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The traitor within?

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Gry

Gry

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[FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif] "elimination of fossil fuels will set society back 200 years."[/FONT]
[FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]
[/FONT][FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]The opposite is true.
[/FONT][FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]Were we to go with a project seeking alternatives to carbon based fuels as a national priority,
[/FONT][FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]the resulting technologies would offer a more promising future than big oil offers with unending wars[/FONT]
[FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]and continual spills.[/FONT]
[FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]
[/FONT][FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]No major spills since 2010 ?[/FONT]
Feb 26, 2016 - A scientific analysis of a natural gas leak near Los Angeles says that it was the biggest in US history.
 
Elmer Bud

Elmer Bud

Genotype Sex Worker AKA strain whore
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"elimination of fossil fuels will set society back 200 years."

Saudi and the USA maybe .

Solar Farms Australia .
darling-downs-solar.jpg


Qld-solar-farm-solar-choice-impression.jpg
 
Elmer Bud

Elmer Bud

Genotype Sex Worker AKA strain whore
Veteran
packerfan79 said:
We have many huge solar farms here in the states. They still only produce a small percentage of the electric demands.
Click to expand...


G `day PF

Batteries ?
Solar tech is moving quickly ATM .

The writing is on the wall when British petroleum put solar on the roof of every petrol station in Oz .

Thanks for sharin

EB .
 
insomniac_AU

insomniac_AU

Active member
Elmer Bud said:
"elimination of fossil fuels will set society back 200 years."

Saudi and the USA maybe .

Solar Farms Australia .
View Image

View Image
Click to expand...
Hi EB! I agree solar helps but let's not get carried away. We are a long way off replacing fossil fuels here in Australia. Personally I don't think batteries are the long term answer. I don't believe you can solve one environmental problem by creating another.

https://www.wired.co.uk/article/lithium-batteries-environment-impact

Of course Elon Musk thinks they are a good idea because he makes them.

Personally I'd like to see solar energy used to produce hydrogen that could be stored and used when needed.
 
I

Ignignokt

Fossil fuels is such bullsh*t....

It is archaic and will be laughed at soon enough.
 
insomniac_AU

insomniac_AU

Active member
I'm not trying to preach or change people's opinion it's just the way I see things.
We all know the earth has limited resources. I just think we humans have to get away from pulling stuff out of the ground to meet our needs. It cannot continue indefinitely.
To me hydrogen energy seems the best solution we have at the moment short of things like zero point energy etc which may be developed in the future.
To be able to produce energy from the simple fusion of hydrogen and oxygen with the only emission being water seems like a no-brainer to me. As long as the sun keeps shining it's an endless supply of energy. I seriously believe this could have happened years ago but there is way too much money to be made from oil.
 
P

packerfan79

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Elmer Bud said:
G `day PF

Batteries ?
Solar tech is moving quickly ATM .

The writing is on the wall when British petroleum put solar on the roof of every petrol station in Oz .

Thanks for sharin

EB .
Click to expand...

I am sure batteries are an option, we should definitely make sure we can recycle them in a way that doesn't cause more damage. Their are big subsidies for going solar here in the states, it's just good business to get solar from a corporate stand point.

I still don't understand why you can't use an alternator to constantly charge the batteries on electric vehicles. I have a suspicion it's very possible but less profitable. I think adding the demand of electric cars to the power grid is going to lead to major problems. Not to mention the insane electric rates here in California. We have problems with the grid now, during high demand (summer), how much worse will it get when you add 20 million electric cars that must be charged daily.
 
insomniac_AU

insomniac_AU

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packerfan79 said:
I am sure batteries are an option, we should definitely make sure we can recycle them in a way that doesn't cause more damage. Their are big subsidies for going solar here in the states, it's just good business to get solar from a corporate stand point.

I still don't understand why you can't use an alternator to constantly charge the batteries on electric vehicles. I have a suspicion it's very possible but less profitable. I think adding the demand of electric cars to the power grid is going to lead to major problems. Not to mention the insane electric rates here in California. We have problems with the grid now, during high demand (summer), how much worse will it get when you add 20 million electric cars that must be charged daily.
Click to expand...


Yeah the cost of electricity here forced my hand in getting solar. I don't have batteries though so it's not that useful really. We only get 1/3 as much for each KW/h we feed in as it costs us to buy. So you need to feed in 3 times as much as you use to break even. All it really does it makes my bills a bit cheaper in summer.


I think the reason they don't have alternators on electric cars is you can't make something from nothing. The return will always be less than the energy required to produce it due to losses.


I agree, here in Australia we are also woefully under-prepared for electric vehicles. There are going to be issues. The government is crying because electric vehicles don't use fuel and fuel tax is what they use for road funding.
 
Klompen

Klompen

Active member
packerfan79 said:
I am sure the forest fires have greatly contributed to the rise in co2 levels. Exxon Valdes oil spill was in 1989. The last major oil spill was in 2010. You make it sound like their is an oil spill every Tuesday. Even if oil was never pulled out of the ground we would still have oil in the ocean. Oil constantly seeps out of the sea floor in California. Probably happens around the world. The Labrea tar pits are nothing more than an oil seep.
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The problem is that you don't really understand the scale of this issue. Volcanoes globally emit about 320,000,000 tons of CO2 annually. Sounds like a lot right? Humans emit 34,000,000,000 tons(over 100x as much).

The important thing is how much actual carbon is in the atmosphere at any given time; not how much is present in the Earth's mass total. Most human CO2 production is from fossil fuels, which means we're extracting sequestered carbon and adding it to a closed system. Compared to biofuels, this is adding carbon that effectively can't be removed from the system as fast as it is being added.

packerfan79 said:
I am certainly not opposed to renewable energy. But it's not something the government should be enforcing. I am all for hemp based fuels, paper, plastic, etc. I am not willing to tell others that they get to die because I want to virtue signal. Population control is a very sick proposition, who gets to decide. I don't want to be the person who has to decide who lives and dies. Also anyone who wants to make that decision is undoubtedly a sick person.
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Its a very limited viewpoint to believe that population control by necessity means killing people. Even if the average babies-per-male-female-pair was maintained at no greater than 3, the world population would drop slowly(natural mortality and other factors considered). There's just way too many people for a planet this size. We really need to get our expansion under control, and we are having a hard time of that because of how our economic and political systems work.


packerfan79 said:
As a pot grower, I am quite familiar with the role of co2 in our world. You want lower co2 levels plant more trees, and of course more pot plants. Stop covering the whole damn world in concrete. Stop letting environmentalists demand California waste billions of gallons of water over a dead fish. Then we can plant some damn grass so kids can get off the Nintendo and go out and play. While we are at it, stop letting murderers and rapist off with light sentances, so my kids can go out and play, without me having to worry about sick ducks who want to kill or rape children.
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First off.... Nintendo? I guess I'll leave that one alone.... lol

Trees are not an especially effective CO2 sequester and more importantly there's simply not enough arable land on Earth to accommodate the plant life necessary to sequester that much carbon. Worse yet, the only place where such actually can be done is the ocean and that is being devastated by various human activities.

As for sickos who go after kids: you're going to find that hard to resolve simply by going after convicts. Unfortunately, many of the worst predators are deeply entrenched in public positions and places of authority. Many of them have simply never been caught yet. Resolving that problem is hugely important but not as simple as locking people up or keeping them locked up. We desperately need to have a serious look at dealing with mental problems that do not stop individuals from being functional. All our society cares about is how functional people are; which is why psychopaths, pathological liars, and pedophiles are so disproportionately represented in positions of power and trust(government, clergy, corporate governance, etc). Most deeply depressed and anxious people out there are far better people than the aforementioned but they aren't go-getters like the aforementioned are. Figure out a good way to solve that problem and we'll be a lot closer to having it safe for our kids to go out and play.
 
Brother Nature

Brother Nature

Well-known member
Interesting topic, NZ uses only 20% fossil fuels and we're only about 3 years behind everyone else ;). On a serious not though, it's not only solar that is an alternative to fossil fuels, we use hydro power, geothermal, and wind energy mainly, then supplement it with fossil fuels when necessary and are 100% nuclear free. I think the battery idea is ok, in the interim, but not long term. I like Insomniacs idea about producing store able hydrogen, that's pretty neat.


I don't really like references wikipedia, but it does have a good page on NZ's electricity sector that contains all this info.


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electricity_sector_in_New_Zealand
 
Klompen

Klompen

Active member
Solar is a complicated topic. Silicon photo cells are not as eco friendly as one might think. Generally they are made from SiO2, and the output product of their manufacture is ironically CO2 the silicon must be sintered and then there is a process of "drawing" the material to drive the impurities out of the aggregate mass. This process definitely uses quite a bit of power and eats in to the benefits of the technology. Worse yet, the mining processes for the materials involved has carbon emissions associated with it. This includes things like selenium, silicon, cobalt, copper, etc. So the photo cell must be in constant service for a year or two to even start to offset this impact. Now if that was the entire story of course it would still be a no-brainer, but storing that power is a complicated issue. Chemical batteries are huge environmental nightmares and capacitors range from not so bad on the environment to involving severe pollution to produce. Capacitors, even super capacitors, don't have the capacity of chemical batteries though. There's flywheels and other mechanical tension devices, but they're not very efficient. Right now probably the most green tech for storing power of any promise is compressed air. Unfortunately there's also serious issues with that ranging from compression limitations to production and maintenance of the storage mediums. There are not a lot of good ways to store power on a grid scale.

Fusion is really our only likely salvation. Anti-nuclear-anything types are unfortunately quite opposed to it even though its extremely important to our future survival.
 
S

St. Phatty

Active member
Most conversations about Nuclear energy are incomplete if they don't mention Thorium.

Thorium works great for nuclear reactors - and you can't build bombs with it.

Maybe that's why it wasn't used in the US.

What I don't understand is why conversations about keeping nuclear tech away from Iran ... they never talk about Thorium reactors.
 
B

bigtacofarmer

Well-known member
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I side with the aliens on this one. Humans are entirely to stupid to have anything nuclear. Period. We barely deserve forks.
 
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