anything but cheap energy. Coal is plentiful and easier to mine in quantity than wood, coal has greater energy density than wood, oil is even easier to pump with even greater energy density. Everything else is harder and more expensive.
     
  16. billvon Valued Senior Member

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    Ah, the ignorance of someone who has no knowledge of renewable technology. Sunlight is free and plentiful. It is available in more places than coal. It is as easy as it gets - expose the PV panels to sun then sit back and have a beer while the panels pump energy into the grid. Or your car.

    And "coal is plentiful and easier to mine in quantity than wood?" Have you ever cut down a tree, or tried to dig a four ton boulder out of the ground? If you've done either I suspect you wouldn't be making such silly statements.
     
  17. spidergoat pubic diorama Valued Senior Member

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    Renewable energy is a pitiful percentage of our energy use. It's greenwashing. The media is full of empty promises, but when you look around, our whole way of life is dependent on fossil fuels, everything from the roads themselves to trash collection. It's all going to collapse before your green utopia comes about. I'm not saying things around technically possible in a lab or small scale, but they aren't scalable.
     
  18. billvon Valued Senior Member

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    It makes up most of my direct energy use. And I'm not even living in a cave.
    Yes, they are. I'd ignore them if I were you and listen to scientists, industry leaders and urban planners instead.
    http://www.ucsusa.org/clean_energy/...e-energy/how-solar-energy-works.html#bf-toc-5
    http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/a-solar-grand-plan/
    Yep. And back in the 1800's, people's whole ways of life were organized around wood. Nothing could possibly replace wood. And back in the 1900's, entire economies were organized around coal. Nothing could possibly replace coal.
    Really? So California can't possibly scale up to supply power via renewable sources? Over 20% and climbing, 5% of which is solar - and that's doubling every 2 years.
    The naysayers were wrong about wood and they were wrong about coal. They'll be wrong about oil, too.
     
  19. spidergoat pubic diorama Valued Senior Member

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    Cars are about 30% efficient. Some of the energy does go into forward motion, which means that some energy is not wasted.
     
  20. billvon Valued Senior Member

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    Cars are 0% efficient with respect to their payload (you.) You leave with zero velocity; you arrive with zero velocity. No added energy despite all that energy put into the system. You could do the same thing with a hole drilled through the earth between your starting point and your destination and use zero energy to get between the two places.

    However, cars can be pretty efficient at converting fuel into force that can be used to accelerate the car.
     
  21. Russ_Watters Not a Trump supporter... Valued Senior Member

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    That's precisely the point I was getting at, that most people, including you, are missing: they are about 30% thermodynamically efficient, but 0% of the energy produced by the engine goes into useful work. The work that provides "forward motion" is not conserved: all of it is converted to waste heat, either via aerodynamic drag or various types of friction. As such, there is no limit to our ability to reduce it. Do you want to reduce it by 30%? A factor of 2 (50%)? A factor of 10? Simple. Easy. Cheap.
    Your attempt to quibble over a definition is not useful. Regardless of what label you attach to it, what you describe happening is extremely unlikely. In particular, you really didn't respond to what I said, since, for example, "a car is still a car" is not true if it is a scooter.
     
  22. exchemist Valued Senior Member

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    12,451
    I'd have thought a world without Walmart would be a more civilised place. Ghastly store.

    But seriously, when you look at countries such as Germany, where 30% of electricity now comes from renewables: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renewable_energy_in_Germany

    doesn't that suggest that our oil dependence can be reduced substantially, and a rate that will allow a "consumer" society (whatever you mean by that) to continue? The oil resource is finite, and our use of its will have to reduce asymptotically towards zero, some time. But what we will get, surely, is a progressive restriction on its use, towards those applications in which is least substitutable (transport fuel, petrochemicals, lubricants), driven by hikes in its price, which will make the process progressive. Given that (a) we have numerous other energy sources, (b) our energy efficiency, in terms of GDP/kWh energy consumption, has doubled since the 1970s oil shocks and is forecast to double again, ( c) we know, from the 1970s that the world economy can withstand major disruptions in price and availability of oil, I see no reason why we cannot expect a process of managed change, that leaves our children's lives recognisably the same as ours, if with a different emphasis in certain areas. Car ownership in cities will drop, I expect, use of aircon and night lighting will reduce, maybe our standard of living will not rise at the rate it has historically done, but I see no reason any of this would give our children a poorer quality of life than what we have today.
     
  23. spidergoat pubic diorama Valued Senior Member

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    That's just silly. The useful work was delivering you from one point to another. That energy was not wasted. The question is what percentage of the energy used was converted to motion? And it's more than 0.
     

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