21–30 of 314 posts
Yeah right. They drilled in Strasbourg, France, to get this "free" energy. When they entered production, the city was experiencing an earthquake every month, waking the city at night. After a magnitude 4 earthquake, they finally shut down the plant. A town in Germany is devastated also due to geothermal power: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Staufen_im_Breisgau
Yeah right. They drilled in Strasbourg, France, to get this "free" energy. When they entered production, the city was experiencing an earthquake every month, waking the city at night. After a magnitude 4 earthquake, they finally shut down the plant. A town in Germany is devastated also due to geothermal power: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Staufen_im_Breisgau
Something I've always wondered. Wouldn't massive scale geothermal end up pumping more heat into the atmosphere that otherwise wouldn't be there? In contrast, the energy collected by solar and wind generators is from the energy added to Earth by the sun and would be energy in our atmosphere regardless of whether or not we collect it. But it seems like the heat inside the Earth's core should be fairly well insulated by…
You are correct in that the earth core is really well insulated from the surface. So well that the light of the sun delivers an order of magnitude more energy per M2 to the Earth's surface. That information also answers your question, our problem isn't with the amount heat we produce, it's with how much of that solar radiation we trap in our atmosphere due to the green house effect of CO2 and similar gases. So yeah w…
The current narrative is largely defeatist and regressive. It's largely about rolling back growth and the amount of energy civilization has harnessed.
But if the narrative was altered to be a heat engineering problem, then it fundamentally changes how we think about it. Removing CO2 (insulation) is one option, but so are projects like solar reflection or some other forms of heat dissipation or heat sinking.
Here is the thing, a lot of that tech is coming from oil and gas. An industry with a track record of leaving the land they enter in terrible shape.
I think we have to start over with geothermal and look at it more like hydro electricity. We should harvest the electricity on the way down, not the way up. I wish I'd get rich enough one day to devote my life to this.
Yeah right. They drilled in Strasbourg, France, to get this "free" energy. When they entered production, the city was experiencing an earthquake every month, waking the city at night. After a magnitude 4 earthquake, they finally shut down the plant. A town in Germany is devastated also due to geothermal power: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Staufen_im_Breisgau
Assuming this is a real problem, wouldn't you just put your geothermal power plant well outside of any city? Doesn't even have to be somewhere where there are no buildings. Just somewhere where hardening the few existing buildings against small earthquakes etc won't be too expensive.
Yeah right. They drilled in Strasbourg, France, to get this "free" energy. When they entered production, the city was experiencing an earthquake every month, waking the city at night. After a magnitude 4 earthquake, they finally shut down the plant. A town in Germany is devastated also due to geothermal power: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Staufen_im_Breisgau
Assuming this is a real problem, wouldn't you just put your geothermal power plant well outside of any city? Doesn't even have to be somewhere where there are no buildings. Just somewhere where hardening the few existing buildings against small earthquakes etc won't be too expensive.
So, expending twice on a bad idea ? Seriously, what do you think will happen ?
And even it was technically possible, how do you insure a company like that ? Will the plant operator be responsible for the repairs and damages when they destabilize an entire region ?
Something I've always wondered. Wouldn't massive scale geothermal end up pumping more heat into the atmosphere that otherwise wouldn't be there? In contrast, the energy collected by solar and wind generators is from the energy added to Earth by the sun and would be energy in our atmosphere regardless of whether or not we collect it. But it seems like the heat inside the Earth's core should be fairly well insulated by…
So, only ones I can think of which don't add additional heat to the planed may be wind and hydro.
Assuming this works, tech still won't save us alone. Pure thermal (ie. just energy, no GHG) climate change is right around the corner if energy use keeps going up exponentially and we keep reducing earth's albedo. Ecosystems are still being obliterated for cattle and mining. All ghg free electricity will do is buy a few decades to end (and in the west, reverse) growth. Possibly the only thing that will give civilisat…
Our psychic and material conditions are poised to get worse as we rapaciously exploit the natural resources of the planet and destroy the fabric of life across it (not just the casual culprits like extinction, but the general accruing debt of pollution and degradation across the biosphere). Further,our global civilization and the supply lines that enable it (gas, water + sewage, electricity, connectivity) exist in an equilibrium we're actively disrupting.
Another thing to consider is that our biology has adapted for a vastly different experience of environment and society than those we inhabit.
The patterns of human civilization need to change drastically for it to be extant and thriving in 100 years.
How much energy is in the core of the Earth? What happens if we cooled the core to the point that it became solid? I’m guessing that would be bad, but is it something that’s not conceivably possible on any human timescale?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
You are correct in that the earth core is really well insulated from the surface. So well that the light of the sun delivers an order of magnitude more energy per M2 to the Earth's surface. That information also answers your question, our problem isn't with the amount heat we produce, it's with how much of that solar radiation we trap in our atmosphere due to the green house effect of CO2 and similar gases. So yeah w…
I've had the thought for a while now that it might be a good idea to start changing the climate change narrative to a problem of planetary heat engineering, not simply a problem of GHG reduction. The current narrative is largely defeatist and regressive. It's largely about rolling back growth and the amount of energy civilization has harnessed. But if the narrative was altered to be a heat engineering problem, then i…