Bryan said:
The Gardener said:
The coal sands are an even more dramatic example of this. Now I will admit that there is "net" energy in the coal sands, and I hear the refrain that if oil reaches a certain price, it becomes profitable. The fallacy of this is that as oil reaches that higher price to make oil sands profitable, it also increases the costs of extraction, which makes the "profitability point" spiral a lot higher than the oft quoted $80/bbl after things sort out.
That reminds me of a discussion I was having with some other posters on a solar energy Web site and forum a few years ago. The accepted estimate on that site for the amount of time it takes for a solar panel to pay for itself was around 7-8 years, if I recall correctly (that's the amount of time it takes to pay for itself if it's plugged into your local electrical grid, reducing your electric bill).
But I was politically incorrect enough to point out to them that that was under IDEAL conditions, like with no hardware failures of that expensive equipment at all during that entire period of time. And in my opinion, it's asking a lot for hardware to function perfectly under adverse conditions for such a long time. Take the inverter, for example (the device that converts the DC from the solar cells into AC): a single failure of a high-power semiconductor device inside that unit could set you back to Square One, starting the 7-year process all over again! :shock:
But the main point I'm getting at here is this: one of the other posters responded to me by saying that as the price of commercial electricity inevitably continues to increase in the coming years, the "payback" time of those expensive solar panels will continue to become shorter and shorter, making it a better and better deal for people to buy them! My response to HIM, of course, was that as electrical rates go up, so will the cost of manufacturing solar panels; therefore, there's no particular reason to believe that the "payback" time will ever change from the current estimate of around 7-8 years. People don't always think these things through clearly.
We aren't talking about how small computers can get, or whether or not a telephone will become a working piece of technology. We are talking about how "possible" it is to break the physics of the Law of Conservation of Energy.
Now, I don't think it is completely IMpossible, its just that the CURRENT list of "alternatives" aren't going to do the trick. I DO see some possibility coming from a solution in the realm of massive scale genetic engineering. If we can alter genetics, this does open the door to the potential of doing human-initiated "terraforming" of our planet. Perhaps we could genetically engineer some plant so that it breathes in the greenhouse gas emissions of our hydrocarbon usage, and creates a hydrocarbon sap that we can refine. Of course, we would also need to genetically alter these plants so that their metabolism is increased a thousandfold or so.
The quotes were highlighting not the specifics of a certain technology or science. They were highlighting what you later mentioned - "current list of alternatives" and that current situations are poor indicators of future reality.
Nobody could predict Nazis>Nuclear Science>WW2>Manhattan Project>Nuclear Power
What's especially relevant are
disruptive technologies, unpredictable circumstances which propel certain ideas from obscurity to mainstream normality within a matter of years. For example oil production based on *THEN* methods of extraction, in the late 1800s, would have peaked and declined before most of us were born, and the peak oil pessimists of the day (yes peak oil was known long before M King Hubbard, who simply applied the concept ‘globally’) commonly noted for chronocentric thinking (which all of us do by the way at times in a variety of ways). “Oil will not last much beyond x date†x never going beyond mid-20th century. Technology extended peak, there were no deviations from the laws of thermodynamics, or any natural laws.
Geophysical analysis with supercomputers (disruptive technology) that can visualize the deep crevices of the Earth, mapping large swathes of land, both dry and later underwater, was completely unpredicted, it wasn’t even a fantasy in 1900. Geographers then would find praying to God for inspiration on where to find oil deposits more realistic than geophysical supercomputing. Somebody once said “a technology that is fully developed is indistinguishable from magicâ€, geographers in 1900 would be in awe at the current oil industry, a globally coordinated dance, pipelines spanning continents and nations behaving like arteries of a worldwide economic organism. The engineering marvel of oil rigs, like man-made cities of the ocean, for the sole purpose of oil production. These developments which are standard today were once, at best, a trip on some mushrooms.
The Savinars of today like the Savinars of the past were chronocentric. An over-reliance of strategic thinking impairs the ability to see beyond its’ inherent weakness. I’m a strategic analyst by title, and I know full well the limits of strategic thinking. It’s easy to note current trends, and extend it….as long as one wishes. You can extend it forever if you want, the trend rules are indefinite, but the objects of the trend are usually not. At current trends, the human population will be 36 billion by 2100, at current trends my diet and exercise regime will give me a weight of 22lb in October 2010. At current trends my salary will be about $3million a year by 2090.
What the energy crisis is dependent on is not so much the ‘source’, but refinements in processing. Even simple, basic changes over a small period can result in radical long term outcomes.
Bryan said:
It's very odd that you would even mention "hydrogen" in this context, since there is no natural source of free hydrogen. In other words, you can't go drill a hole in the ground somewhere and expect hydrogen to come out. For that reason, hydrogen isn't a source of energy, although it may be a good way to store energy made somewhere else..
Bryan said:
“We don’t even know where to find it properly, it’s not like we can just mine the oil out of a deposit (like coal) or chop it down (wood). And even if we do, it’s practically useless (refinement into clear gasoline was still in its’ infancyâ€
Bryan, that was 1850 thought you would have learned by now! Just kidding, but similar responses to a pre-fledgling oil industry not only happened, but was, and still is, expected. Don’t get me wrong, I definitely am not belittling those people or your own view, in fact, we need a healthy balance of opposing perspectives to fully maximise whatever results manifest from this worldwide discourse. Some people are good at highlighting reality by enlightening us of the limitations, whilst those not so good at that take note and avoid costly mistakes, and those who dislike problems when they’re told them, and inspires them to come up with a solution. No one person could possess all those qualities at their best, and everyone possesses a degree of each. It’s the creative process. If everyone thought like me, we’d be bankrupt because of interesting ideas having money spent on them only to find they don’t work, if everyone highlighted limitations we’d all get no where, in fact, the safe solutions they would recommend, were previously ‘crazy ideas’ by the other camp. Balance is key within the scientific community, a healthy spectrum of clever creativity?----?clever wisdom = productivity.
In fact, going around randomly drilling for oil despite how useful it is, then pumping it out, then turning it into a usable form (gasoline), was thought by many as unrealistic absurd. Not that oil tycoons could see past their own time either they were just adventurous and most of them didn’t make a penny, they were entrepreneurial and were seeking quick start profits in a sector that hasn’t yet been monopolized. The technology that depends on oil developed its’ extent AFTER it became a major energy source, AFTER it was proven an oil dependent micro-economy was feasible. There was no universal concept of personal combustion-engine transport before an oil business proved workable in the long-term. You need to use your imagination and live as a ‘realist’ in 1850+, I would find it difficult to imagine how black sludge could possibly be anything more than a novel tool but I would also certainly be very interested in it’s pursuit and potential! So a fairly conservative person will almost certainly discard it as of much use to the wider economy, let alone imagine it as the basis of the future global economy, the creative or the entrepreneur have a trial and error way of experiencing things and depends on seeing failure not as failure, but as feedback.
Hydrogen in 2008 is probably the equivalent of steam in 1808. The arguments against it can sound rather similar. Those who imagined steam power revolutionizing transport, and those who imagine hydrogen revolutionizing our energy use, faced the same obstacle. That was converting initial energy into steam/hydrogen. The problem of steam on a large scale was solved not by discarding steam, or discarding engine pistons, they are not the issue as much as the process. Hydrogen has to pass a point where it can be produced on a large scale reliably. To me, it seems easier to do this than trying to implement a steam infrastructure. Coal > heat > steam, which has to be generated on demand and cannot be stored. Its’ application is not wide-ranging. Hydrogen capsules could be used for MP3 players, in Japan they’re releasing methane cartridges which are about the size of an AA battery. Any current portable electronics can be developed for cartridge power. Power lasts for around a month, instead of hours. I couldn’t imagine having portable steam power in my iPhone.
Anyway, that’s too long a post.
