181–190 of 195 posts
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In theory, there is no difference between theory and practise. In practise, there is.
Even if, as I presume, you are trying to spell in Australian/Commonwealth English, it should be "practi c e" here because it's a noun. Only the verb is "practi s e".
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It's not an engineering problem to the extent that you've got populations whose very existence depends on these energy streams. At that point, it becomes a rather pressing existential problem. You cannot simply "engineer" more energy into existence. Yes, there's quite a bit more energy striking Earth every day from the sun than humans use today. However it's not in forms we can utilize directly, other than simply bas…
Well, either we find a way to give people what they want, through efficiency or new energy sources, or America keeps bombing the Middle East. And I expect viable fusion to be easier to solve than the politics of a world running out of energy.
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I just dislike the black-and-white way renewables vs. nonrenewables are addressed. Then do some research. I've, literally, dedicated the past 9 months to figuring out what the hell is going on. And one way or the other, we're going to run out of fossil fuels in any practical economic sense (there will always be some coal, oil, and natural gas underground, but the ability to extract it and gain useful economic product…
You're so eager to defend renewables you're projecting opinions you want me to have, on me. What I mean is I don't like how anything that is grouped into "renewables" is considered to be equally perfect. Like, "It's not fossil fuels so it's the holy grail". Nevermind that hydro backs up rivers and solar panels require rare earth metals. This sort of mindset, I figure, will hamper our ability to choose the best renewa…
In which case, you're projecting opinions on me which aren't correct.
In the world of energy sources available to humans, there are two classes:
Renewables which replenish given time.
Nonrenewables which don't.
For all of human existence save the past 250 years, we've depended virtually entirely on renewable resources. Which isn't to say they didn't have negative impacts on the land humans occupied. Deforestation and desertification are very common in human history and prehistory.
For the past 250 years or so we've had coal, oil, and gas. The chart looks roughly like this: https://plus.google.com/photos/104092656004159577193/albums/...
There are a handful of other nonrenewables which are sufficiently abundant that they might be able to address some of our energy needs (mostly electricity -- transportation, liquid fuels, and chemical feedstocks remain a major issue). They have some pretty tall technical challenges however. Thorium reactors are more probable, fusion rather less so: we've been unable to reach technical let alone commercial viability with 50 years' research during the period of maximum abundance.
And there's a very clear relationship between energy, economic growth, and population: http://ourfiniteworld.com/2012/08/29/the-long-term-tie-betwe...
Anyhow, as I said: list out your options. Figure out how viable they are, and what the negatives are.
A list of questions I like to keep in mind:
1. How Much Energy is Returned for the Energy Invested (EROEI)?
2. Have the claims been verified by an independent third party?
3. Can I see the alternative energy being used?
4. Can you trace it back to the original energy source?
5. Does the invention defy the Laws of Thermodynamics?
6. Does the inventor make extravagant claims?
7. Does the inventor claim zero pollution?
8. Can I see blueprints, schematics or a chemical analysis of how it works?
9. Infrastructure Requirements -- Does the energy source require a corporation to produce it? How will it be transported and used? Will it require new engines, pipelines, and filling stations? What will these cost? Who will pay for them and with what? How long will it take to build them?
From: http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/052703_9_questions...
Have fun.
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Solar is renewable, self sustaining The sun is, but what about the raw materials needed to make the panels?
Panels are not irreversibly diluted or consumed. They just "fall apart" at the molecular level and have to be recycled.
With present known reserves (including recent finds in South America -- Bolivia as I recall), there's not enough lithium to build batteries for an EV for the entire world's population. I believe the number I came up was about 1 in 10. And that's for one generation of vehicles.
Turns out that you can recycle batteries. But the process recovers only 90% of the lithium. After about 7 generations, you've lost over half your original stock.
With sufficient energy, you can extract virtually anything from seawater (even stuff like uranium). But that "with sufficient energy" prerequisite is pretty much specifically the challenge we're looking at.
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Which leads to a culture where everyone is afraid of touching kids that are not their own. It's really sad.
When my own kid was very young I was paranoid about touching him in public. It didn't stop me, but I was mindful of it, and I would occasionally feel I was getting extra scrutiny by some parent; a man not at work in the daytime, holding a young boy's hand. Feh.
Just a counter data point here.
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sounds like negligent parents waiting for a CPS visit to happen to enforce those social mores :) Fortunately, you seems to live among similarly "negligent neighbors". Once, we picked up an obviously lost dog on a mountain road and dropped it at the first fire station after the phone on its collar resulted in a voicemail. It was during our 1st year in the US and the thing "what if the dog was stolen and we stopped by…
We got visited once. Turns out the CPS for the most part isn't really interested in Parents who love their kids enough to let them experience a little pain. They were there less than 30 minutes.
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Are you saying there weren't overprotective parents before? This thread is full of a lot of confirmation bias / society is going to hell in a hand basket type of discussion. Boy, kids these days, right? I'd like to see some facts because I don't find it very credible.
Talk to some older folks. My dad describes walking to school with other schoolchildren in Montreal in the 1950s. They'd be alone, without adults, going miles. When playing, they were out dusk to dawn on city streets with no adult supervision.
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I don't understand your last sentence. For most of what you list, nobody is forcing American parents to do this, they just choose to. Nothing stops you from letting your own children do things on their own.
There are lots of social pressures to conform. It's also a lot harder to let your child spontaneously play with others if all the other parents require playdates before your kid can see their kids.
This is from wikipedia. Pardon my language, but what the actual fuck. An arranged appointment for playing? I really feel sad for kids now in America.
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>That's a ridiculous comparison, The fact of the matter is that those decisions are completely logical. I don't think shutting down an entire industry in a knee jerk reaction is logical. Gently paring down fossil fuel energy consumption is logical. I think the extreme reaction is the illogical mentality that he was talking about.
It's more than a knee jerk reaction though, there are a lot of reasons to speed up the switch to solar and renewables. Global warming may have been a catalyst, but it was going to happen eventually and they figured sooner rather than later.
Ditto Google's early drive for lowering watts per flop in their data centers and seeking lower costs of energy.
GDP (economic growth, however it's measured) has tracked fossil fuel consumption. Some smart people are working to decouple the two.
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Boston's a poor example. It's possibly the most socially-conservative place on earth I've ever lived in other than a Muslim country.
Tangent: I lived in Boston for a while. I'm glad to read stuff like this as it reminds me that it wasn't me. PSA: Boston is not liberal, except a little bit in the abstract NPR "latte sipping" academic sense. Culturally it is unbelievably, stiflingly conservative, far more so than "red states" for example.
She hated that I wore a tiny bit of gold jewelry (gold cross from my grandmother) because "that's what non-white people wear", so away that went. She hated that I wore T-shirts because... probably similar reasons. I took her to a beach on the Cape, and she wore... black. Covering her whole body. Formal black clothing. I mean basically, if you transplanted a Puritan circa 1750 into the modern age, you'd get this woman. She had never lived anywhere else. And then after breaking up with her, I looked around and it was all I could see... races not even interacting at all, both white and black people having REALLY limited "socially acceptable" clothing choices, etc.
I don't want to bash Boston too hard. I lived there for like 8 years. It has the best sports bars around, but this unfortunately only adds to its "provincial" reputation. Boston Harbor is really nice. The fact that Boston barely has any beaches (at least compared to, say, Long Island) was just weird for me (growing up on LI, I took the miles of beaches for granted, I guess).
I have a lot to say about Boston, both positive and negative. But yeah, socially? Can you even get more socially conservative while still being politically liberal?