Review of the Olduvai Gorge

patience · Expert Joined: Jan 04, 2008 Posts: 1331

The article quoted above mentions cobalt being affected by powere outages. Cobalt is a crucial metal used in High Speed Steel; that's the stuff garden variety drill bits are made of. It is also the binding agent in tungsten carbide, the hard material used for masonry drill tips, and virtually all of machining cutting tools used in manufacturing.

A shortage of cobalt for any extended length of time would cause major disruption in manufacturing. The same thing happened in WWII, causing criical shortages of HSS, and led to the development of tungsten HSS. Won't work for carbide though, in all but a few cases. (Nickel is used as a binder in cermet cutting tools.)

Watch this one closely.
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outcast · Heavy Crude Joined: Apr 21, 2008 Posts: 138

OK, let's get some perspective in here:

India: People running for office often promise free electricity handouts to the desperately poor farmers, which strains the system. Combining this with the Indian government's spectacular failure to make even a decent attempt to upgrade it's infrastructure and power generation capacity will lead to rolling blackouts. This kind of thing isn't that uncommon.

China: The snow storms buried the country in at least a foot and a half of snow (more in some places) and shut down transportation for some time. Obviously the coal shipments stopped for a bit and so they had to cut back. In any case blackouts are not unheard of, although nowhere near as common as in India, still happen once every few years (like 2004). This is caused by extremely rapid economic growth, and while the government tries to keep pace, sometimes it isn't enough. It has been an on and off recurring problem for a while. Again, nothing new.

Other third world countries: No real surprise, third world nations often have unreliable infrastructure.

US: No surprise given short-sighted energy planning and neglect of the grid.

And for the record the California blackouts in summer of 2001 were NOT caused by supply problems, they were caused by Enron playing around with the grid to artificially create power shortages.

I'm pretty skeptical of the gorge theory, it was flat wrong about energy usage in the US for the last 20 years, and while it was correct about the date (only after a recent convenient revision), anyone could have looked at a graph comparing projected power demand with projected supply and see that something like this would happen. There won't be a new (figurative) dark age, and all this will do is slow down economies and force governments to get serious about building powerplants (and power infrastructure).

gnm · Posted: Fri May 09, 2008 10:41 am Post subject: Re: Review of the Olduvai Gorge

outcast · Heavy Crude Joined: Apr 21, 2008 Posts: 138

seahorse · Expert Joined: Oct 15, 2004 Posts: 2070 Location: Arkansas

Yes, Zimbabwe is still working on those other ways. Now, if you will scroll back several pages, you will see the US Fed gov't has backed out of financing any new coal plants, and you will see that, in this credit downturn, the projects just disappeared. It may be awhile before they find this "other financing" you are talking about, and they may be standing in line behind all the other third world countries. One fundamental problem is Americans simply can't fathom that there would ever be a day when they might not be a superpower and be relegated to just another third world country.

cube · Fusion Joined: Mar 12, 2005 Posts: 3262

outcast · Heavy Crude Joined: Apr 21, 2008 Posts: 138

IMF, World Bank, UN, richer nations that aren't bogged down in debts.

I wasn't reffering to simply turning on the printing press ala zimbabwe.

cube · Fusion Joined: Mar 12, 2005 Posts: 3262

outcast · Heavy Crude Joined: Apr 21, 2008 Posts: 138

seahorse · Expert Joined: Oct 15, 2004 Posts: 2070 Location: Arkansas

We're way off subject now; suffice it to say the earlier news links concerning no more new coal plants in the U.S. bc no financing available directly contradicts your assumption that financing must be out there somewhere. If you come up with a source that shows new coal plants, estimated to be 10, have now found that financing, please post it.

outcast · Heavy Crude Joined: Apr 21, 2008 Posts: 138

seahorse · Expert Joined: Oct 15, 2004 Posts: 2070 Location: Arkansas

You're calling B.S. on the gorge is hungry? Hmmm, it seems pretty well documented that power outages are increasing, not decreasing, and affecting the rest of the world (higher commodity prices) and that with NG depletion setting in on the good old USA along with "peak finances" and the cancelling of any new coal plants, the Gorge is getting ready to rear its ugly little head right in our own backyard, at least my backyard. It really doesn't matter why the problem is creeping up on us, bc its a multi pronged issue, but the problem is getting ready to kick us in the pants and we will be completely unprepared to deal with it. We, USA, should have dealt with it back when we had budget surpluses, but we didn't. Unfortunately the Vikings in Greenland starved to death bc they were unwilling to change, same with Easter Island. So, its foolish to say these things can't happen here. Its foolish to say bc the evidence is they are happening here and we are doing nothing about it. And, its my position that there is a point of no return, that after the public recognizes there is a problem, it will be too late. American's ability to borrow and finance is dependent on its being a "super power" with a dollar other countries want. If that changes, and it is, then we won't be able to get the financing to do anything. We will be just like Zimbabwe.

seahorse · Expert Joined: Oct 15, 2004 Posts: 2070 Location: Arkansas

There are others, besides me, that doubt the capital can be timely raised to meet the world's future energy development.

Energy capital doubts

outcast · Heavy Crude Joined: Apr 21, 2008 Posts: 138

Ok, so if the lights are still on all the time in my little corner of the universe in a few years, would that be enough proof that the gorge theory is BS? According to the theory, the lights in a few years should not be on that much.

Btw, I forgot to mention another reason for this happening earlier: Climate change has been disrupting rainfall patterns in many third world nations causing their hydro plants to produce less then they otherwise would have, which in turn causes power shortages.

SchroedingersCat · Intermediate Crude Joined: May 26, 2005 Posts: 514

I did a back of the envelope calculation and found that from 2000 to 2005 global energy generation increased by about 280 kwh per capita. You can all leave that 100 watt bulb on for another 12 days! Increases in Asia were significantly more than the rest of the planet combined.

Of course, there were also many countries that lost generational capacity. This seems to back up the unevenly distributed theory. When I get time, I will try to put together a more detailed analysis of the changes.

Also, many things have happened in the last few years relating to energy. We can only look at all these changes through the rear view mirror.
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