it's been so fucking cold they actually made a wikipedia page about it

[jackulator]

I don't get how there are so many people that are willing to believe 'climate change' some kind of sinister plot.

but even if it was, who does it hurt? people who own stock in oil? gas prices? okay... surely you don't think it's GOOD to pump exhaust into the air nonstop. so let's kill all the birds with one stone and start mass-producing wind and solar... problem fucking solved...

but no, because during the entire history of this debate a few scientists have made claims that turned out not to be true we're gonna throw the baby out with the bathwater and hop in line behind the super-rich and all their oil company stock, and pretend THEY don't have a clear, vested interest in convincing people to deny climate change...

to me that's absolute lunacy.

even if you believe the scientists are AS CONCERNED about their reputations and not being shunned by the rest of the scientific community (some kind of bizarre groupthink) -- you can't place that motivation higher up on the "I'll say whatever needs to be said" scale than people whose entire family fortunes are tied to the success of oil -- a resource that can only  increase in value the more we burn it...

[stoneeh]

i think you're jumping to conclusions jack. nobody denies that something is happening climate-wise. but what is happening too is that there's a lot of bullshit going on around it. you cant deny climategate, can you? also a lot of politics.. in how many political campaigns has global warming or climate change been used, and then nothing has changed?
these guys dont back up their words. the climate conference in copenhagen in 2009 produced as much carbon emissions in 1 weekend as the entire state of morocco does in a year - http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/copenhagen-climate-change-confe/6721850/Copenhagen-climate-summit-How-green-is-the-summit.html
why big oil is not trying to deny climate change? because nothing is happening anyway! the self proclaimed proponents of global warming/climate change always talk about change, but they dont work towards reducing oil usage in the least. it's words, not actions. and if they do, the measures are always directed towards the citizen, never towards big companies or governments. ever heard of eco friendly apache attack helicopters or eco friendly freighters?

also for me it's just the fact that they're concentrating on co². hell, water vapors have a greenhouse effect too, so let's ban water next!

co² is what enabled life on the planet in the first place. you have got to seriously consider why among all the pollutive agents that have no positive sides at all, the one pollutive agent that is, along with water, the most basic and important element of life, is being singled out and vilified
what worries me is that this is never talked about and/or acknowledged. in scientific circles it's common knowledge, but to the man in the street this is a foreign concept. and i am pretty sure here too in this community with mostly pretty smart members, the fewest have considered this fact

a debate can never have a constructive outcome, when some opinions or facts are ignored. this is what's happening here. i think it's groupthink and conditioning/programming at its finest, and if you're dissenting you're being vilified along with your opinion or fact. it's what would have happened in a debate about the führer in nazi germany, or a debate about god or the church in medieval christian europe. you know jack, back then, 96% of the experts would have happily agreed that the earth is flat

as to the agenda, if it's only to confuse and frighten us and pit us against each other, then global warming is already a huge success. but i am not so naive to think that there is always one fixed agenda. something can serve multiple purposes in multiple different aspects at different points in time

everyone who is serious about these things, do yourself the favor and just read or re-read (watch the movie if you're lazy) 1984. and always keep an open mind towards everything. remember, most of humankind believes some all powerful dude in the sky is possible without any proof or indication of it. so keeping an open mind towards most everything else should be relatively easy

also consider that we're being influenced by our peers all the time. it's just normal human nature to judge his opinion as true or untrue by how many others agree with him. for example, if you constantly watch TV or read the papers, you WILL integrate some of the mindset that is presented to you. if something is repeated again and again, it WILL become truth for you. it is very hard to impossible to resist that
90+% of people watch TV and read the papers, the mainstream media. the information and opinions they receive come from there. they repeat them to each other, so for them, it's their truth, their view, their world. now what is presented and debated in there is within very very limited spectrum. debate is only accepted in our society within that spectrum. when you lean to one side of that spectrum, you think you express your own opinions, you're not part of the mainstream, you're free of it - when in fact you are still very much trapped in that spectrum. so while there is never one absolute truth, if you want to get closer to truth in general you've got to break out of that spectrum. and for that, first and foremost, you most recognize it. you must recognize the chains to break them

[jackulator]

you didn't really address much of what I said:

1. you can't argue with a straight face that scientists are as invested in their opinions about climate change as the stockholders of oil companies are in protecting the use of oil -- sorry but money trumps being right or being ostracized any old day of the week

2. let's stop arguing over exactly to what degree we're fucking up our ecosystem, and just stop doing things we all agree are bad, like pumping exhaust fumes into the air we all breathe.

So I'm done with the whole debate. I think it's a distraction. It's like we won't agree to proceed unless we can all agree on exactly what the problem is. Curious that this dynamic seems to be playing right into the hands of the oil companies and their shareholders...

but yeah -- I've read 1984 at least half a dozen times and recommend it to everyone

[stoneeh]

i think i did address what you said jack. but i also needed to address that there's just too much out there that is regurgitated from popular opinion. it's frustrating. for example i have decade long buddy that feels strongly about climate change, and i listened to his arguments. then once i saw his youtube account, saw he liked a youtube video on climate change, viewed it, and found out all of his arguments were EXACTLY 1:1 copied from that one video. i later found out that that video also only regurgitated popular opinions/arguments from known global warming proponents. but back to what you said jack

1. if you present opinions that are so far removed from the debated spectrum, chances are noone will have an interest in debating with you. you will not be part of the scientific community. you will be shunned. next, science requires funding. chances are that if your results are not what the funding entity wants, you're out of a job. so i would argue the exact opposite - scientists are all the way invested and have a incentive for bias
regarding big oil i wrote that they're not threatened because global warming is merely being talked about, no actual measures are taken. oil usage is continually rising, so why should they go out and campaign against climate change? again, it is no threat to them, or rather an empty threat

2. i addressed that in an earlier post:

if i wanna make a point here is that there is no way to be certain that increased co² actually means a negative outcome for this planet. it hasnt in the past, and co² along with h²o is what enabled life on this planet on the first place

but what use for the planet are (as jack has stated) garbage islands floating in the sea, or heavy metals flowing into the sea, or all these other chemicals, or methane or various sulfur gasses into the air. or for that matter, that we overproduce food and dump it into the ocean instead of sending it to africa where it's badly needed. or that a certain superpower keeps bombing the middle east. why dont we concentrate on these issues first (that are by the way considerably easier to address)?

so i am all for doing things, and i agree exactly that too much discussion can be just a distraction and remove you from a solution / from taking action. i just think we should work towards solutions that actually practical and accomplishable

i have actually done much reading on this, mostly because i need to know all of this professionally. but it also interests me personally

oil has a couple of unique properties. it is plentiful and still relatively easy to access. it is rich in energy. it is highly portable. it is easily convertable to other forms of energy

let's look at oil use per sector: http://energyforumonline.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/30-Percent-shares-of-world-oil-demand-by-sector-2009-and-2035-OPEC-WOO2012.png

so let's discuss alternatives. by far the most oil is used in transport. so let's concentrate on transport:

electric engines instead of the otto motor? battery technology might soon enough develop well enough to enable personal vehicles to run on electricity, but not trucks, not planes, not big freighters
the other side of the issue is, where is the electricity going to come from that we are going to store in those batteries? water or wind plants can only make up a small percentage of the energy that oil provides us with. on the nuclear front, uranium is running out fast. we can build nuclear plants, but we cant create uranium out of nothing. the next alternative is solar. solar cells need silicium and silver. silicium is plentiful, but fuck is silver not. silver is very rare and already used in many other applications, and supply is already tight

hydrogen cells or engines? hydrogen is plentiful, more plentiful than oil, but it is not as rich, and by far not as portable/transportable

and i think that's it. our technology is not ready to sustain our way of life without the use of fossil fuels. even a small reduction in oil use would have major implications. feed 7 bn people without the use of otto motors to farm, refine, produce, and transport? nope, stop burning oil overnight and we'd be back to a couple of hundred million people a couple of months later

a slow transition is in the works anyway and is unavoidable. we ARE at or very close to peak oil (people who are actually out there in the fields state this), and we have passed "peak cheap oil" a long time ago. oil is increasingly hard/expensive to get. around 1900 it took 1 barrel oil of energy to get 100 barrels of oil out of the ground. today it takes on average 20 barrels of oil of energy to get 100 barrels out of the ground. google "EROEI" for more

so oil usage will adjust by itself via the laws of economics. the more expensive it becomes, the less can be used. i havent sweated this topic for a long time. it's self-regulating, nothing needs to be done. what we can do however is, and relatively easily at that, stop wars, stop hunger, stop fucking up the rainforest, and stop creating garbage islands or giant oil spills in the sea.. because those things will also for sure come back to bite us in the ass

[jackulator]

what troubles me is we seem to be looking at the same facts and coming to different conclusions.

when it comes to the scientists or the oil and natural gas and coal companies I'll trust the scientists. they have a lot less money riding on whether they lie or not.

yes, eventually oil will price itself out of usefulness -- right around the time world war III kicks off so all the rich guys can have us all kill each other to decide which of them gets the last of it 

and oil is not 'relatively easy' to get to. I do financial briefs for oil companies all the time -- they're digging deeper and deeper to get it, and while there are still new proved reserves found on a daily basis, it's certainly not 'easy' to get it out anymore. some rigs have day rates of upwards of a million dollars... it doesn't cost a million dollars a day to do something relatively easy.

and while they're constantly innovating on new ways to get at the oil, the technology for cleaning up the inevitable spills is the same as it was in the 1970s... basically big diapers. we saw how well those worked in the Gulf.

we need to act like this is more of a crisis than maybe it is, otherwise we're gonna wait so long to do something about it that it'll be too late.

if we see the crisis coming and pretend like the worst part is already here, maybe we can pool our resources the way we did during the space race -- get all the best heads working together, instead of for competing companies -- and get some of these problems solved.

but we're not gonna do that if we just argue about how much longer we've got before we absolutely HAVE TO decide. I guess that's the source of my frustration on this.

green energy solves so many problems. the only problem it creates is the need to tax the rich so the government can afford to invest in it... and that ain't a problem for anyone but the super-rich. so I say fuck it, let's do it. we need the jobs. and we need the technology -- we can argue about how soon we'll need it, but why bother?

[stoneeh]

you have a very naive/idealistic view on this jack. i dont blame ya and can somehow relate, but it's just not as simple just to collect some money and then finally do it

first off, "tax the rich to afford it", well as we can see governments dont need to afford stuff, they just run deficits and make the central bank monetize the debt. since they dont use that ability to effect a major change in energy policy, i think it's safe to assume it's just not that high on their priority list

then as ive said, a green energy world with 7bn people is just not possible. it's not a money issue, it's a resource issue. you just cant pull enough raw material out of the ground to support the worldwide transportation system with green energy (solar, wind, and the like). solar uses silver, which is rare. wind turbines use rare earths, which are very rare. then, that energy is just not as portable as petrol. i mean, the best electricity storage we have today are lithium ion batteries. they suck! how are you going to move a 100000ton freighter with them?

so we very much need better electricity storage. this is already hard at work, and i think ive read that in 1, 2 decades we might have batteries that are 10-20 times more efficient than those we have now. and that's what we need for this to at least have a chance of working

[jackulator]

I point out oil isn't easy to get to, that the technology for cleaning spills doesn't keep pace with the technology to get the oil out of the earth, that your market solution of oil pricing itself out of usefulness will likely occur the same time as WWIII -- and you don't respond to any of it, and instead say my views are naive and idealistic. but the only two things I can see that could be interpreted as naive or idealistic in what I said was believing scientists over oil company shareholders on climate change (personally I think it's naive NOT to), and the idea that we might be able to work together to solve the problem before it becomes catastrophic. and your reasoning for this is because there isn't enough silver to make enough solar panels.

okay, what about wind energy? is there enough silver for that? have we exhausted all research on geothermal? these are the areas of investment I was talking about.

I know there are a lot of political reasons why the type of cooperation I'm talking about just 'won't happen', and I know that with the current resources we have now, there's no way to provide the same amount of energy to every citizen of the world that the U.S. currently uses... but you're overlooking a few things that are part of the equation. conservation for one -- growing food locally cuts way down on transportation costs... so much of the oil is used to produce shit we don't even need... doing what we can to end the culture of consumption for consumption's sake. (more idealism)

when I was talking about taxing the rich I was referring to jobs like putting up windmills and solar panels. and rebuilding bridges and dams and roads and airports and high-speed rail. because all of the extra jobs will fuel the economy, which will encourage investment in innovation in things like super-batteries (like the ones I read about the other day that run on sugar). anyway, I wasn't talking about just taxing the rich and then somehow magically we'd have all the energy we need.

we can't all be as grown-up about this as you are, because without a little idealism and perhaps a little naivety we would never have done some great things like -- just announce one day we're gonna put a man on the moon, and then we did it.

my point is we have to be that single-minded about it. population is the real problem here, and we shouldn't wait until after the next world war to rebuild society and try to be smarter next time. because the war will exhaust most of the remaining resources for one. and two, by the time we get society up and running again, stocked up with scientists, the next wave of capitalists will have already come along and fucked it all up again so we'll have another world war over resources.... I'd say that's more cynicism than idealism. But if I'm idealistic it's because I'm hoping we're not gonna stay on the same hampster wheel until there's nothing left.

there's always hope. until there isn't. 

[jackulator]

I hope I'm not coming off like a dick here, but I'm a little sensitive about being called naive and idealistic. The way my mind works, I study something until I get the gist of it, and I apply what I learned to other areas I've learned about. I'm better at sifting through ideas and concepts and finding interrelation and synchronicity than I am at rote memorization. It's more interesting to me to understand how everything works in relation to everything else than it is to really understand one particular thing. So it's easy to call me out on things like there not being enough silver to make enough solar panels for everyone in the world. But that doesn't mean my whole argument is flawed. Besides, I never suggested that everyone in the world should use as much energy as so-called western civilizations use. So I felt like it was unfair for you to imply I did with your counterargument. Anywho. I like to keep things civil, so I can appreciate all your points. And you've encouraged me to do a little more studying on this matter. Maybe grill a few scientists and plumb the depths a little more on what's bullshit and what isn't. Maybe I can come back with some better intel.

[houseman]

The future of energy is likely solar or wind unless there are advances in neutralizing nuclear waste.  I just get a little frustrated at people who think that we should switch over to renewable energy today.  What I think people don't understand is that every technology has a big fat disadvantage.  Nuclear has waste, natural gas can have a quickly fluctuating price (although it is cheap right now), coal pollutes the atmosphere, clean coal is expensive, bio fuel is expensive and uses land and water that could be used for growing food, wind and solar are not always available and ramp up or down to quickly.

Incidentally, there is roughly a factor of 9 in the installed and useable power from a wind turbine.  So, the largest wind turbines might be rated at 10 megawatts, but they produce about 3 megawatts on average.  Now, when the wind picks up and they come on strong, there is nowhere to dump that power and no way to suddenly ramp down the other generation.  So, the wind power is purposely curtailed and the 10 megawatt turbine ends up being a 1.1 megawatt turbine.  Consider this when someone boasts about how there was 1 gigawatt of wind power installed somewhere.  1 gigawatt is significant because that is on the order of a nuclear plant.  However, the 1 gigawatt wind farm is only producing 110 megawatts and this is really not that impressive.  It ends up taking thousands of wind turbines to produce the power of one nuclear plant.

So, what to do about these big fat disadvantages of wind and solar?  Well, you guys are right, it comes down to the energy storage or super batteries.  If we could easily store the energy in an inexpensive way, wind and solar would be much more practical.  For wind, most of the energy is generated at night.  This could be stored and used during the day.  Energy storage would also come in when wind suddenly picks up.  For solar, if you could put solar panels on your roof and store the energy in a super battery, you could go off grid.

[CallMeBronco]

I pretty much do a little amount of research until I get bored, but in everything that I've gathered my conclusion is that they simply don't know enough, even if they claim they do to be sure of anything. But, that doesn't mean we should just forget it and do whatever we want. I don't like to pollute and stuff and I think we outght to move away from oil and gas.

As to major energy, my money is on nuclear fusion. They are actually getting really close to it, last I heard a year ago on science channel. The energy output of that would be like more than twice anything we currently have. They say it'll be so much it'll actually revolutionize our whole society, whether that's true or not who knows but I'm looking forward to it.

-------------------

HOLY SHIT, this is totally off topic, but right now as I was typing this I had my head phones sitting on my desk, and they were playing music and I looked down and realized that they were shaking, the sound was literally making them rock back and forth. i didn't know that's how it works 

[HairyChinaman]

http://i.imgur.com/RmRo5d2.gif

[stoneeh]

wow hairy, gtfo . i mean, something like that is kind of expected on the internet, but still..

[jackulator]

this one derailed fast. I haven't locked a topic in forever but I'm thinking this would be a comical place to do so.

[jackulator]

The future of energy is likely solar or wind unless there are advances in neutralizing nuclear waste.  I just get a little frustrated at people who think that we should switch over to renewable energy today.  What I think people don't understand is that every technology has a big fat disadvantage.  Nuclear has waste, natural gas can have a quickly fluctuating price (although it is cheap right now), coal pollutes the atmosphere, clean coal is expensive, bio fuel is expensive and uses land and water that could be used for growing food, wind and solar are not always available and ramp up or down to quickly.

Incidentally, there is roughly a factor of 9 in the installed and useable power from a wind turbine.  So, the largest wind turbines might be rated at 10 megawatts, but they produce about 3 megawatts on average.  Now, when the wind picks up and they come on strong, there is nowhere to dump that power and no way to suddenly ramp down the other generation.  So, the wind power is purposely curtailed and the 10 megawatt turbine ends up being a 1.1 megawatt turbine.  Consider this when someone boasts about how there was 1 gigawatt of wind power installed somewhere.  1 gigawatt is significant because that is on the order of a nuclear plant.  However, the 1 gigawatt wind farm is only producing 110 megawatts and this is really not that impressive.  It ends up taking thousands of wind turbines to produce the power of one nuclear plant.

So, what to do about these big fat disadvantages of wind and solar?  Well, you guys are right, it comes down to the energy storage or super batteries.  If we could easily store the energy in an inexpensive way, wind and solar would be much more practical.  For wind, most of the energy is generated at night.  This could be stored and used during the day.  Energy storage would also come in when wind suddenly picks up.  For solar, if you could put solar panels on your roof and store the energy in a super battery, you could go off grid.

I hadn't heard that about wind turbines... I suppose that's the first place I'd concentrate if I was a scientist. if people's home solar systems can push electric into the grid that they're not using why can't they do it with everything else??

[jackulator]

http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2014/02/12/3282981/solar-orbs/

oh but, "Broessel’s device is not yet available in the market. He is trying to raise $120,000 on his Indiegogo campaign for further testing, and for patent applications he’s filed in five jurisdictions. " (investment...)

280MW station (also uses silver though) -- uses parabolic troughs: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solana_Generating_Station

but then there's these: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_thermal_energy#Dish_designs

"In 2005 Southern California Edison announced an agreement to purchase solar powered Stirling engines from Stirling Energy Systems over a twenty-year period and in quantities (20,000 units) sufficient to generate 500 megawatts of electricity. In January 2010, Stirling Energy Systems and Tessera Solar commissioned the first demonstration 1.5-megawatt power plant ("Maricopa Solar") using Stirling technology in Peoria, Arizona.[37] At the beginning of 2011 Stirling Energy's development arm, Tessera Solar, sold off its two large projects, the 709 MW Imperial project and the 850 MW Calico project to AES Solar and K.Road, respectively,[38][39] and in the fall of 2011 Stirling Energy Systems applied for Chapter 7 bankruptcy due to competition from low cost photovoltaics. In 2012 the Maricopa plant was bought and dismantled by United Sun Systems.[40]"

an 850MW station new york city uses 10500MW of power, or 12.5 of those stations.

we need a shitload of em, plugged into the grid so we don't need to store the energy they create.

and if companies refuse to buy them because they don't need the extra expense, taxpayers can stop putting stupid shit on the credit card (Iraq, Afghanistan, massive tax cuts for the wealthy...) and chip in to help out.

[stoneeh]

yep, wind is not the way to go, unless serious new energy storage capabilities are developed. anyways as ive already said it uses rare earths (for the magnets of the turbines), which btw china has a virtual monopoly on, and is already exerting quotas on. so good luck getting a meaningful quantity

solar is strictly a daytime thing. we'd need them all over the world and connected with superconductors to gain a constant energy supply via solar - not likely. geothermal is not efficient enough

from wikipedia:

In 2008 energy supply by power source was oil 33.5%, coal 26.8%, gas 20.8% (fossil 81%), 'other' (hydro, peat, solar, wind, geothermal power, biofuels etc.) 12.9%, and nuclear 5.8%.

someday they are going to come up with a superior energy source, like as bronco has stated nuclear fusion, and a way to use it for it to be able to replace oil as an energy source. i agree with jack that more emphasis should be placed on this, sooner rather than later, but in the end it's policitcs & economics. oil continually gets harder to get, the EROI is gradually sinking, but oil companies are still getting rich off it, and people can still afford it

[houseman]

 
Actually, there are wind turbines that don't use rare earth magnets, such as the induction machine (invented by Tesla) and the would-field synchronous machine.  In fact, allot of generator designers are avoiding permanent-magnet machines because of the problem with the China supply.

[jackulator]

tick tock bitches:

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2014/02/12/scientists-in-california-make-landmark-advance-towards-unlimited-fusion-energy/

[CallMeBronco]

I wish fuckin' electric cars would take over. OF course, I know about all the monumental problems with that. Not long ago I saw a documentary on TV called "who killed the electric car" I don't remember who done it.
Anyway, also on TV I saw this guy who has a car called the "White Zombie". It's an electric car and the batteries are made with a special alloy of something new, mixed with Lithium that enables it to withstand more heat. They took it on a drag race against a souped up Cadillac or something really powerful and it absolutely blew its door off    I mean the Cadillac didn't even come close.

Anyway, I'm pretty excited about nuclear fusion, even though, being realistic like that article said it may very well be decades or longer till it happens. The fuel will be seawater and the waste will be or maybe the waste was seawater idk.

I don't understand this from that article:
"In two experiments described by the researchers that took place in September and November of last year, more energy came out of the fusion fuel than was deposited into it, but it was still less than the total amount deposited into the target."
 


sorry for going off topic a little. How'd we get started on this? 

[stoneeh]

i assume that when it was up and running, energy was net positive, but they needed some kind of preparation/warmup phase or something else periphery that was energy intensive as well, so all in all the fusion was not net energy positive