Peak Oil Theory

[Vecha]

Originally Posted by Spectre

After all is said and done, even this is all about your opinion. Who do you trust, who do you think is more credible? I've decided that as long as there are options left to consider(alternate fuels, electric cars, etc...), we'll always adapt according to demand. Let's face it, despite greed being a 'bad' trait, it drives technological and societal advancement. Once something becomes too expensive, people change their lifestyles to adapt to it, and once oil companies stop making money off it due to no demand, they sell something else that people do want, that being alternate ways to drive their vehicles. It's what we've done for thousands of years, don't see why we'd stop now.

I understand where you are coming from...and it makes sense, alot of sense.

But...I don't live in a "big" city...no side walks. Most people here commute to work....unless options open up around the same time gas hits 10 bucks a gallon I'll be in a world of pain.

Just frightening to think about it...I know it won't happen over night, but it has the potential to get ugly.

Feels like the perfect storm right now...Peak Oil...Recession that may turn into a depression...Hopefully we can climb out of this mess...and start funding alternate energies...

[Malorn]

Meh.

[Vecha]

Originally Posted by Malorn

Don't need to fund to try to 'stimulate' alternative energy. Private industry and the energy industry itself will do that for us. Let capitalism and American exceptionalism work its magic. Hand holding just gets in the way and makes investors cautious.

Then at least we need to stop cutting the education budget.

[Baneblade]

Originally Posted by Vecha

Then at least we need to stop cutting the education budget.

Because throwing money at education has helped oh so much...

[Accuser]

Originally Posted by Vecha

Then at least we need to stop cutting the education budget.

There is too much budget and not enough education. Having actually taught outside the U.S., I can assure you that our problems are:
1. Parents that don't give a shit, or simply don't pressure their kids to learn like they should.
2. The inability of schools to fire bad teachers, because as in any job, some people are bad at it.

[Geist]

Originally Posted by Accuser

There is too much budget and not enough education. Having actually taught outside the U.S., I can assure you that our problems are:
1. Parents that don't give a shit, or simply don't pressure their kids to learn like they should.
2. The inability of schools to fire bad teachers, because as in any job, some people are bad at it.

That pretty much summed it up, but also the fact that parents can't even punish children without social services telling them, "Your doing it wrong, we're taking your children away."

[Goku]

Originally Posted by Malorn

Don't need to fund to try to 'stimulate' alternative energy. Private industry and the energy industry itself will do that for us. Let capitalism and American exceptionalism work its magic. Hand holding just gets in the way and makes investors cautious.

This.

[Traak]

You know, one thing America will have, if they largely switch to electric powered vehicles, is something they have not had for over a century: a populace that can, "fuel up" its transportation anywhere. With a rack of solar panels, a windmill, or water turbine, you can "refuel" your vehicle independent of infrastructure.

Imagine running out of electricity while out four-wheeling. You deploy the regeneration system you have brought, and start charging the vehicle up while you set up camp. After a few days, you're full-up and good to go.

I think this is one of the fears facing Big Oil. People actually being able to get for free what they want to force them to line up to buy.

[Vecha]

Originally Posted by Traak

I think this is one of the fears facing Big Oil. People actually being able to get for free what they want to force them to line up to buy.

Well...some companies overseas have been able to charge for the use rain falling down...so wouldn't surprised me if they made it illegal to use the sun.

[Vecha]

Originally Posted by Accuser

There is too much budget and not enough education. Having actually taught outside the U.S., I can assure you that our problems are:
1. Parents that don't give a shit, or simply don't pressure their kids to learn like they should.
2. The inability of schools to fire bad teachers, because as in any job, some people are bad at it.

Well...massively cutting the education budget won't fix this.

Adjusting tenure laws and making BOTH parents AND teachers responsible will.

[MadPenguin]

I've been reading through this with some interest, and curiously enough, im currently taking a module about this at university. Here are some of the numbers our lecturer (who knows what hes on about) gave us: (numbers are of course approximate using current consumption values)

Coal - 200-400 years
Oil - 50 years
Gas - 60-70 (not including shale gas)
Nuclear Fission - 1,000's of years
Nuclear Fusion - 1,000,000's of years

I consider myself in the not bothered category, but certainly not because of renewables.

Wave power is just terribly inefficient and we will never get a decent amount of energy out of it.

The main problem with windpower is that its very sporadic. But the companies have to give out a constant supply of energy. So when they recieve a drop in the amount of energy from windpower, they have to supply it from elsewhere. The ONLY source that can do this is gas, since its the only one where you can really "flick and switch" and instantly get more going. However, this means that the number of wind farms you build must be proportional to the number of gas stations. So in effect wind isnt going to last forever, only as long as we have gas.

Solar power has the obvious drawback of not working at night and not very well on cloudy days.

Refering back to the numbers i posted above its clear nuclear is the only long term solution. There are a lot of myths about how terrible nuclear is but most of it is fabricated. People arguing against fusion (usually non-scientists, ever noticed?) will say things like what about Chernobyl? But the way fission reactors are built now, its literally impossible to have another chernobyl. Not a worry.

Now yes we saw in Japan basically everything that could go wrong did go wrong fast because of an enormous earthquake. Basically, nature threw everything it had at the station, and no casualties were sustained. Yes there are now issues with the land.

But look at somewhere like france where it gets 80% of its energy from nuclear, its not had a problem because huge earthquakes arent an issue there. Its electricity is amongst the cheapest in Europe.

And we are talking fission here, when we crack fusion thats even safer.

So im in the lets not worry category, but because of nuclear, not renewables.

[SgtMAD]

Originally Posted by MadPenguin

I've been reading through this with some interest, and curiously enough, im currently taking a module about this at university. Here are some of the numbers our lecturer (who knows what hes on about) gave us: (numbers are of course approximate using current consumption values)

Coal - 200-400 years
Oil - 50 years
Gas - 60-70 (not including shale gas)
Nuclear Fission - 1,000's of years
Nuclear Fusion - 1,000,000's of years

I consider myself in the not bothered category, but certainly not because of renewables.

Wave power is just terribly inefficient and we will never get a decent amount of energy out of it.

The main problem with windpower is that its very sporadic. But the companies have to give out a constant supply of energy. So when they recieve a drop in the amount of energy from windpower, they have to supply it from elsewhere. The ONLY source that can do this is gas, since its the only one where you can really "flick and switch" and instantly get more going. However, this means that the number of wind farms you build must be proportional to the number of gas stations. So in effect wind isnt going to last forever, only as long as we have gas.

Solar power has the obvious drawback of not working at night and not very well on cloudy days.

Refering back to the numbers i posted above its clear nuclear is the only long term solution. There are a lot of myths about how terrible nuclear is but most of it is fabricated. People arguing against fusion (usually non-scientists, ever noticed?) will say things like what about Chernobyl? But the way fission reactors are built now, its literally impossible to have another chernobyl. Not a worry.

Now yes we saw in Japan basically everything that could go wrong did go wrong fast because of an enormous earthquake. Basically, nature threw everything it had at the station, and no casualties were sustained. Yes there are now issues with the land.

But look at somewhere like france where it gets 80% of its energy from nuclear, its not had a problem because huge earthquakes arent an issue there. Its electricity is amongst the cheapest in Europe.

And we are talking fission here, when we crack fusion thats even safer.

So im in the lets not worry category, but because of nuclear, not renewables.

yea lets spend billions of dollars for one nuc plant that will generate power for maybe 40 years and yet generates waste that is poisonous for 10's of thousands of years,if you figure the actual cost of nuc energy, it is the most costly by a far margin and when considering the power generation versus the waste reclamation problems,the cost becomes astronomical.

I love these "save the planet" types, they are all for saving the environment today but don't give a shit about a future where we are forced to deal with decades of nuclear waste piling up.

if the real cost of nuclear energy is added up,the price of the power generated becomes the highest in the history of mankind

[MadPenguin]

The arithmatic of a world without nuclear power just doesnt add up. It it going to become a neccesity when we run out of other fuels.

The situation is not as dire as you seem to believe it is. Even now there are plans for nuclear reactors that will use the waste produced by earlier plants to produce more energy, cutting down the waste considerably.
Even now however, if ALL the energy you used in your LIFETIME came from nuclear power, the waste from the production of this energy would fit in a coke can. Clearly not a lot, and soon this waste isnt going to be waste since its going to be re-used. And no one is suggesting we switch completely to nuclear power, renewables can still be used, so it would be even less waste than this is reality.

The whole "40 year life-span" thing is a common misconception. 40 years is just the point at which certain peices might need to be replaced. In reality, a nuclear plant can go as long as its reactor is fit to go, which is more like 70 years.

During the last winter here (England) we went an entire week without any wind and had to borrow huge amounts of nuclear energy from France.

Lets also not forget how green nuclear power also is.

I'll close with an interesting quote from the wiki page:

" A recent report from Oak Ridge National Laboratory concludes that coal power actually results in more radioactivity being released into the environment than nuclear power operation, and that the population effective dose equivalent from radiation from coal plants is 100 times as much as from ideal operation of nuclear plants."

[SgtMAD]

there is currently 77000 tons of high level nuclear waste in the US right now, thats one hell of a lot of "coke cans"

and how in the hell is it "green" producing the most toxic poisons known to man?

I know the "real" cost of nuclear power,i live in Nevada and we have been fighting this crap for 30 years now,I have seen family members and friends die as a direct result of the above ground testing done back in the 50's and 60's,the govt told them all it was safe too.

just wait 20 years and you will see the results of how Japan has handled their nuc disaster,there are now spots in Tokyo that are "hotter" than the areas around the plants due to fall-out patterns,the local govt's are letting kindergarten age children hunt for accorns in piles of leaves that are contaminated.

if you really want to know how bad it is in Japan then you can start with these links
this site is news links and blogs http://enenews.com/
this guy is in Japan and he hunts down blogs and stories in japanese and translates them http://ex-skf.blogspot.com/
this man is a retired nuc engineer/plant operator and has been doing updates since the beginning and if you read what is going on right and see his predictions from months ago, you will see he had a pretty firm grasp of what was occurring in Japan. http://fairewinds.com/updates

if you do the math and calculate what the cost of the storage of any nuc waste generated it drives the costs through the roof,you have to secure this crap for 10,000 years

[MadPenguin]

You have critisized nuclear quite a lot. I am interested to hear what you think our alternative is.

There is that much waste because it started out a lot less inefficient, current stations are a hell of a lot better. It also weighs a lot because its very dense, thats why people arguing against it always state the amount of waste in weight rather than volume. On top of this, like i already stated, this "waste" is soon no longer going to be waste, it is going to be producing more energy itself.

As for the 50's and 60's testing i am not familiar with the specifics, but i would say there is a difference between the government saying something is safe and scientists saying something is safe. So often the government relies on its "scientific advisor" who usually knows nothing. A lot of things were more dangerous back then, but scientific advancements, just like in the case of say cars, has made things safer, especially when it comes to nuclear power.

And we are talking about fission here. Fusion leaves behind even less waste, produces more energy efficiently. As for Japan there seems a simple solution, dont build nuclear power stations where there are earthquakes and hurricanes for example.

Nuclear power stations have far less accidents than other power stations do because they ARE safer, look at the stats.