Hmm so if we pump water to amplify the tides we can speed up the Earth's spin and get rid of the leap second.
lol great minds think alike
Tidal energy is not renewable
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Re: Tidal energy is not renewable
#32The single most important assumption in this paper is that energy consumption will increase by 2% per year. This kind of exponential growth leads to outlandish estimates for the amount of tidal energy that society will demand.
Energy consumption has decoupled from population growth rates and economic growth.
How much energy will we consume in 1,000 years? Most projections of the population have it stabilizing at around 15 billion. But continuing at its current growth rate (an optimistic assumption I think), gets us to about 150 trillion humans in 1,000 years.
And at 2% growth rate, each of those humans will consume 20,000 times more energy than a circa 2023 human.
Now state of the art technology wastes about 80% of the energy consumed, so this is equivalent to 100,000 times more useful energy consumed per human.
So the physics in this page is a good examination of the surprisingly large compounding effects of unchecked exponential growth.
Re: Tidal energy is not renewable
#33Then technically neither is wind, since it slows down surface air currents and widens the effective boundary layer of the atmosphere. Technically-technically, no forms of energy "generation" (technically just conversion) are 100% efficient so something is always lost to heat. I guess the important question is, what is the net effect in changing that kind of energy into purely thermal energy?
Air currents have a purpose, and I actually believe large scale wind farming will have negative impacts on climate. Not to mention the impact on birds killed by the things. I would even go as far to say nuclear energy has less of an impact (as long as all goes well). The question few seem to ask is should we be this (literally) power hungry in the first place?
Nuclear does have less impact than wind, in terms of human lives lost volume of waste, and land usage.
However, bird strikes can be mitigated via careful placement, etc. Also, we are not close to the point where wind farms impact wind currents.
Re: Tidal energy is not renewable
#34> So, the 2% growth rate for world energy consumption should be a conservative assumption. An important caveat: this article assumes that energy consumption will continue to increase exponentially to get the 1000 year timeline of draining the rotational energy of the Earth.
That better be the case , we are already seeing that if the pie can't grow then we start fighting each other violently to enlarge one's piece of it.
Conflict over scarce resources is inevitable. When the violence starts, you should be prepared to win (from a nation state perspective).
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37122796 | https://www.mdpi.com/2673-4060/4/3/32
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37313586 | https://medium.com/@samyoureyes/the-busy-workers-handbook-to...
https://overshoot.footprintnetwork.org/newsroom/country-over...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planetary_boundaries
There are 8 billion people in the world, and we’re on track to have 10 by end of century. Which is more likely? Everyone lives like a European (from a consumption perspective)? Or a bunch of people don’t or die while some do?
Re: Tidal energy is not renewable
#35I'm not sure the author realized this, but they're actually making a statement about how crazy exponential growth is. Not about the sustainability of tidal power. This becomes obvious once you look closer at what that 2% growth rate (as assumed in the post) implies. Our global energy consumption in 2008 was estimated to be 474 exajoules. The total energy received by the earth from the sun during a year is about 5 mil…
We, or those of us who by chance survive the worst case scenarios, will just end up learning that maybe huge amounts of socially useless investment isn't compatible with life on earth. It is just not possible unless we carefully plan and ration energy - something the market simply won't do.
Re: Tidal energy is not renewable
#36More quality science coming out of Stanford as usual.
Re: Tidal energy is not renewable
#37Every energy source becomes renewable on the right time scale.
That's not actually true. The conditions for the formation of coal and oil may likely never happen again because the bacteria to break decompose trees did not exist then but exist now, making oil formation impossible because trees decompose now. Unless they all die out, we won't get any new oil ever.
Re: Tidal energy is not renewable
#38Earlier quoted context omitted.
But is it possible to extract that much energy from the tides with current techniques? That starting point in their math may be invalid. But it is good to know that not very much energy is available from the tides.
If its not possible then we really shouldn't be very interested in it because it can't get us very far, 1% is a rounding error towards solving the CO2 PPM causing climate change.
You missed the part where he assumed that energy demand will increase 400 million times and took 1 percent of that
Re: Tidal energy is not renewable
#39Can someone with more experience in the field comment on whether this paper is well founded or off base? The abstract sounds... lets go with "not completely implausible" but the assertion that extracting 1% of the Earth's energy from the tidal sloshing would slow the earth and tidally lock it in 1000 years feels extreme. Of the extreme assertions require extreme evidence variety.
The post assumes a 2% annual rate of growth in energy consumption. So, due to the nature of exponential functions, most of the energy loss would concentrated towards the end of the 1000 years, as the energy consumption approaches 400 million times present day energy usage. The first two centuries of use would not have a noticeable impact.
Re: Tidal energy is not renewable
#40I'm not sure the author realized this, but they're actually making a statement about how crazy exponential growth is. Not about the sustainability of tidal power. This becomes obvious once you look closer at what that 2% growth rate (as assumed in the post) implies. Our global energy consumption in 2008 was estimated to be 474 exajoules. The total energy received by the earth from the sun during a year is about 5 mil…
Isn't it more likely that demand will just outgrow supply? Energy poverty seems like a classic "planet Earth" kind of thing.