Can civilization be sustainable?

[Staenwald]

Best renewable power source: nuclear!

It's also incredibly expensive to begin and sustain. No sir. Nuclear is inefficient compared to oil and should be abandoned before we begin searching for replacements for oil dependency.

if they get the nuclear fusion reactor in france, they'll be set for a while.

[Senestrum]

Best renewable power source: nuclear!

it's not renewable. There's a limited supply of uranium and other radioactive materials....it just produces much more energy for much less of it and lasts longer.

It is a renewable power source, actually; you can reprocess spent (or rather, barely used) fuel and run it through reactors many, many times.

Best renewable power source: nuclear!

It's also incredibly expensive to begin and sustain. No sir. Nuclear is inefficient compared to oil and should be abandoned before we begin searching for replacements for oil dependency.

Except that's not true at all. Nuclear price per kilowatt hour is on par with every other electric source except hydro and some particularly cheap natural gas turbine designs. We don't actually use oil for electrical generation in any significant manner.

It's also incredibly expensive to begin and sustain. No sir. Nuclear is inefficient compared to oil and should be abandoned before we begin searching for replacements for oil dependency.

if they get the nuclear fusion reactor in france, they'll be set for a while.

Nuclear fusion has been twenty years away for the last fifty years. Don't hold your breath.

[Meryuma]

It means that when we have less oil, we can build less renewable stuff.

We're not going to have oil one day, and then the next day have someone flip a magic switch and the gas station down the street closes down. You won't be in the middle of refueling your car and *DING!* it stops pumping because there's no more oil left in the world. The real world doesn't work like that, and the doomsayers would do well to learn this.

I never said that. In fact, in that very post I said less oil, and I've made at least one statement in which I said the exact opposite of civilization coming down at once.

It means that when we have less oil, we can build less renewable stuff.

That doesn't follow. I am talking about building infrastructure (eg, synthetic fuel plants) through which you can replace oil drilling in its entirety. Modern civilization does not require oil in any way; most things which are powered by oil products can be powered just as easily by something else, and the remaining specialist applications (such as airplanes and rockets using hydrocarbon-based propellants) can be easily switched over to using fuels synthesized from hydrogen and carbon. You can use the same synthesized hydrocarbons for all the non-fuel uses of oil, such as plastics and lubricants. This is all stuff that has been done commercially in the past century, and which will expand as drilled oil gets more expensive and production slowly falls.

I've pointed out the flaws in this numerous times.

It means that when we have less oil, we can build less renewable stuff.

Unlikely. Building renewable stuff will probably be the last thing to run out of oil. At first it will just be gas getting more expensive, so people are forced to switch to other forms of power for their cars - several of which already exist and are being made. The roads, built for an oil-based infrastructure, will work just as well if the cars are powered by electricity or by hydrogen. Electric wires will accept power from solar or nuclear plants just as well as they do power generated by burning oil. Oil substitutes for plastics are able to be synthesized right now.

Long story short, the oil situation is going to be less of a dramatic collapse and more of a decades-long transition. Not to 'post-civilization' societies so much as one that relies on different sources of energy. Hopefully renewable ones, but if not then at least ones that will last us another while.

Actually, at first it's going to be everything that uses oil getting more expensive. It's not like one oil-based thing gets more expensive at one point and another gets more expensive later.

Best renewable power source: nuclear!

Not renewable plus the materials are quite rare.

The only argument I have here is that the fuels we use (gasoline, diesel, kerosene) are extremely useful and just downright handy. I find it unlikely that we'll totally abandon fossil fuels in any application (famous last words) just due to the properties, cost, ease of handling/synthesis/processing, and energy density as compared to anything else.

It's likely that synthetics will grow substantially, but frankly petroleum products are too darn handy to switch only to electric for the forseeable future. (some 20 years or so)



Invent an electric car that can be refueled as easily as a gas one, and then we'll be talkin

why can't we use hydrogen?...it's been tried in california. same performance but cheaper and cleaner.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/ ... -cars.html
(sorry i know it's the daily mail, but they can't lie on everything)
and just think, on economies of scale it could get even cheaper.

But AA president Edmund King warned: ‘The fact the hydrogen is cheaper now doesn’t mean it always will be because the Government would soon get its hands on it and increase the tax.’

Erm... hydrogen doesn't make more power.

Source is this.

[Distruzio]

It means that when we have less oil, we can build less renewable stuff.

We're not going to have oil one day, and then the next day have someone flip a magic switch and the gas station down the street closes down. You won't be in the middle of refueling your car and *DING!* it stops pumping because there's no more oil left in the world. The real world doesn't work like that, and the doomsayers would do well to learn this.

[Senestrum]

That doesn't follow. I am talking about building infrastructure (eg, synthetic fuel plants) through which you can replace oil drilling in its entirety. Modern civilization does not require oil in any way; most things which are powered by oil products can be powered just as easily by something else, and the remaining specialist applications (such as airplanes and rockets using hydrocarbon-based propellants) can be easily switched over to using fuels synthesized from hydrogen and carbon. You can use the same synthesized hydrocarbons for all the non-fuel uses of oil, such as plastics and lubricants. This is all stuff that has been done commercially in the past century, and which will expand as drilled oil gets more expensive and production slowly falls.

I've pointed out the flaws in this numerous times.

Really? If so, surely you wouldn't mind pointing them out again because I have somehow managed to miss them entirely.

Best renewable power source: nuclear!

Not renewable plus the materials are quite rare.

Oh? How is it not renewable?

Also, radioactive materials suitable for reactor use are not rare. Christ, you can filter uranium out of seawater if you really want to.

[Sociobiology]

Best renewable power source: nuclear!

Not renewable plus the materials are quite rare.

fission is not renewable but breeder reactors take all the useless light uranium and turn it into heavy uranium thus increasing the fuel supply a million fold. also there are half a dozen other materials that can be used for nuclear power.

kinda like if someone invented a method to turn wood pulp directly into diesel, oh wait that would be fungal diesel.

Erm... hydrogen doesn't make more power.

Source is this.

you dont use hydrogen to make power you use it as a highly efficient power store, you get the power from nuclear, hydro, solar whatever.

[Sociobiology]

Best renewable power source: nuclear!

It's also incredibly expensive to begin and sustain. No sir. Nuclear is inefficient compared to oil and should be abandoned before we begin searching for replacements for oil dependency.

are you high? nuclear is the most efficient power source on earth, a coke can sized lump of fuel per year, heck every other power source there is runs off nuclear eventually, because it is so high yield.
nuclear is the only workable large scale alternative to oil right now.

[Staenwald]

It's also incredibly expensive to begin and sustain. No sir. Nuclear is inefficient compared to oil and should be abandoned before we begin searching for replacements for oil dependency.

are you high? nuclear is the most efficient power source on earth, a coke can sized lump of fuel per year, heck every other power source there is runs off nuclear eventually, because it is so high yield.
nuclear is the only workable large scale alternative to oil right now.

have you heard about the mad (but very doable idea of turning the moon into a giant solar power plant? We can cover the earth in a thin film of solar foil and get a permanent solar power source. It could power a very large part of the world, with microwave transmission power being used to direct the power back to earth.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/20 ... 073334.htm

pretty awesome...probably quite expensive at the moment. And the arguemnt 'how are we going to get to the moon with no oil?' Rockets use hydrogen fuel.

[Distruzio]

It's also incredibly expensive to begin and sustain. No sir. Nuclear is inefficient compared to oil and should be abandoned before we begin searching for replacements for oil dependency.

are you high? nuclear is the most efficient power source on earth, a coke can sized lump of fuel per year, heck every other power source there is runs off nuclear eventually, because it is so high yield.
nuclear is the only workable large scale alternative to oil right now.

Were your synopsis true, there would be private nuclear facilities popping up everywhere. They don't and never have b/c it ain't an efficient use of capital investment.

[Senestrum]

There are regulatory and political barriers which make it incredibly difficult to get permission to build new plants in most of the western world, although there is a significant amount of new construction. China in particular has enough plants under construction to triple the number of chinese reactors and sextuple their nuclear power capacity, and recently approved enough new reactors to double the capacity of all the stuff they have under construction.

The actual cost is on par with everything else, and superior to every other renewable/non-polluting energy source.

[Meryuma]

I've pointed out the flaws in this numerous times.

Really? If so, surely you wouldn't mind pointing them out again because I have somehow managed to miss them entirely.

Not renewable plus the materials are quite rare.

Oh? How is it not renewable?

Also, radioactive materials suitable for reactor use are not rare. Christ, you can filter uranium out of seawater if you really want to.

1. Basically a small amount of renewable power generators can't provide enough energy to replace oil, plus many forms of renewable energy have their own ecological problems.
2. You don't have to prove a negative.
3. I think only a specific isotope works.

Not renewable plus the materials are quite rare.

fission is not renewable but breeder reactors take all the useless light uranium and turn it into heavy uranium thus increasing the fuel supply a million fold. also there are half a dozen other materials that can be used for nuclear power.

kinda like if someone invented a method to turn wood pulp directly into diesel, oh wait that would be fungal diesel.

Erm... hydrogen doesn't make more power.

Source is this.

you dont use hydrogen to make power you use it as a highly efficient power store, you get the power from nuclear, hydro, solar whatever.

I've addressed breeder reactors and the article I linked addresses hydrogen.

are you high? nuclear is the most efficient power source on earth, a coke can sized lump of fuel per year, heck every other power source there is runs off nuclear eventually, because it is so high yield.
nuclear is the only workable large scale alternative to oil right now.

have you heard about the mad (but very doable idea of turning the moon into a giant solar power plant? We can cover the earth in a thin film of solar foil and get a permanent solar power source. It could power a very large part of the world, with microwave transmission power being used to direct the power back to earth.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/20 ... 073334.htm

pretty awesome...probably quite expensive at the moment. And the arguemnt 'how are we going to get to the moon with no oil?' Rockets use hydrogen fuel.

How do we make this hydrogen fuel?

[Staenwald]

are you high? nuclear is the most efficient power source on earth, a coke can sized lump of fuel per year, heck every other power source there is runs off nuclear eventually, because it is so high yield.
nuclear is the only workable large scale alternative to oil right now.

Were your synopsis true, there would be private nuclear facilities popping up everywhere. They don't and never have b/c it ain't an efficient use of capital investment.

it is efficient, it's just fucking expensive to build them. it might turn out that you won't get your investment back for a long time...but that's a similar story with a oil plant. You might need a few oil plants to generate to same amount of energy as a nuclear one.

[Great Nepal]

1. Machinery which is oil-powered.

Correct me if I am wrong, but we trend to live in 21st century, were mostly we trend to use something new known as electricity?

And how many fucking times have I responded to your claims about biodiesel?

No, you fucking have not. All you have said is "it needs small amount of real diesel to work" and "we need land to grow crops". Both of which are frankly idiotic as I already pointed out:-
a) We can synthesize diesel to mix with bio diesel.
b) We can spare a lot of farmland for that purpose without starving to death.


So what is the problem exactly? Except some nations will have to deal with flooding?



For the last bloody time:-
We have oil to last for another 100 years without counting untapped ones and Antarctic oil. We will develop new way of power by then (ie. space solar etc) and even if we do run out of oil, we have alternatives which are able to take over.


And, humans have an IQ capable of future planning; as oil gets harder to obtain, we will be using alternatives.


Perhaps cos there are no experts to actually validate the information there? I can go and create a blog saying "world is going to be destroyed in 2012", will it be a valid one?


Or as an alternative, you could use "Ctrl+C" and "Ctrl+V"?


So?


No, you made a claim that "there is not xyz", you are the one who should be providing source. Otherwise, I could claim that "everything but petroluen are not sustainable".


No, it bloody is not. We have alternative to oil based fertilizers, vehicles etc.


So?


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_and_radiation_accidents#List_of_accidents_at_nuclear_power_plants


Um.. under your toilet? Obviously basements are built under ground.



Because, we trend not to need oil to make them, or at least: not significant amount of.


And?


WOW...
You have made a sensational discovery - plants cause pollution!!


Could you use method I said earlier to post is again - cos I somehow have managed to miss it completely.


Except, we are not going to run out of coal for next 350 years.


So?


Which can just as easily be changed and we have new tech called genetic engenering to modify plants.

No, all you have said last time is "And I pointed out the problems with synthesizing oil.", and I have searched for the phrase.

[Distruzio]

Were your synopsis true, there would be private nuclear facilities popping up everywhere. They don't and never have b/c it ain't an efficient use of capital investment.

it is efficient, it's just fucking expensive to build them. it might turn out that you won't get your investment back for a long time...

Or ever when compared to the low capital intensive requirements for energy production derived from conventional fossil fuels. However much folks enjoy the idea of clean fission energy, it simply isn't economic yet. They only producers of nuclear energy do so with tremendous amounts of gov't subsidization (i.e. tax money). Nuclear energy is, for the time being and so long as it is financed by public funds, far too expensive to ever be a viable alternative to fossil fuels in a post civilization world. Hell, it's too damned expensive now with civilization. It'll never happen.

[Senestrum]

it is efficient, it's just fucking expensive to build them. it might turn out that you won't get your investment back for a long time...

Or ever when compared to the low capital intensive requirements for energy production derived from conventional fossil fuels. However much folks enjoy the idea of clean fission energy, it simply isn't economic yet. They only producers of nuclear energy do so with tremendous amounts of gov't subsidization (i.e. tax money). Nuclear energy is, for the time being and so long as it is financed by public funds, far too expensive to ever be a viable alternative to fossil fuels in a post civilization world. Hell, it's too damned expensive now with civilization. It'll never happen.

Except that's not true at all. Nuclear power is strongly competitive with every other power source except hydro, and blows other renewable sources out of the water. The large majority of nuclear power "subsidies" are in the form of R&D spending. Subsidies on actual power production are unheard of beyond a small tax credit in the US; it's far more common for nuclear power to be taxed (in the most amusing cases because the nuclear operators were making massive profits selling CO2 allowances).

The capital costs of nuclear are high (it does take a long time to pay off, although construction costs are actually decreasing as reactors get more advanced), but operating costs are low (lower than coal and wind, for example), and fuel costs make up a very small portion of the total price of electricity (which means fuel cost increases will affect overall nuclear electricity costs far less). They are also operating at peak capacity almost all the time, which is something no other power source can boast.

Since you seem to be fond of demonizing things by pointing out they've received subsidies, I'll just use this line to note that in the last decade alone the US has subsidized fossil fuels by more than half of the total subsidies received by nuclear power during its entire existence.

And who was proposing that a post-civilization world would be using nuclear? I struggle to think of a use for large-scale power production in an uncivilized world at all, regardless of source.

[Sociobiology]

are you high? nuclear is the most efficient power source on earth, a coke can sized lump of fuel per year, heck every other power source there is runs off nuclear eventually, because it is so high yield.
nuclear is the only workable large scale alternative to oil right now.

have you heard about the mad (but very doable idea of turning the moon into a giant solar power plant? We can cover the earth in a thin film of solar foil and get a permanent solar power source. It could power a very large part of the world, with microwave transmission power being used to direct the power back to earth.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/20 ... 073334.htm

pretty awesome...probably quite expensive at the moment. And the arguemnt 'how are we going to get to the moon with no oil?' Rockets use hydrogen fuel.

you do understand the difference between hydrogen and hydrocarbon right.

[Sociobiology]

Check it out 90% of non-renewable technology just became renewable.

http://www.ted.com/talks/fiorenzo_omene ... uture.html

[Sociobiology]

pretty awesome...probably quite expensive at the moment. And the arguemnt 'how are we going to get to the moon with no oil?' Rockets use hydrogen fuel.

How do we make this hydrogen fuel?

electricity and water.
less than half of US energy production comes from coal or oil so there would be plenty of electricity.

[Sociobiology]

And how many fucking times have I responded to your claims about biodiesel?

I have yet to see you point out a problem with synthesizing, lubrication oil, plastic, or diesel.
links to articles with made up (unsourced) numbers and graphs does not count as dealing with.

you have yet to say why we cannot make hydrogen, not hydrocarbon.

you have yet to say why nuclear plants, geothermal, and solar plants cannot be built given that electric construction equipment is very common.
note solar plants do not use solar cells, so a solar cell argument is useless.

you have yet to say why methane cannot be used as a fuel.

.

[Sociobiology]

Or ever when compared to the low capital intensive requirements for energy production derived from conventional fossil fuels. However much folks enjoy the idea of clean fission energy, it simply isn't economic yet. They only producers of nuclear energy do so with tremendous amounts of gov't subsidization (i.e. tax money). Nuclear energy is, for the time being and so long as it is financed by public funds, far too expensive to ever be a viable alternative to fossil fuels in a post civilization world. Hell, it's too damned expensive now with civilization. It'll never happen.

Except that's not true at all. Nuclear power is strongly competitive with every other power source except hydro, and blows other renewable sources out of the water. The large majority of nuclear power "subsidies" are in the form of R&D spending. Subsidies on actual power production are unheard of beyond a small tax credit in the US; it's far more common for nuclear power to be taxed (in the most amusing cases because the nuclear operators were making massive profits selling CO2 allowances).

The capital costs of nuclear are high (it does take a long time to pay off, although construction costs are actually decreasing as reactors get more advanced), but operating costs are low (lower than coal and wind, for example), and fuel costs make up a very small portion of the total price of electricity (which means fuel cost increases will affect overall nuclear electricity costs far less). They are also operating at peak capacity almost all the time, which is something no other power source can boast.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/c ... _costs.png

it cost more but barely so, if carbon emission tax is included it actually costs less.
and yes these numbers include construction cost, insurance ext.

[Staenwald]

have you heard about the mad (but very doable idea of turning the moon into a giant solar power plant? We can cover the earth in a thin film of solar foil and get a permanent solar power source. It could power a very large part of the world, with microwave transmission power being used to direct the power back to earth.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/20 ... 073334.htm

pretty awesome...probably quite expensive at the moment. And the arguemnt 'how are we going to get to the moon with no oil?' Rockets use hydrogen fuel.

you do understand the difference between hydrogen and hydrocarbon right.

ok maybe i made a mistake but yes i know the difference...H2 =hydrogen
hydrcarbon = 2 Hydrogens +2 for every carbon atom there is.

[Sociobiology]

you do understand the difference between hydrogen and hydrocarbon right.

ok maybe i made a mistake but yes i know the difference...H2 =hydrogen
hydrcarbon = 2 Hydrogens +2 for every carbon atom there is.

sort of yea (the hydrogen to carbon ration rarely works out so cleanly), but you understand why oil is used to make one but not the other correct.

[Meryuma]

Check it out 90% of non-renewable technology just became renewable.

http://www.ted.com/talks/fiorenzo_omene ... uture.html

If we base everything around silk, then what's going to stop us from over-harvesting and driving silkworms to extinction? Not very sustainable? And how will we fuel the vehicles to transport the silk?

You have a very narrow way of looking at sustainability issues.

And how many fucking times have I responded to your claims about biodiesel?

I have yet to see you point out a problem with synthesizing, lubrication oil, plastic, or diesel.
links to articles with made up (unsourced) numbers and graphs does not count as dealing with.

you have yet to say why we cannot make hydrogen, not hydrocarbon.

you have yet to say why nuclear plants, geothermal, and solar plants cannot be built given that electric construction equipment is very common.
note solar plants do not use solar cells, so a solar cell argument is useless.

you have yet to say why methane cannot be used as a fuel.

.

1. Go back to my comments on the Fischer-Tropsch process.
2. I never said those things "cannot be built", or that we "cannot make hydrogen". And what do you mean by "hydrogen, not hydrocarbon"? Genuine question BTW.
3. You don't have to prove a negative. However, you do have to prove why methane would overcome the general problems with renewable energy I've outlined.

[Senestrum]

Meryuma, every argument you've tried against synthetic fuels does not make sense.

[Sociobiology]

Check it out 90% of non-renewable technology just became renewable.

http://www.ted.com/talks/fiorenzo_omene ... uture.html

If we base everything around silk, then what's going to stop us from over-harvesting and driving silkworms to extinction? Not very sustainable? And how will we fuel the vehicles to transport the silk?

You have a very narrow way of looking at sustainability issues.

I have yet to see you point out a problem with synthesizing, lubrication oil, plastic, or diesel.
links to articles with made up (unsourced) numbers and graphs does not count as dealing with.

you have yet to say why we cannot make hydrogen, not hydrocarbon.

you have yet to say why nuclear plants, geothermal, and solar plants cannot be built given that electric construction equipment is very common.
note solar plants do not use solar cells, so a solar cell argument is useless.

you have yet to say why methane cannot be used as a fuel.


.

1. Go back to my comments on the Fischer-Tropsch process.
2. I never said those things "cannot be built", or that we "cannot make hydrogen". And what do you mean by "hydrogen, not hydrocarbon"? Genuine question BTW.
3. You don't have to prove a negative. However, you do have to prove why methane would overcome the general problems with renewable energy I've outlined.

you do realize we don't use wild silk worms, we breed them, its like saying we are going to over harvest potatoes to make fries.

you power the transport with electric, hydrogen, fungal diesel, methane, ect.


I have just gone through every post you have made here, the closest you came to addressing diesel was the un-sourced claim that fungal diesel requires diesel to make (false) and that transportation requires oil again with no source, and I have shown how this is false aswell.

you never mentioned methane, and methane was extracted by the ancient Chinese and requires no oil products, and can be harvested from dozens of highly varied sources from old garbage dumps to livestock, to abandoned coal mines.

I never mentioned the Fischer-Tropsch process nor am I referring to its use, we have biological means to produce these things, you might want to go back and read my posts.

I refer to hydrogen because your continued assertion that oil is needed to make hydrogen could only come from a misunderstanding of the difference between hydrogen and hydro-carbons, since how hydrogen is produced has been explained multiple times.

you DO have to prove an negative WHEN you are claiming a negative when proof of the positive is given and scientifically acceptable, for instance you would have to prove the negative claim that the earth does not orbit the sun.
and again your assertion that oil based fuel is required to build nuclear ad solar plants has been refuted, so what other reasons do you offer that they cannot replace coal.