Apocalypse Soon?

Discussion in 'General Science & Technology' started by Futilitist, Jan 1, 2013.

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  1. Billy T Use Sugar Cane Alcohol car Fuel Valued Senior Member

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    No that is not even possible. Energy can only be transformed; however, it may seem to be "manufactured." For example with some very costly instillations, nuclear energy can be transformed into electrical energy with about 2/3 of the nuclear degraded into heat of little value south of Canada in the winter.

    Sugarcane is exceptionally good at capturing and storing solar energy in a form useful to man. (In part because it is one of a few plants that uses a more efficient four step, instead of three step, photo-chemical process. In part because simple fermentation only requires a vat to hold the juice crushed from the cane and distillation is cheap and easy with all the heat required produced by burning the crushed cane, with enough left over to make currently about 4% of Brazil´s electrical energy.)
    If you really mean tidal power, the high water peaks precede by ~6 hours before the low water extreme period. This makes it economically unattractive except in only a few locations (Bay of Fundy, perhaps but AFAIK, not even there!)

    If, as I suspect you mean wave power, it has a different economic problem, related to the fact the energy density goes as the cube of the wave height. So if your system is designed to get some power from two foot difference in wave height, say 100 watts per meter along the wave, (per meter width of the wave power machine) then when the once in five years 30 foot wave height difference occurs (bad storm) each meter is subjected to 100x(15^3) times more power or 337,500 watts/m. Man has zero ability to make a generator that gives 100W/ meter power from the common waves that can survive even only 1/3 of that linear power applied to it. I.e. when subjected to 111,111 W/ meter. If lucky you may be able to find your machine after the storm passes so you can sell it for scrap metal.

    All electric generators are expensive a require at least 10 years of working life (usually 30 years or more) to amortize their capital cost. Yes, there is steady power available from the waves (unlike twice a day tidal power) and many different designs have been tried, but AFAIK, not one has survived for even 5 years without being destroyed. I would be pleased to learn of one that did.

    Further more, you assertion is false. Wind power is "natural kinetic energy" and it is quite practical. The power density incident upon the wind machine also goes as the cube of the wind speed but it is easy to shed rather than capture absorb the power peaks of the wind - just "feather the blades" and they will barely spin.

    The feathering linkages are complex with motors in the base of each blade and control circuit and can fail (but never seem to); none the less when I designed a small wind system for the US coast guard to reduce the consumption of diesel fuel at remote light houses,* I bought a wind machine from "North Wind" that had a very rugged and simple way to shed power. The generator & blade shaft was mounted above a base that could tilt back as it was connected to the tower with a very heavy multi-turn coil spring. At the test demonstration wind system APL installed on land at the light house near Norfolk, entrance to the Chesapeake Bay, I have seen the three blades so tilted back that they were spinning with their spin axis almost vertical, instead of horizontal as they were in light winds. (If North Wind company still exist, perhaps someone can find a photo of their clever simple automatic design.)

    * At some light houses the diesel fuel had to be delivered by helicopter and then its cost was greater than $500/ gallon! (back when gasoline for my car was less than a dollar per gallon.) – At that price, it is not hard to quickly pay for the entire diesel displacement wind system in a few weeks with steady wind!
     
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  3. Futilitist This so called forum is a fraud... Registered Senior Member

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    Instead of just trying to make fun of my statement, tell me why it doesn't make sense.

    We survived by using our massive brains to figure out how to use resources with ever greater intensity. That type of adaptation is obviously not possible forever. Thus, eventually, collapse is inevitable.

    ---Futilitist

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  5. billvon Valued Senior Member

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    Not quite the question.

    We used whales for lighting for a long time (whale oil was in high demand for lamps.) We ran out of that resource; nearly drove whales to extinction.

    How did we survive overshooting that resource base?

    We used horses for transportation for a long time. It got to be such a problem that the #1 health problem in larger cities was horse poop and decaying horse carcasses. Extrapolating into the future, use of that resource would result in pandemics and mass deaths.

    How did we survive overshooting that resource base?

    We used to use canals for most of our transport of goods. It was convenient and integrated well with ocean-going shipping. However, as our population rose, canals became woefully insufficient for shipping, despite some herculean efforts to improve and extend them.

    How did we survive overshooting that resource base?
     
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  7. Billy T Use Sugar Cane Alcohol car Fuel Valued Senior Member

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    We will never use up the "last drop." We will, as we are currently doing, find alterantives that are cheaper, like sugarcane alcohol, and some EV hybrids, or natural gas fuel at least for all big trucks etc. so as is now happening, the demand for oil will continue to fall. Some day, at most three decades hence, instead of 93% of oil being used for tranport as it currently is, 93% will be used for petrochemical production. - That does not add much CO2 to the atmosphere, so can be done for a long time; however, it will not be the base of common plastics. BrasKem is already annually making 400,000 TONs of two common plastics from the sugar cane grown on only 0.02% of Brazil´s farm land. I.e. using sugarcane to make the idential plastics oil does, but cheaper than using oil if the oil costs $90/ brl or more.
     
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  8. Billy T Use Sugar Cane Alcohol car Fuel Valued Senior Member

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    That reminds me of an earlier (by ~200 years) and more scientific "futiltist" who like the present one could not imagine any alternative systems to the one then in use. He did a careful analysis of how far outside of NYC a horse could round trip travel without eating more grass, etc. and assumed NYC would not in the future have much grass for horse to eat and that there had to be one horse for every (5? - I forget his number) people in NYC. From this and the amount of distant pasture available that most horse would need to pass thru, etc. he concluded NYC was doomed to always have less than 100,000 people living in it. (Again, I´m not sure of the number - perhaps it was 200,000?)

    The present Futilitist is so lacking in imagination /intelligence that he even ignores the present trend away for oil - demand is falling and assumes there is no alternative, like solar energy in its various transformed forms (wind, solar cell power, sugarcane alcohol, etc.) to oil, so mankind must die off when oil is a little more expensive to produce (or at time says that even the current price is so high we are all doomed!)
     
  9. spidergoat pubic diorama Valued Senior Member

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    We have reality on our side, all you have is imagination and fantasy, which isn't energy. You have the delusion that comes from being spoiled living in the age of cheap energy and the hubris of technological worship. We won't "die off", but we cannot sustain a consumer industrial economy anymore.
     
  10. Billy T Use Sugar Cane Alcohol car Fuel Valued Senior Member

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    No, for example I have these two facts: BrasKem is making 400,000 tons of plastic annually from sugarcane grown on only 0.02% of Brazil´s farm land and for 30 years some Brazilian cars have run on sugarcane alcohol (and most do today) instead of CO2 producing oil´s gasoline.

    You have ONLY your opinion, no facts.
     
  11. billvon Valued Senior Member

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    Which is exactly what the "horse apocalypse" guy claimed. He could not imagine cars. (Or trucks, or oil, or rails, or airplanes, or nuclear power.)

    Yep. And that guy 200 years ago knew we could not sustain a NYC population of more than 100,000. He knew it with the cold, hard facts of reality.
     
  12. Write4U Valued Senior Member

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    And that will solve the problem of running out of oil? You need to pay more attention to the Bartlett's lecture.
    400,00 tons of common plastics from .02 % of Brazil's farmland?

    Here is the problem,
    http://www.worldometers.info/

    Why use petrochemicals to make plastics? We do not need plastic pouring into molds, we can grow mushrooms in molds.
    http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/tech/making-stuff.html#making-stuff-cleaner (36:17 bio plastics)
     
  13. Futilitist This so called forum is a fraud... Registered Senior Member

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    You asked me to clarify my question, so I did. Now you dodge it. Please answer my question:

    We survived by using our massive brains to figure out how to use resources with ever greater intensity. That type of adaptation is obviously not possible forever. Thus, eventually, collapse is inevitable. Why doesn't that make sense?

    ---Futilitist

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  14. billvon Valued Senior Member

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    Right. Which is why we don't use horses or canals any more; they don't last forever. We used our massive brains to figure out new solutions. Once we used the old ones to their "greatest intensity" we moved on to something else. Why doesn't that make sense to you?
     
  15. Futilitist This so called forum is a fraud... Registered Senior Member

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    Obviously because if we are so good at using stuff up, we will eventually use up something critical that we cannot replace with something else. The earth's resources are finite, after all. Each time we have figured out a new "solution", our population has risen to exploit the new "solution" to exhaustion, requiring yet another new "solution". Under these conditions, it seems quite logical to assume that we will eventually run out of "solutions". Once we do, we will experience civilization collapse and die off. Why doesn't that make sense to you?

    ---Futilitist

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  16. spidergoat pubic diorama Valued Senior Member

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    So if he was wrong, I'm wrong? It's not the same situation. The oil was waiting to fuel NYC. There is nothing left like that.
     
  17. Billy T Use Sugar Cane Alcohol car Fuel Valued Senior Member

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    Yes, why we need to (and are) switching our energy source to solar energy, usually in a transformed form like wind or photo-cells electricity or stored chemically, like the sugar in sugarcane plants). Continued burning of fossil fuels, is not sustainable - not because they are finite resources, but because if even half that remain were burnt, at the present or faster rate, the earth over heats.* Material resources, ores and their refined minerals get dispersed if we don´t recycle, but are not "lost from Earth." - It just takes more energy to get them pure again. (Higher efficiency & recycling are better "new energy" than new energy sources. 96% of soft drink and Aluminum beer cans get recycled in Brazil, but this is not much to be proud of as it is achieved by very poor, homeless men walking the sidewalks, stopping at each trash can, and sorting thru the trash to add a few more "foot crushed" cans to the enormous plastic bag of cans on their back. Many of them get all their food that way too.)

    * Perhaps in a very extreme way: Atmospheric CO2 rapidly increasing will accelerate the release for CH4, now stored safely in the frozen tundra or on the near shore ocean floor. CH4 is at least 10 times more effective at blocking the escape of IR ("earth shine") than CO2 molecule vs. molecule. Fortunately, CH4 is oxidized high up with UV getting it over threshold energy. (A tank of half O2 and half CH4 is stable because of that reaction threshold.) The "half life" of a CH4 molecule released at sea level is at least a decade. Thus if the CO2 were more slowly released the atmosphere concentration of CH4 remains small. In fact in Earth´s history the atmospheric CO2 has been several times higher than it is today and Earth was warmer, but still with low CH4 concentrations in the air.

    No one can be sure, but it is possible that the current rapid man-made release of CO2 is causing the stored CH4 to be released faster than it can get up to the high atmosphere´s UV and be destroyed. If this is the case, then ALL life on Earth ends: In a thermal run-a-way to air temperature of ~100C as the oceans boil. I.e. Earth can be a "cooler version of Venus." As the air becomes mostly very high pressure** steam, the earth shine IR is ever more efficiently blocked from escaping as H2O is the best molecule for absorbing IR trying to escape - very much better than CO2 and a lot better than CH4. (The physics of this has to due with fact both CH4 and CO2 (actually O-C-O in shape) have full symmetry and are not polar but water molecule is polar as both H atoms are on the same side, with 105 degree angle between them. I.e. the H side is permanently positive and the O side is permanently negative. Just spinning such a polar molecule makes radiation. (Or with equal ease, absorbes IR radiation with quantum changes in the spin state)

    Because of the huge heat capacity of the oceans, it may be on the order of a million years before the near surface air temperate is greater than ~105C. Then, when there is no longer any liquid water on earth, the surface temperature soars up to more than the melting point of many metals.

    Venus was once much like a "warmer version of Earth" - had a relatively clear atmosphere. Both planets have two stable states, one in which the atmosphere blocks only small part of the IR radiation from the surface (like Earth now) and one where no surface radiation can escape from the surface - only radiation from near the top of the atmosphere can escape. I don´t think man´s release of CO2 has already made the transition to Earth´s hot stable state inevitable, but I am not sure of that. Hence the sooner we stop burning fossil fuels, the better. - Why I am such a strong advocate of using sugarcane alcohol for 93% of all the petroleum now being burnt!

    ** The weight of the air pressing down on a square inch of earth surface now is 14.7 pounds. If the mass of the oceans were in the atmosphere as steam, each square inch would hold up many tons, not 14.7 pounds!

    Look up at noon on a clear day - that is man´s ONLY sustainable energy source.
     
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  18. The Marquis Only want the best for Nigel Valued Senior Member

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    Rationally?
    What, so there isn't any room for forlorn or whimsical hope?
     
  19. billvon Valued Senior Member

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    What materials will we "use up?" What matter is disappearing from our planet that we will never see again?

    Uh, no. That's akin to saying "with every generation we use up more potential genetic permutations, thus it is logical to assume that we will eventually run out of genetic permutations and all die." It is in fact not logical.
     
  20. billvon Valued Senior Member

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    Going by history, the apocalypse predictors have always been wrong. Thus you have centuries of false predictions - many just as good as yours, many much better - to work against. You have to say "well, they were all wrong, but this time I'm right!" Not impossible, but very difficult, since many had far better proof than you do of an impending apocalypse. For example:

    Paul Erlich has a PhD in biology. He is a professor at Stanford and is also a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the United States National Academy of Sciences, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Philosophical Society. He wrote a book predicting an apocalypse in the 1970's based on several peer reviewed papers he authored.

    Thomas Robert Malthus was a British scholar. He was Professor of History and Political Economy at the East India Company College and a Fellow of the Royal Society. He wrote extensively on the problems of the coming apocalypse, and published a famous treatise, "An Essay on the Principle of Population". He said among other things that you cannot increase population without misery. If the population were to climb much above its contemporary value (about one billion at that time, around 1800) standard of livings must invariably decline. "The poor consequently must live much worse, and many of them be reduced to severe distress." There was no way out.

    So perhaps your vision is better than both those men, your study of the problem more thorough, your data harder to refute, your conclusions more learned. But going by history - that's unlikely.

    No? NYC gets no sun? There are no tides, no rivers? No nuclear power plants nearby? No means of mass transit not based on oil?
     
  21. Billy T Use Sugar Cane Alcohol car Fuel Valued Senior Member

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    First footnote of post 994 tells how man may be killing all life on Earth by burning fossil fuels. - I.e. may trigger the rapid release of CH4 now in methane hydrates.

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    Right: A burning specimen of methane hydrate ice (United States Geological Survey image).
    Left: A ball-and-stick model of methane hydrate showing the central methane molecule surrounded by a "cage" of water molecules.

    Here is a little more about Methane Hydrates (the ice that burns):
    * That is Japan´s hope. Japan is now getting CH4 from a deposit in the S.China Sea - the first nation to accomplish this task.
     
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  22. Futilitist This so called forum is a fraud... Registered Senior Member

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    Oil, fresh water, topsoil, concentrated metal ores, phosphorus, etc. Basically all of the stuff we need to continue with industrialized civilization.

    Um, my statement does not mention genetic permutations. So in order to make your argument against my original statement, you simply substitute another statement I did not make and argue with that. Nice.

    ---Futilitist

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  23. Futilitist This so called forum is a fraud... Registered Senior Member

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    Since an apocalypse is inevitable, I will eventually be proven right. And there is good evidence to indicate that we are already in the danger zone.

    Also, this apocalypse soon thread has just reached an important landmark. 1000 posts, 50 pages, and 153,904 views! This interest shows that at least some people are genuinely concerned about the possibility of collapse.

    ---Futilitist

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