The explanation for those weird Siberian craters isn't comforting

[Zorba]

Yes you were because hydrogen fuel cells require renewable electrical energy to generate. Even limiting it to solar cells, a 100% efficient solar cell robs 100% of the heat and other energy the sunlight would have imparted into the environment the same as a 100% efficient wind turbine would rob 100% of the passing wind's energy, which would now never pass (impossible, of course). An extreme example is that shadows are very cold on the moon. If we start covering the Earth in these and efficiency improves, we have less wind, rain, etc in addition to completely ruining the environment for anything that naturally lives beneath (your house already does this).

You do understand that basically all energy usage decays back to heat, right? So if you have a 100% efficient solar farm, the worst thing you are going to do is move the heat from one location to another. You could "store" the heat by using the power to generate potential energy and then not releasing it.

Also what is the "other energy" you are talking about with solar?

 

[OverVolt]

You do understand that basically all energy usage decays back to heat, right? So if you have a 100% efficient solar farm, the worst thing you are going to do is move the heat from one location to another. You could "store" the heat by using the power to generate potential energy and then not releasing it.

Also what is the "other energy" you are talking about with solar?

magnets

 

[glenn1]

magnets

How people who want to immediately stop using fossil fuels think we'll get around:

 

[bshole]

How people who want to immediately stop using fossil fuels think we'll get around:

Do you have a patent on that technology? Good gawd, that idea could be worth a fortune! It is brilliant on so many levels, it is a 3E product.... elegant, efficient and erudite.

 

[CZroe]

CZroe: Anyway, my point was that if the promise of supercapacitor tech is ever realized (more likely than most alternative energies) then it would be FAR superior to generating hydrogen fuel cells.

M: I am going to assume you mean 'than power generated using fuel cells' because you would have to manufacture rather than generate the cells themselves. I have no problem with the concept of Super Capacitors but that is a down stream solution to energy storage rather than the main issue, energy generation. I focused on fuel cells because they use hydrogen as a fuel and it is water cracking that can provide hydrogen. If a cheap method can be commercialized, and there is evidence, I think, that it can, then a government funding on a major scale in that direction would do much to solve our energy problems.

Yes. It should be read "...generating fuel cell hydrogen," which is something I already typed once. I was never saying that super/ultracapacitors generate anything. I was saying that they have more promise than hydrogen fuel cells because current technologies already perform comparably or better (energy density and charging efficiency). Best-case for Hydrogen fuel cells is that they become an alternative to Lithium Ion because it doesn't require Rare Earth metals like those superior technologies. That's not saying much.

I'm saying that super/ultracapacitors are a more promising substitute technology for hydrogen fuel cells. They will charge instantly ("fill-ups" will be faster than gasoline fill-ups) and can discharge faster when needed. They will be safer to transport. They will be able to discharge more power more rapidly when needed to do so. There will no/negligible efficiency losses for charging. With high-capacity super/ultracapacitors there will be no reason for fuel cells to exist.

With capacitors, the energy has to come from somewhere. It could come from solar energy from photovoltaics or fuel cells generators, nuclear or any other source. The issue remains as to where the power to charge them comes from. If hydrogen can produced cheaply and plentifully from sunlight like in a leaf, then our energy problems will be over. It doesn't matter if hydrogen is more or less energy dense. It's the availability that matters. I think it would be great to have solar cells on my house that generate both electricity directly and store surplus as hydrogen fuel to charge any form of engine in my car, fuel cell or battery or capacitor for that matter. The point is whether there is a commercial device that can be made at a cost efficient price. This would be true if you could use sunlight to create billions or rats running wheel generators in cages by feeding them directly with sunlight

It sure can, and there is no "issue" with that as a fuel cell replacement: It comes from the same electrical source you would have used for splitting water molecules for the fuel cell. Got it? I never said it was a power source. I said it was a more promising tech than fuel cells for use in the same applications as fuel cells. A futuristic car-sized solar cell as efficient as a car-sized leaf (electric or hydrogen) could not power your car on a multi-day non-stop road trip because the sun does not put that much energy into an area that small every day. You either need more area or more down-time for generating/storing energy. The larger area you must dedicate to power our current level of consumption will have a significant/devastating impact on the environment no matter how you look at it. Considering that our consumption would go UP as energy costs go down and we find new uses for it, the area must also go UP.

It can balance power availability without the losses of generating fuel cell hydrogen.

Which is what super/ultra capacitors could potentially "balance" a heck of a lot better (nearly no conversion losses).

 

[woolfe9998]

Surely relinquishing more of your money to the government will fix things, right?

For any proposed tax or law that is supposed to help slow the rate of man made climate change, is am analysis of just how quickly the savings of say Co2 output will be offset by the growing demands of India and China.

It makes no sense to ask for more money if the resulting decreases in man made causes to climate change are erased by one month of increased Co2 output from India's new car owners.

A global problem requires global cooperation, something I feel will be impossible until the problem becomes too dire.

This is correct. However, how our we suppose to insist on developing countries reducing carbon emissions when we can't even agree on it ourselves? Denialism is a big part of the problem.

 

[Jaskalas]

This is correct. However, how our we suppose to insist on developing countries reducing carbon emissions when we can't even agree on it ourselves? Denialism is a big part of the problem.

"Denialism" is best countered by agreeable solutions. Then you bypass the question of CO2 and establish America as leading the way into an "energy secure" future.

If you go knocking on other countries, telling them not to build farms, then you'll run head first into "Denialism".

 

[CZroe]

While Czroe is technically right, (his favorite kind), what he fails to mention is that it would take approximately 83 million years to reduce the moons kinetic energy to 0 if we drained it to supply the entire worlds energy. (Thank you Wolfram Alpha)

So he's basically trolling. Tidal energy will never realistically damage the moons orbit.

Edit: I see I was beaten to the answer.:thumbsup:

Even when powering futuristic alcubierre warp drives that take the energy of an entire planet?

Current energy consumption levels that are constrained by availability and price. If it were not constrained ("free energy!") then we would lose our push for efficiency in certain areas and keep coming up with more uses. Supply and demand.

My point of using extreme on/off and 100% examples are to A) Show something that may not be apparent when we are talking a matter of degrees and B) Show the ridiculousness of those trying to attain perfect efficiency, like that Discover Magazine article about the wind power producing kite.

Czroe seems to be on a tear of running to extremes.

To address his comment about sucking down all the energy out of the environment, even if we could with 100% efficiency convert sunlight to electricity we would use 0.008211 percent of the yearly incident solar radiation.

Since we've already dumped almost a dinosaur killers worth of energy into the ocean thanks to global warming, this would help the environment more than hurt it.

Once again, that seems to be aimed at supplying our current levels of consumption. It will go WAY up and require much more area. The plants and algae that are trying to sequester more energy for future fossil fuels will, of course, be drastically affected in these large areas. There is significant environmental impact no matter whether we use tidal, solar, etc.

Didn't feel like figuring that part out.

Still we're talking 10's of millions of years. So I call:

Unless we build that Alcubierre drive without some kind of fusion or zero-point energy. Talk about using extreme examples: It doesn't have to be "all the way" to have an effect. If the Earth slowed a measurable amount faster then the other effects of that will also be measurable.

Can you explain this? I don't understand how you can only use a tiny portion of something if you convert 100% of it. The thing I didn't think was right about his 'sucking the energy out' argument was what he also pointed out, that energy can't be created or destroyed. It's like saying that trees are sucking up all the sunlight, but it's trees etc. as coal and oil that are causing global warming. Energy can be converted from one form to another which will ultimately result in heat death. But a windmill is basically using kinetic energy in wind created by solar heat back to electricity and heat again. The heat is stored and released, and reflected back into space, not so well as before as CO2 collects in the atmosphere. What that is doing is creating more wind rather than causing the wind to stop. But for every calorie of heat from the sun turned into wind, that calorie will be returned to the earth by friction. It doesn't matter if it's the energy requited to blow over the ground bend the branches of a tree or a turban blade. The wind will eventually stop.

The trees are also sequestering it as stored potential energy, just like the swamp trees from billions of years ago that run our cars today. We use huge amounts of stored energy from fossil fuels for space-faring today. When we start using electrical propulsion using stored tidal/solar/wind energy from Earth, then we are NOT putting it back into the same system. Quantuum Vacuum microwaves and Ion thrusters better use nuclear (NIMSS)!

 

[CZroe]

You do understand that basically all energy usage decays back to heat, right? So if you have a 100% efficient solar farm, the worst thing you are going to do is move the heat from one location to another. You could "store" the heat by using the power to generate potential energy and then not releasing it.

Yes, but some of that energy would have been naturally sequestered by the plants and algae and such that were denied its use. Even so, restoring heat doesn't erase the impact. If you stop the wind to harness it and change the weather patterns they don't just resume because the heat eventually made its way back into the environment. Also, I particularly mentioned that we would use it outside the planet if it truly were to replace fossil fuels. THAT energy isn't coming back. If energy were practically free and every third-world country were as lit up as South Korea with super-efficient lights that do not generate much heat, then we are losing a lot of that energy as light simply escaping into space faster than the heat would.

Also what is the "other energy" you are talking about with solar?

All forms of "renewable" electrical energy. We discussed tidal, for example.

 

[CZroe]

All I did was take the worlds yearly consumption of energy from wiki (~140000terrawatt hours in 2008) and divided by the total yearly incident solar irradiance of the Earth, (1350W/m^2 x the half the surface area of the Earth in a year)

I assumed that the solar energy was completely turned into electrical energy so no heating loss occurs, which is wrong but simplified things and gave him the benefit of the doubt. It also ignores that most of the 140000TWH will be turned into heat anyway when used to turn on lights, run computers, etc.

We need to keep working on cheap PV arrays, wind, and while I know you and I don't see eye to eye on it, nuclear. Specifically I'd like to see new reactors that can be used to extract power from our current waste stock piles making it safer.

I'd like to see cheap solar on top of most residential roofs and available to 3rd world countries. This fixes the need for huge upgrades to the grid.

I'd like to see baseline coal plants replaced with natural gas at the minimum in the short term.

The sooner we start making small necessary changes the sooner we get the issue under control.

This completely ignores the promise of free, renewable, energy to bring power to all and power everything typically done by fossil fuels and man/animal power today. If renewable are the future, they better be able to power the future and not just our current consumption. Even if access to electricity did not improve for third-world countries, once electric cars replace fossil fuel cars, we have a huge increase in electrical consumption. Because we are specifically promoting it as the future alternative to fossil fuels, the increase MUST be considered even though our current consumption is what it is.

 

[Zorba]

Yes, but some of that energy would have been naturally sequestered by the plants and algae and such that were denied its use. Even so, restoring heat doesn't erase the impact. If you stop the wind to harness it and change the weather patterns they don't just resume because the heat eventually made its way back into the environment. Also, I particularly mentioned that we would use it outside the planet if it truly were to replace fossil fuels. THAT energy isn't coming back. If energy were practically free and every third-world country were as lit up as South Korea with super-efficient lights that do not generate much heat, then we are losing a lot of that energy as light simply escaping into space faster than the heat would.


All forms of "renewable" electrical energy. We discussed tidal, for example.

By your logic, we are completely heating up the world today be release all the pent up potential energy. And technically we are, just the affect is tiny. By your logic if I piss in the pacific ocean in Japan, the water in Florida would raise and warm up.

I don't think anyone is saying we should harness 100% of the sun's radiation. I doubt anyone wants to clear cut forest or grass lands to install solar, so we wouldn't be significantly reducing the amount of energy for photosynthesis. I think you fail to understand how massive the total solar energy is compared to our energy usage.

If you went way overboard, you could potentially change the weather patterns in a local area because you would be move the heat elsewhere.

The amount of energy lost to artificial light radiating to space, since normally light would reflect off the surface of earth back to space, in much higher amounts than all the artificial light in the world. But a 100% efficient solar panel would reflect no light back to space.

 

[Zorba]

This completely ignores the promise of free, renewable, energy to bring power to all and power everything typically done by fossil fuels and man/animal power today. If renewable are the future, they better be able to power the future and not just our current consumption. Even if access to electricity did not improve for third-world countries, once electric cars replace fossil fuel cars, we have a huge increase in electrical consumption. Because we are specifically promoting it as the future alternative to fossil fuels, the increase MUST be considered even though our current consumption is what it is.

I think he was quoting total energy consumption, not just electricity. So those numbers include, electric, fossil fuels, nuclear, renewables, etc.

So actually, total energy consumption would likely go down with 100% electric vehicles, because you don't have a massively inefficient gasoline engine converting the chemical energy to kinetic on the car. Not to mention all of the energy consumed to bring that chemical energy to the car.

 

[CZroe]

By your logic, we are completely heating up the world today be release all the pent up potential energy. And technically we are, just the affect is tiny. By your logic if I piss in the pacific ocean in Japan, the water in Florida would raise and warm up.

I don't think anyone is saying we should harness 100% of the sun's radiation. I doubt anyone wants to clear cut forest or grass lands to install solar, so we wouldn't be significantly reducing the amount of energy for photosynthesis. I think you fail to understand how massive the total solar energy is compared to our energy usage.

If you went way overboard, you could potentially change the weather patterns in a local area because you would be move the heat elsewhere.

The amount of energy lost to artificial light radiating to space, since normally light would reflect off the surface of earth back to space, in much higher amounts than all the artificial light in the world. But a 100% efficient solar panel would reflect no light back to space.

You are correct, but a massive increase in consumption would require a massive increase in deployment. Powering future technologies while rolling them out to all of mankind will be a massive increase regardless of new efficiency improvements.

 

[Paratus]

You are correct, but a massive increase in consumption would require a massive increase in deployment. Powering future technologies while rolling them out to all of mankind will be a massive increase regardless of new efficiency improvements.

Way up doesn't mean anything. And no reasonable increase in energy usage will make a difference in those numbers.

But let's take a look anyway:

The US was using 300GJ per-capita per year. Let's go ahead and raise all 7 billion peoples consumption to US standards. Then let's double it to 600GJ per year.

So that works out to:1.167 million terawatt hours or about 8 times my original estimate.

Congratulation. We can drain the moon in only 10 million years or we can use .064% of the solar energy that hits the Earth.

Oh but I didn't account for increasing population. Well let's take a look at that.

Well that's interesting. Growth rates are dropping and developed countries seem stagnant.

Yup developed countries population increases are basically halting. China and even India's rates are slowing.

We can draw the conclusion that after reaching first world status population growth stops or even goes negative. After we bring everyone else up to our standard of living population is going to slowly drop. That will decrease demand.

If we're smart about it we can help the third world get to our standard of living using wind, solar, water, nuclear, and natural gas instead of coal. Which will slow production of CO2 and reduce the population.

 

[CZroe]

Way up doesn't mean anything. And no reasonable increase in energy usage will make a difference in those numbers.

But let's take a look anyway:

The US was using 300GJ per-capita per year. Let's go ahead and raise all 7 billion peoples consumption to US standards. Then let's double it to 600GJ per year.

So that works out to:1.167 million terawatt hours or about 8 times my original estimate.

Congratulation. We can drain the moon in only 10 million years or we can use .064% of the solar energy that hits the Earth.

Oh but I didn't account for increasing population. Well let's take a look at that.

Well that's interesting. Growth rates are dropping and developed countries seem stagnant.

Yup developed countries population increases are basically halting. China and even India's rates are slowing.

We can draw the conclusion that after reaching first world status population growth stops or even goes negative. After we bring everyone else up to our standard of living population is going to slowly drop. That will decrease demand.

If we're smart about it we can help the third world get to our standard of living using wind, solar, water, nuclear, and natural gas instead of coal. Which will slow production of CO2 and reduce the population.

I am not even talking about population increases. I'm saying that society will find a use for cheap energy. That's the way it works. Demand will continue to increase in 1st world peaked populations just as it continues to increase as we switch to more and more electrified appliances, vehicles, wireless everything, etc.

1.5mbps was great in 1999, but we found uses for 15mbps. Now we have YouTube, Netflix, OnLive, etc. There will eventually be a common consumer use for gigabit Internet service just the same. Just because we scale our population's current demand to apply to the world population doesn't mean the world will forever be satisfied with our current 30mbps norm in a future where everyone has access. We WILL need more bandwidth just like we will need more electricity. We can inflate the price by manipulating the market to ignore market demand ("no new capacity").

Now, who said the moon had to run out of energy before it was a problem? I only talked about the "eventual" ti illustrate that there is an effect in the first place, but that eventuality was never my point. It is environmental impacts which will have happened long before that. Tides, ocean currents, animal migrations, longer days, more extreme temps, etc will have changed massively from the impact long before the moon "runs out."

 

[Paratus]

I am not even talking about population increases. I'm saying that society will find a use for cheap energy. That's the way it works. Demand will continue to increase in 1st world peaked populations just as it continues to increase as we switch to more and more electrified appliances, vehicles, wireless everything, etc.

1.5mbps was great in 1999, but we found uses for 15mbps. Now we have YouTube, Netflix, OnLive, etc. There will eventually be a common consumer use for gigabit Internet service just the same. Just because we scale our population's current demand to apply to the world population doesn't mean the world will forever be satisfied with our current 30mbps norm in a future where everyone has access. We WILL need more bandwidth just like we will need more electricity. We can inflate the price by manipulating the market to ignore market demand ("no new capacity").

Now, who said the moon had to run out of energy before it was a problem? I only talked about the "eventual" ti illustrate that there is an effect in the first place, but that eventuality was never my point. It is environmental impacts which will have happened long before that. Tides, ocean currents, animal migrations, longer days, more extreme temps, etc will have changed massively from the impact long before the moon "runs out."

I agree. Any energy sources we use will have an impact on the environment. I also understand your point about energy usage and cost.

What I was pointing out was your hyperbolic approach to making those points.

However I'm not convinced per capita energy usage will rise much for the US or other 1st world countries. Energy usage has been reasonably steady for a few decades. The increase is going to come from the developing world. Reduced population growth from improving quality of living will off set some energy demand growth. Efficiency gains will offset some energy usage growth.

Even if we were able to reduce the cost of a kWh below 1 cent there's only so much power required to live. Heating and cooling usage aren't going to skyrocket in 1st world countries just because power is cheap. Neither will transportation. Industry will use more, but again, that will be attributable to providing goods and services to the developing world.

 

[Jaskalas]

World's first thorium reactor ready to be built for cheaper, safer nuclear energy

Sounds like a sales pitch, but it gives you the idea. Even pushing it through today, India won't be 30% covered until 2050. The United States needs similar policy to push nuclear through.

 

[Ichinisan]

I think he was quoting total energy consumption, not just electricity. So those numbers include, electric, fossil fuels, nuclear, renewables, etc.

So actually, total energy consumption would likely go down with 100% electric vehicles, because you don't have a massively inefficient gasoline engine converting the chemical energy to kinetic on the car. Not to mention all of the energy consumed to bring that chemical energy to the car.

If fossil fuels are used by the power plant, then you actually do still have chemical energy being converted to heat, then kinetic energy, then into electricity, then into kinetic energy.

Seems like it would be less efficient than just burning the fuels in your car because you skip some of those conversions.

 

[Darwin333]

This completely ignores the promise of free, renewable, energy to bring power to all and power everything typically done by fossil fuels and man/animal power today. If renewable are the future, they better be able to power the future and not just our current consumption. Even if access to electricity did not improve for third-world countries, once electric cars replace fossil fuel cars, we have a huge increase in electrical consumption. Because we are specifically promoting it as the future alternative to fossil fuels, the increase MUST be considered even though our current consumption is what it is.

Actually it goes beyond that. In the modern world we can directly correlate increase in GDP to increases in energy consumption. It actually makes perfect sense, if I open a factory to make widgets the sale of those widgets increase our GDP but the newly opened factory also increases the nations total energy use.

With that said, it appears that you are looking for a 100% guaranteed absolutely perfect solution before we decide to do anything. If we had that sort of mindset a century ago we would still be using candles. The true answer is that there is no single answer. Solar isn't going to be our sole source of power, neither is tidal or nuclear or coal or whatever. We should be doing the stuff that makes common sense right now and expending much more money than we currently into R&D. Perfect example of things we can do right now is use existing rooftop space that is currently going completely unused (actually in most cases it is a HUGE energy sink, dark colored shingles are bad in hot climates but they look better). Turning what used to be an energy sink into a producer of energy, during peak consumption time no less, just makes good sense.

Other things like reflective insulation which is rather cheap and pays for itself very quickly, can stem the increase in our consumption assuming GDP/energy use continues to rise, if not it could actually reduce it.

 

[Darwin333]

By your logic, we are completely heating up the world today be release all the pent up potential energy. And technically we are, just the affect is tiny. By your logic if I piss in the pacific ocean in Japan, the water in Florida would raise and warm up.

I don't think anyone is saying we should harness 100% of the sun's radiation. I doubt anyone wants to clear cut forest or grass lands to install solar, so we wouldn't be significantly reducing the amount of energy for photosynthesis. I think you fail to understand how massive the total solar energy is compared to our energy usage.

If you went way overboard, you could potentially change the weather patterns in a local area because you would be move the heat elsewhere.

The amount of energy lost to artificial light radiating to space, since normally light would reflect off the surface of earth back to space, in much higher amounts than all the artificial light in the world. But a 100% efficient solar panel would reflect no light back to space.

Not to mention the "urban heat island", we would have to soak up a bunch of sun just to offset that. Most residential homes have dark colored shingles which absorb a lot more heat than whatever nature used to have there.

Using so much "renewable" energy that it would have a larger environmental effect than humans building shit and everything else we currently do is beyond the point of absurd. Then again, I tend to think of future problems in decades and centuries and not millions of years. I hope that in a million years we would have came up a solution but if they don't, I don't really care because I would have turned into dust quite a few times over by then.

 

[Zorba]

If fossil fuels are used by the power plant, then you actually do still have chemical energy being converted to heat, then kinetic energy, then into electricity, then into kinetic energy.

Seems like it would be less efficient than just burning the fuels in your car because you skip some of those conversions.

Car engines are pretty inefficient, especially compared to large scale power plants. In EV/hybrid cars you also have regenerative braking, so you don't loose all that kinetic energy when you stop.

 

[master_shake_]

One Word: Thorium Nuclear

FTFY

but it won't happen cause there is no way to weaponize it.

 

[Jaskalas]

If we don't muster up an immediate campaign to advance nuclear energy then it won't be available to reduce CO2 in our life times. Such projects take decades, if it isn't started now it might as well not be an option.

 

[Moonbeam]

Car engines are pretty inefficient, especially compared to large scale power plants. In EV/hybrid cars you also have regenerative braking, so you don't loose all that kinetic energy when you stop.

Actually I don't care how inefficient my power source is so long as it is cheap and plentiful and doesn't harm the environment. A bank of solar cells on my house that produce enough hydrogen gas to run it and my car via any technology is more than I could ask for.