General / Off-Topic Recycle or Die! (the elite environmental thread)

[Shinji Ikari]

A significant minority of pregnancies, and the resulting children, are unwanted. Making them more of a liability would make them more unwanted, but may not do much, in and of itself, to reduce their prevalence.

Education, increased standards of living, greater equality/opportunity for women, and better access to birth control are going to be more effective at reducing birth rates than any heavy handed legislation penalizing having more than a given number of children.

They need to go both hand in hand, the law is targeted for people who are educated and still wish to have more offspring.

 

[WeComeInPeace]

There are plenty of realistic alternatives. Most categories of renewables (wind, solar, hydro, geothermal, and more) have made significant strides in the last few decades. Nuclear fission is still a compelling option and we are probably less than thirty years from commercially viable fusion power (I know they said that thirty years ago, but only recently have we actually been able to demonstrate net energy production and resolve some critical issues). Any one of these many sources, if fully exploited, could likely supply the entire world's energy needs for the foreseeable future.

Once it becomes economically problematic to continue to rely on fossil fuels, these alternatives will be waiting to supplant them.



I've never been arguing against Moore. I'm arguing against your association of Moore's Law with your argument.

Moore's Law is the observation that the number of transistors that it's economically viable to put in an integrated circuit doubles approximately every two years. As transistors get smaller, the power consumption per transistor goes down.

Moore's Law doesn't say anything about the demand for integrated circuits and using Moore's Law as a metaphor for any exponential growth is misleading.



Yes, demand is growing exponentially, and Moore's Law is one of the checks on, not a driver of, increased power consumption.

No doubt total power consumption of IT is still rising, rapidly and with no end insight, but that's never been in doubt.



A significant minority of pregnancies, and the resulting children, are unwanted. Making them more of a liability would make them more unwanted, but may not do much, in and of itself, to reduce their prevalence.

Education, increased standards of living, greater equality/opportunity for women, and better access to birth control are going to be more effective at reducing birth rates than any heavy handed legislation penalizing having more than a given number of children.

All renewable energy solutions runs into problems when scaled up to global scales, simply because Earth is a closed system with a limited amount of elements. Especially because those elements take energy to extract and refine. Therefore the best current solution for a global 12 hour battery backup storage of energy for the cloudy day without wind is NaS batteries built on Sodium and Sulfur, both relatively plentiful elements. To build such "a battery" we would need to spend energy equivalent of the current global energy consumption for 18 months. Furthermore NaS batteries are difficult to handle, since the Sodium need to be in a liquid state (>300 deg C), and pure liquid sodium is extremely reactive. It's an illusion.

Maybe I should have been more precise regarding Moore, and written that the amount of bits on the internet "follows" Moore's predictions. Potato-potato.

From your POV and vocabulary, I assume you use some sort of economics theory to understand the system we call Earth. Economics is not a science. It builds on wrong assumptions and axioms, most famously the "rational consumer". When I debate these subjects with an economist, I often hear them try to argue against science, using "increasing demands leading to higher equilibrium prices" as an argument against resource depletion. When I then say: "Ok, then let's use a simple nonlinear supply/demand model", they switch to saying that economics is way too complicated to predict anything.

 

[EISENHORN01]

Every species that has, does or will inhabit the earth will become extinct and that includes the human race. In a hundred thousand years everything we have done to the planet will be gone and forgotten, turned to dust or buried below new seas and still the planet will orbit the Sun oblivious and uncaring of what happens on its surface.

 

[Shinji Ikari]

So you don't think oil is too cheap when you can have water (!) shipped across the world for peanuts and make a profit...?
This is just plain wrong.

Gas here in Mexico costs roughly speaking 1$/L, that to me is not cheap. The fact that you can ship Fiji water for that price is only a demonstration that you needed very little oil to transport it.

 

[Shinji Ikari]

Every species that has, does or will inhabit the earth will become extinct and that includes the human race. In a hundred thousand years everything we have done to the planet will be gone and forgotten, turned to dust or buried below new seas and still the planet will orbit the Sun oblivious and uncaring of what happens on its surface.

Nothing last forever regardless of what it is and where and when it existed.

 

[[VR] optimal_909]

Gas here in Mexico costs roughly speaking 1$/L, that to me is not cheap. The fact that you can ship Fiji water for that price is only a demonstration that you needed very little oil to transport it.

That is because there is plenty of tax on it - in fact half of the price if I googled it correctly.

Where I live, tap water is excellent and we never buy bottled water either. In my eyes Fiji water shipped across the world is a total nonsense and waste of oil.

 

[WeComeInPeace]

Every species that has, does or will inhabit the earth will become extinct and that includes the human race. In a hundred thousand years everything we have done to the planet will be gone and forgotten, turned to dust or buried below new seas and still the planet will orbit the Sun oblivious and uncaring of what happens on its surface.

Which kind of opens the question of how far in the development of a civilisation the dinosaurs really were

The thing about Homo Sapiens is that compared to the dinosaurs that lived for hundreds of millions of years, we haven't roamed the planet for more than a couple of "10.000 years". Here's another Blade Runner quote:

"The light that burns twice as bright burns half as long, and you have burned so very very brightly".

 

[[VR] optimal_909]

All renewable energy solutions runs into problems when scaled up to global scales, simply because Earth is a closed system with a limited amount of elements. Especially because those elements take energy to extract and refine. Therefore the best current solution for a global 12 hour battery backup storage of energy for the cloudy day without wind is NaS batteries built on Sodium and Sulfur, both relatively plentiful elements. To build such "a battery" we would need to spend energy equivalent of the current global energy consumption for 18 months. Furthermore NaS batteries are difficult to handle, since the Sodium need to be in a liquid state (>300 deg C), and pure liquid sodium is extremely reactive. It's an illusion.

Maybe I should have been more precise regarding Moore, and written that the amount of bits on the internet "follows" Moore's predictions. Potato-potato.

From your POV and vocabulary, I assume you use some sort of economics theory to understand the system we call Earth. Economics is not a science. It builds on wrong assumptions and axioms, most famously the "rational consumer". When I debate these subjects with an economist, I often hear them try to argue against science, using "increasing demands leading to higher equilibrium prices" as an argument against resource depletion. When I then say: "Ok, then let's use a simple nonlinear supply/demand model", they switch to saying that economics is way too complicated to predict anything.

Yes, because you envision a supply shock when 'overnight' we run out of fossil fuels.
The prolonged decline will start with price hikes, then switch to alternatives such as gas. Shortage, just like war, ignites innovation.

Edit: what about energy storage in a way of pumping water in a storage and have it as positional energy?

Which kind of opens the question of how far in the development of a civilisation the dinosaurs really were

The thing about Homo Sapiens is that compared to the dinosaurs that lived for hundreds of millions of years, we haven't roamed the planet for more than a couple of "10.000 years". Here's another Blade Runner quote:

"The light that burns twice as bright burns half as long, and you have burned so very very brightly".

And the dinosaurs are not only still here in the form of birds, but are smarter than similarly sized mammals and even many of them are thriving in urban environments.

 

[Shinji Ikari]

That is because there is plenty of tax on it - in fact half of the price if I googled it correctly.

Where I live, tap water is excellent and we never buy bottled water either. In my eyes Fiji water shipped across the world is a total nonsense and waste of oil.

That's true, 0.5$/L is still not "cheap" IMO, regardless, the important point is that it's getting more expensive and it'll run out in the intermediate future.

 

[[VR] optimal_909]

That's true, 0.5$/L is still not "cheap" IMO, regardless, the important point is that it's getting more expensive and it'll run out in the intermediate future.

Cheaper than bottled water basically.
We are in the age of plenty, masses can afford to own a car, have the latest smartphone - and in the developed world (incl. China), you have goo chances that you can easily afford a family holiday at a remote location.
It is ridiculous that I see vegetables/fruits that can be produced locally being shipped from countries like China or New Zealand - total nonsense.

Standards have to be adjusted...

 

[WeComeInPeace]

@optimal_909
Whenever you start using a limited resource it follows the same pattern over and over. In the beginning you need to start up the extraction, buy machinery, train and hire personel, have a consumer demand etc. Then production increase until a point where you have extracted the easily accessible part of the resource. After that point extraction becomes more and more dificult (deeper mining etc.) leading to higher production costs and thereby lower production. Once you have extracted all of the feasible extractable resource, production stops. It looks like this:

Currently we are at the peak of the curve with regards to the classical crude oil (not including shale oil and tar sands). Sometimes the peak is delayed somewhat because of very high demands in the case of vital resources causing people to value the resource higher, and therefore being willing to spend more of their purchasing power, but that mechanism cannot change the basic peak function much, and it cannot make the resource larger.

It is important to distinguish between reserve (extractable) and resource (total), but after the extraction reaches zero, you will always see this curve, and the economics is already built into the model.

 

[Morbad]

They need to go both hand in hand, the law is targeted for people who are educated and still wish to have more offspring.

Very few wealthy/educated populations have high birthrates.

All renewable energy solutions runs into problems when scaled up to global scales, simply because Earth is a closed system with a limited amount of elements. Especially because those elements take energy to extract and refine. Therefore the best current solution for a global 12 hour battery backup storage of energy for the cloudy day without wind is NaS batteries built on Sodium and Sulfur, both relatively plentiful elements. To build such "a battery" we would need to spend energy equivalent of the current global energy consumption for 18 months. Furthermore NaS batteries are difficult to handle, since the Sodium need to be in a liquid state (>300 deg C), and pure liquid sodium is extremely reactive. It's an illusion.

Plenty of renewable energy sources are available 24/7 (hydro, geothermal, even tidal, for example), as is nuclear. Long range energy transport, via a variety of means are also an options.

Even in situation where storage is mandatory, I wouldn't consider NaS batteries to be the best option. Personally, I've always liked the idea of flywheels, water towers, and other mechanical means.

Currently we are at the peak of the curve with regards to the classical crude oil (not including shale oil and tar sands). Sometimes the peak is delayed somewhat because of very high demands in the case of vital resources causing people to value the resource higher, and therefore being willing to spend more of their purchasing power, but that mechanism cannot change the basic peak function much, and it cannot make the resource larger.

New discoveries and/or extraction methods can make the effective resource larger.

Just this last year, for example, the United State's proven reserves of crude and natural gas doubled.

 

[WeComeInPeace]

Very few wealthy/educated populations have high birthrates.



Plenty of renewable energy sources are available 24/7 (hydro, geothermal, even tidal, for example), as is nuclear. Long range energy transport, via a variety of means are also an options.

Even in situation where storage is mandatory, I wouldn't consider NaS batteries to be the best option. Personally, I've always liked the idea of flywheels, water towers, and other mechanical means.



New discoveries and/or extraction methods can make the effective resource larger.

Just this last year, for example, the United State's proven reserves of crude and natural gas doubled.

It doesn't really matter what you personally prefer. Show me a calculation of how a mechanical solution is supposed to work on a global scale?

I'm getting a little tired of repeating myself. You CAN´T compare classical crude oil with shale oil, since shale oil has a much lower EROI. If you need to spend one liter of oil to produce two liters, then you have already produced a lot of CO2. Secondly shale oil typically runs dry in a few years.

America's Oil And Gas Reserves Double With Massive New Permian Discovery

The United States Geological Survey just identified the world's largest unconventional oil and gas potential buried within the Permian basin, containing over 46 billion barrels of oil and 280 trillion cubic feet of natural gas.

www.forbes.com

Energy return on investment - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

 

[[VR] optimal_909]

It doesn't really matter what you personally prefer. Show me a calculation of how a mechanical solution is supposed to work on a global scale?

I'm not sure how credible this site is, but they claim it is viable.

 

[Morbad]

Show me a calculation of how a mechanical solution is supposed to work on a global scale?

A link to the source of the info in optimal_909's article: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0306261918305270

Honestly, if it's viable on a small scale, it should be viable on any scale, because of economies of scale. I'm having trouble thinking of any sort of energy storage that is viable at small or local scales that can't be viable when scaled up.

I'm getting a little tired of repeating myself. You CAN´T compare classical crude oil with shale oil, since shale oil has a much lower EROI. If you need to spend one liter of oil to produce two liters, then you have already produced a lot of CO2. Secondly shale oil typically runs dry in a few years.

The only thing that really matters, as far as economic viability goes, is how much the oil ends up costing on the open market. It's worthwhile to extract now at ~60 dollars a barrel, which isn't anywhere near oil's high.

Proven reserves implies extractable oil; it will run dry when it's gone.

 

[WeComeInPeace]

I'm not sure how credible this site is, but they claim it is viable.

This in itself, like any other solution, sounds very promising.

However, it doesn't deal with a lot of the problems related to the solution. This is only possible in areas where you have mountains. In Denmark where I live, the highest point is less than 200 meter above sea level. Secondly electricity can only be used in stationary machinery, not in trucks, harvesters and tractors. Then there is the water that we don't have a lot of. Furthermore we also need to build a load of power plants in a very short time, which will use resources and a lot of fossil energy, since that is what we've got.

Solar panels use phosphorus as a central ingredient. We will reach peak phosphorus between 2030-2050, and we need phosphorus to add as fertilizer to the soils, because every plant we harvest sucks phosphorus out of the soil. It is a very simple mass balance. You need to add as much as you remove (harvest). Otherwise the soil becomes more and more starved.

A link to the source of the info in optimal_909's article: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0306261918305270

Honestly, if it's viable on a small scale, it should be viable on any scale, because of economies of scale. I'm having trouble thinking of any sort of energy storage that is viable at small or local scales that can't be viable when scaled up.



The only thing that really matters, as far as economic viability goes, is how much the oil ends up costing on the open market. It's worthwhile to extract now at ~60 dollars a barrel, which isn't anywhere near oil's high.

Proven reserves implies extractable oil; it will run dry when it's gone.

I repeat: You can't fix the laws of physics using economics. The reserve will increase to a certain limit due to demand and price, but once the party is over, you still end up with the curve I showed. When you start digging the reserve is very low, because most of the resource is still undiscovered. This is part of the reason why the extraction curve starts rising slowly and not just vertical. The resource is finite. All this is already built into the model. Resources can be very difficult to estimate, but if you get to a point where you can see the first half of the curve, including a slowdown compared to the exponential growth in the beginning, you can iterate and fit the model to real data and thereby estimate the total extractable part of the resource, called the reserve.

Edit: You might all think that I'm just a pessimist, who doesn't want to see the possible solution(s). That is not true. I'm genuinely worried on behalf of all humans, but we need to think a plan trough. Otherwise we end up like the Chinese and their Great Leap Forward, which ended up killing 23-55 million humans (depending on source), because of "unforeseen" factors they hadn't included in their plan.

 

[Shinji Ikari]

Very few wealthy/educated populations have high birthrates.

Yet they consume far more resources than non-educated populations*.

*Of the same size.

 

[Shinji Ikari]

A link to the source of the info in optimal_909's article: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0306261918305270

Honestly, if it's viable on a small scale, it should be viable on any scale, because of economies of scale. I'm having trouble thinking of any sort of energy storage that is viable at small or local scales that can't be viable when scaled up.

Even if you mean economic viability, it isn't always possible to do so, as a matter of fact, it's sometimes a strategy to limit supply in order to elevate prices.

 

[Morbad]

This is only possible in areas where you have mountains. In Denmark where I live, the highest point is less than 200 meter above sea level.

Current energy transmission technologies can carry electricity hundreds of km with perfectly acceptable losses. You could use the Alps as energy storage for the bulk of Europe.

Secondly electricity can only be used in stationary machinery, not in trucks, harvesters and tractors.

Chemical batteries/fuel cells can.

Then there is the water that we don't have a lot of.

Don't need potable water for pumped hydro-power, or even liquid at all for gravity power storage.

I repeat: You can't fix the laws of physics using economics. The reserve will increase to a certain limit due to demand and price, but once the party is over, you still end up with the curve I showed. When you start digging the reserve is very low, because most of the resource is still undiscovered. This is part of the reason why the extraction curve starts rising slowly and not just vertical. The resource is finite. All this is already built into the model. Resources can be very difficult to estimate, but if you get to a point where you can see the first half of the curve, including a slowdown compared to the exponential growth in the beginning, you can iterate and fit the model to real data and thereby estimate the total extractable part of the resource, called the reserve.

I'm not sure where I even contradicted any of this. Economics can't change the laws of physics, but they are certainly beholden to them, and looking at the economics of something says a lot about it's practicality in the short-mid term.

The reserves will last as long as they last, when they start to run out, and I know they will, prices will rise. Prices that are too high will mandate a shift to now cheaper sources and at some cut off, all sorts of sources will be cheaper.

If oil were 300 dollars a barrel and coal 300 dollars a ton, with no relief in sight, we'd soon be driving fuel cell powered cars and building ten nuclear power plants a year, as well as leveraging all those renewables and dramatically expanding electric grids.[/QUOTE]

Yet they consume far more resources than non-educated populations*.

*Of the same size.

Which isn't going to change by capping the number of children they can have at a figure that they don't even exceed.

Even if you mean economic viability, it isn't always possible to do so, as a matter of fact, it's sometimes a strategy to limit supply in order to elevate prices.

There are some economic and technical exceptions to the rule of economies of scale, but for all the major proposed power storage solutions, they only get cheaper as they get bigger, and that includes things like the NaS batteries I was dismissive of in a previous post...simple cube-square law means it's easy to keep a giant sodium battery molten.

 

[Shinji Ikari]

Which isn't going to change by capping the number of children they can have at a figure that they don't even exceed.

The cap is intentionally made to be under the generational limit of regeneration (2.1 IIRC), if there are couples with over 3 kids then the measure will have an effect.