Green Technology

Civilization is _still_ not going to die. 2km from the surface you get about 75C of temperature differential; not very much. The total heat flux is about 65 milliwatts per meter squared, compared to about 1000 watts per meter squared from solar insolation. That's why geothermal energy does not make sense anywhere except very specific location where heat flow is concentrated due to springs or fault activity.

 

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No, heat pumps systems are productive almost everywhere... but building a competitive geo-thermal factory is another story.

 

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Heat pumps take energy. They do not produce it.

 

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But how would you generate the Ca(OH)₂?

The conventional method is by, er, heating CaCO₃ and thereby driving off (into the air)…….CO₂!

It's not so simple. This presumably is the reason why millions are being spent on expensive solutions such as carbon capture and storage (CCS).

 

Really funny, at least you have some sense of humor =]

 

Where's the joke? All a heat pump does is raise the temperature of heat energy by adding an input of mechanical work to it. You have to provide the mechanical work, i.e. provide an energy input, for it to function. Right?

 

Then it just means that you are funny, without understanding why... Or go on on onansim if you want it, it's not the style of the house here =]

 

No civilization won't die, but it will contract to the level where agriculture will be our primary activity. Cars will be relegated to the rich or hobbyists. Local concerns will prevail over globalism, and the federal government may not survive. Climate, warfare, and economic refugees will spread to prosperous fertile areas with a mild climate...

 

Eh?

 

Climate will spread to areas with a mild climate?

 

Climate refugees.

 

The world's populations have already spread to prosperous fertile areas with a mild climate. Don't see how that would change much. I also don't know why people would stop using cars (or tractors, or trucks . . . )

 

I don't believe so. Especially in the Middle East, where they depend more on oil income, and Bangladesh, which might end up under water, and the American south and southwest.

 

There are several places in the Middle East where they don't depend on oil income; places like Kuwait and Saudi Arabia will become more like them. In Bangladesh, people will move away from the shores over the next 10 decades or so. Given that people currently live in Las Vegas, I don't expect the American South or Southwest to change that much. Population will slowly shift North, but cities will not become ghost towns or anything.

 

Without air conditioning and imported water pumped by electricity, places like Las Vegas couldn't exist. The American south and southwest likewise will return to the backwaters of civilization. This is the end of the age of cheap energy.

 

Exactly. And yet they do exist just fine.

My energy is quite cheap, and the type of energy I have, Las Vegas has even more of.

Yep. And Peak Oil was going to arrive in 2010 and then we were all going to die. We've heard that before.

 

I didn't say you would die. Energy will always be affordable, but that's irrelevant. The scale of energy production will contract and everything else will accommodate the new reality by likewise contracting. This is already happening. But at the peak is also the time of apparent plenty, and yet strange fluctuations in price are going on. This is predicted, the markets will get more and more volatile.

When you are totally poor, you won't be in the energy market, except on a subsistence level, for some firewood so you don't freeze for instance.

 

The scale of energy production IS contracting, at least on a per-capita bases, But everything else has not accommodated by likewise contracting. Since we are becoming more and more energy efficient, we are actually doing more with less energy. This trend will continue.

The markets have always been volatile. Indeed, what's happening today isn't all that unusual, compared to what happened in 2008 (an even bigger drop) or in 1973 (much larger rise) or 1979 (even bigger rise, even bigger change as a percentage of price.)

True, and people live like that right now. That won't change - although as we continue to advance, what we call the subsistence level will rise.

 

No it won't. You can only get so efficient without more capital investment. It's the diminishing returns of technology.

Yeah it is, because it's driven by a true limit, not a political one.

Advance how? Technology isn't a substitute for cheap energy.

 

Correct! Fortunately we are making that capital investment.

What "true limit" is that? We've all heard about how peak oil was going to occur in 2010 and society was then going to collapse because there was no more cheap oil. That was a "true limit" too; backed up by the Hubbert Curve and all sorts of science. That failed to come to pass as well.

Technology can PRODUCE cheap energy. How? For one example, see below.

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