Like the illusion of Wall Street, with its vast and powerful investment banks, now shuttered, China too is an illusion perpetuated by the Globalists that gave us the 15,000 mile Caesar salad, poisoned cat food and lead based paint on babies' pacifiers. Like the illusion that money would come from thin air to always push housing prices higher, China has spent a generation pursuing its illusion. Pursuing an unattainable dream to be like the West, while 6000 years of its carefully shepherded top soil blows into the sea.
Posted: Thu Apr 03, 2008 10:05 am Post subject: Re: My days as a doomer might be over
Quote:
The study also estimated the amount of global wind power that could be harvested at locations with suitably strong winds. The authors found that the locations with sustainable Class 3 winds could produce approximately 72 terawatts and that capturing even a fraction of that energy could provide the 1.6-1.8 terawatts that made up the world's electricity usage in the year 2000. A terawatt is 1 trillion watts, a quantity of energy that would otherwise require more than 500 nuclear reactors or thousands of coal-burning plants. Converting as little as 20 percent of potential wind energy to electricity could satisfy the entirety of the world's energy demands, but the researchers caution that there are considerable practical barriers to reaping the wind's potential energy.
A mere half-million 3MW turbines to account for world demand? Let's get going!
It still feels like boiling the ocean to me. _________________ "It's called the American Dream because you'd have to be asleep to believe it."
George Carlin
Last edited by emersonbiggins on Thu Apr 03, 2008 10:07 am; edited 1 time in total
Posted: Thu Apr 03, 2008 10:06 am Post subject: Re: My days as a doomer might be over
Quote:
Some sources have suggested that millions of turbines would be needed to produce an acceptable level of energy and that alternative energy sources would still be necessary to produce power when the wind speeds fall below a certain threshold.
I do not see a practical complimentary alternative power source for when it is windless.
Plus on top of the millions of turbines we would need millions of pylons, transmission lines, substations etc. And a big buckets of public education, political will, industrial infrastructure and especially cash.
The only solution that would de-doomerize me immediate powerdown, electrification of transport, relocalization of industry, reruralization of communities--then depopulation. And it must have started yesterday.
I'm still a doomer. _________________ ree rah rip ram. sunofabitch godamn. hidey didey christ almighty. rah rah crap
Joined: Mar 04, 2007 Posts: 504 Location: Hong Kong
Posted: Thu Apr 03, 2008 10:11 am Post subject: Re: My days as a doomer might be over
If we could run the world on wind, we'd keep on doing what we're doing: Using energy to turn natural resources into disposable commodities until the entire planet turns into a fetid heap of waste.
"Solutions" that don't bring exponential economic and population growth to a halt scare me more than Peak Oil. _________________ "We shall live in interesting times, and we shall die in them too." - Heineken
Posted: Thu Apr 03, 2008 10:52 am Post subject: Re: My days as a doomer might be over
This just highlights the fact peak oil is not really an energy problem it is a liquid fuel problem.
I see many alternatives in the medium to long term for low carbon energy such as 3rd and 4th generation nuclear, fusion, solar film, CSP, wind, tidal turbines. Wind kites, geothermal and hot rock. Plus, in general, gas and coal are plentiful.
The problem is not really energy. The problem is the reliance of transport on oil. If oil goes into decline soon (next 10 years or so) the potential discontinuities make plenty of doom scenarios plausible. I believe, however, that Campbell et al are overly pessimistic and URR is more likely to be around 2600 billion barrels so the decline will be more of a, gradually declining, bumpy plateau. High oil prices, economic problems but not the end of the world. Not yet anyway.
Posted: Thu Apr 03, 2008 11:47 am Post subject: Re: My days as a doomer might be over
FreakOil wrote:
If we could run the world on wind, we'd keep on doing what we're doing: Using energy to turn natural resources into disposable commodities until the entire planet turns into a fetid heap of waste.
"Solutions" that don't bring exponential economic and population growth to a halt scare me more than Peak Oil.
Yep. Cheap plentiful energy has to be accompanied by some kind of commensurate drop in population, or radical overhaul in the way we view the natural world, or we are just as doomed.
Joined: Jun 18, 2004 Posts: 804 Location: Western North Carolina
Posted: Thu Apr 03, 2008 2:00 pm Post subject: Re: My days as a doomer might be over
Quote:
The only solution that would de-doomerize me immediate powerdown, electrification of transport, re-localization of industry, re-ruralization of communities--then depopulation. And it must have started yesterday.
Joined: Apr 06, 2006 Posts: 3626 Location: 3 miles NW of Champoeg, Republic of Cascadia
Posted: Thu Apr 03, 2008 2:15 pm Post subject: Re: My days as a doomer might be over
Our moderator TylerJC seemed to suddenly stop worrying because of alternative energy coming to the rescue. I still don't see it - for the US anyway, it's 17 million cars sold/year, in a healthy economy. You could snap your fingers and make every one of those a PHEV, there are still so many obstacles in the way, the need for qualified mechanics, space for disposal of dud batteries, the increased strain on the grid, etc. And that's purely academic since the oil companies will fight the changeover from liquid fuels to the end, even though to do so is patently insane.
So I don't take heart knowing there are terawatts of potential wind power in the South Atlantic. There are enormous sources of natural gas that remain stranded, too, since it's uneconomical to build pipelines to them. Alternative will only grow as fast as economics dictate, barring government mandates - and all current POTUS candidates are quite beholden to the conventional energy industry, don't see them upsetting the apple cart too much frankly. _________________ Cogito, ergo non satis bibivi
C'mon man, who're you gonna believe?
Base on European experience it seems that no more then 20-25% of your electricity may rely on wind.
So if you need 1TW then 0.25TW can be from wind.
If you need 1GW then 0.25GW can be from wind.
Denmark is recently battling against these limits to no avail.
They must rely on base load supply from other EU countries.
Without this imported base load supply part of their wind power would have to be switched off or withhold from national grid to prevent instabilities and blackouts occurring.
There is a consensus growing that mentioned 20-25% share of wind power in electricity total is all what we can hope for, if integrated national grids are to function.
Solar will not change much this picture due to another set of troubles with intermittent nature of it.
You may reasonably expect combination of wind and solar to provide something like 40% of overall total in geographic locations EU alike.
You must produce remaining 60% from other sources (FF, nuclear, hydro) as a precondition of harnessing this 40% of wind & solar combined.
Below you can read about some problems of German energy company with wind:
Joined: Sep 25, 2004 Posts: 4721 Location: Boston, MA
Posted: Thu Apr 03, 2008 2:40 pm Post subject: Re: My days as a doomer might be over
Did somebody call my name?
I was at the British Industry and Trade consulate in Boston this morning for a presentation by a few scientists, engineers, "policy wonks", and economists to discuss the energy situation in the UK and the potential for renewables.
They said that without new nuclear power, there is no way Britain will be able to both meet its coal use reduction target that was set forth by the EU.
They estimated that by 2020 using very favorable conditions for the renewable energy industry. The UK could be getting as much as 19% of its electricity from renewable sources. This is great. But without new nuclear power stations, the share of power from nuclear will drop from around 20% to around 6%. Virtually of that gap can be made up with renewable energy.
But what about coal? The share of power from coal fired power plants MUST fall according to EU regulation, this means that the gap must be made up by new natural gas fired power plants, eliminating any chance of seriously reducing carbon dioxide emissions.
If nuclear is increased or at least stays at the same level as before, we can build new renewables fast enough to reduce coal use to acceptable levels and even make a slight dent in the natural gas demand.
But you can't have a fully renewable grid in the next 20 years. Nuclear power must be a part of any transition.
Or so was the opinion of the panel.
As for a maximum capacity for wind, Denmark is a tiny country. It's possible to have no wind over most of Denmark on a given day. It's extremely unlikely that the entire European Union would be wind free for a day.
If you spread out the risk, wind becomes a much more favorable option. But this requires the construction of a true European Super Grid (another opinion of the panel).
It's possible but we need to start increasing investment right now.
By the way, global investment in non-fossil fuel energy development and deployment was $150 billion last year. This isn't a niche industry anymore, I'm tempted to drop the title "alternative energy" altogether because it is no longer "alternative".
That $150 billion is equal to a little more than 1% of global investment in fixed capital assets and adds up to about 20% of all investment in the energy sector.
Numbers like that should reduce the doom and gloom, no? _________________ "www.peakoil.com is the Myspace of the Apocalypse."
Joined: Oct 18, 2004 Posts: 2128 Location: kiwibush
Posted: Thu Apr 03, 2008 2:52 pm Post subject: Re: My days as a doomer might be over
mkwin wrote:
This just highlights the fact peak oil is not really an energy problem it is a liquid fuel problem.
I see many alternatives in the medium to long term for low carbon energy such as 3rd and 4th generation nuclear, fusion, solar film, CSP, wind, tidal turbines. Wind kites, geothermal and hot rock. Plus, in general, gas and coal are plentiful.
The problem is not really energy. The problem is the reliance of transport on oil. If oil goes into decline soon (next 10 years or so) the potential discontinuities make plenty of doom scenarios plausible. I believe, however, that Campbell et al are overly pessimistic and URR is more likely to be around 2600 billion barrels so the decline will be more of a, gradually declining, bumpy plateau. High oil prices, economic problems but not the end of the world. Not yet anyway.
You might want to have a read of Frankoil's post, a few posts above. It's quite revealing for the few words it has to say. _________________ Bugger me, I hear oil's runnin out mate!
Joined: Sep 25, 2004 Posts: 4721 Location: Boston, MA
Posted: Thu Apr 03, 2008 3:04 pm Post subject: Re: My days as a doomer might be over
I'm not sure if I understand your point.
Are you saying that $150 billion a year (and growing rapidly) in investment is insufficient to produce any kind of positive outcome?
In 2004, the world only invested $33 billion into the renewable energy sector. In 2007, we spent more than that on solar power alone.
$33 billion in 2004.
$59 billion in 2005.
$93 billion in 2006.
$148 billion in 2007.
I'd say that's an acceptable growth rate.
Mind you, only 19 billion of that is biofuels so if you think biofuels are a wate of time, feel free to consider that money a waste.
Now we're "only" spending $130 billion a year on renewable energy. That's still well over twice the level of spending on commercial aviation investment. (just for comparison purposes) _________________ "www.peakoil.com is the Myspace of the Apocalypse."
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ree rah rip ram. sunofabitch godamn. hidey didey christ almighty. rah rah crap 
