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qkkl posted:One issue related to the exhaustion of fossil fuels that does have doomsday-like implications is where will we get the hydrogen necessary for the Haber process to produce fertilizer. Currently we get it from natural gas, and if we had to switch to electrolysis it would require using a lot more energy to produce the hydrogen. We're capable of growing so much food that we have to pay farmers to stop growing so much (which is a superior alternative to what we used to do: providing price supports and then letting all of that additional food rot in silos). I don't think that this is an apocalyptic concern but I'd be happy to look at some studies saying otherwise
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Oct 1, 2018 12:15
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QuarkJets posted:We're capable of growing so much food that we have to pay farmers to stop growing so much (which is a superior alternative to what we used to do: providing price supports and then letting all of that additional food rot in silos). I don't think that this is an apocalyptic concern but I'd be happy to look at some studies saying otherwise Yes, the disappearance of industrial fertilizer would have no effect on industrial production of food, this is a good take.
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Oct 1, 2018 13:08
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Wolf Pussy posted:Yes, the disappearance of industrial fertilizer would have no effect on industrial production of food, this is a good take. How did we go from one component of the cost of fertilizer becoming more expensive to fertilizer disappearing?
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Oct 1, 2018 13:21
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Bates posted:How did we go from one component of the cost of fertilizer becoming more expensive to fertilizer disappearing? The same way we got to natural gas disappearing, one presumes.
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Oct 1, 2018 14:29
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Also Americans throw away 40% of the food they do buy. Increased food costs are essentially a non-issue in any sort of macro sense.
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Oct 1, 2018 14:59
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Blue Star posted:Lol technology isn't going to save us. Solar energy is a load of bullshit. It can't replace fossil fuels. Other renewables are even worse. Energy storage technology improves at a snails pace. Nuclear is unsafe and nobody wants it anyway. There's nothing coming down the pipeline to help us. Learn how to hunt, how to fish, how to farm. Make sure your kids learn these things. It's what they're gonna need. Don't even bother with sending them to college. people like you are such utter loving scum. you're just using your mean stupidity and self centered nihlism as an excuse to do nothing, so the rest of us have that much more slack to pick up. you can, at the very least, shut the gently caress up if you're not going to help.
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Oct 1, 2018 17:45
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It's behind a paywall, but there was a recent article in Science about the prospects for developing GMO nitrogen-fixing plants in the next couple decades: http://science.sciencemag.org/content/359/6378/869 And really, 70% of the reason we use so much fertilizer is because it's cheaper (or more profitable) than crop rotation. We can just go back to that.
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Oct 1, 2018 18:21
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Blue Star posted:Lol technology isn't going to save us. Solar energy is a load of bullshit. It can't replace fossil fuels. Other renewables are even worse. Energy storage technology improves at a snails pace. Nuclear is unsafe and nobody wants it anyway. There's nothing coming down the pipeline to help us. Learn how to hunt, how to fish, how to farm. Make sure your kids learn these things. It's what they're gonna need. Don't even bother with sending them to college. bawfuls fucked around with this message at 18:39 on Oct 1, 2018 |
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Oct 1, 2018 18:35
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bawfuls posted:Storage is an engineering problem, not a research problem. We have solutions now that would work, they're not not mature enough to be cost competitive in the current environment. They need support to get there faster, like most things of this nature. Nah, having uninformed opinions and doomsaying is the way to handle this problem!
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Oct 1, 2018 18:38
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QuarkJets posted:Nuclear is safe and tons and tons of people want it Doomsday preppers loving love solar too, as the only alternative is getting gas at gastown and bullets from the bullet farm.
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Oct 1, 2018 19:13
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I'm not sure solar is going to be very useful during a nuclear winter.
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Oct 1, 2018 19:14
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hobbesmaster posted:I'm not sure solar is going to be very useful during a nuclear winter. I don't think it permanently blocks out the sun like in The Matrix, it supposedly just slightly darkens the sky which has a large cooling effect but wouldn't affect panels that much. I just know the people at Nellis Air Force Base were sitting pretty in Fallout New Vegas.
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Oct 1, 2018 19:21
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Wolf Pussy posted:The same way we got to natural gas disappearing, one presumes. Do we also no longer have access to water? Or oxygen? The disappearance of industrial fertilizer would be a big deal but fossil fuels becoming more expensive does not lead to that, so your post just seems pointless and stupid
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Oct 1, 2018 22:32
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Zero VGS posted:I don't think it permanently blocks out the sun like in The Matrix, it supposedly just slightly darkens the sky which has a large cooling effect but wouldn't affect panels that much. I just know the people at Nellis Air Force Base were sitting pretty in Fallout New Vegas. Darkening the sky would effect panels quite a bit though, output doesn't drop to 0 on a cloudy day but it does drop significantly
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Oct 1, 2018 22:33
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Sorry for the more 101 level question, we hear a lot about advanced in PV cells but what happened to the solar design that just uses mirrors to heat up a big tube in the middle? Is that considered a more outdated technology now or does it still have its place, and if so, what determines which form of solar is best for the situation?
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Oct 1, 2018 22:50
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yes, all the alternatives to pv lost out to the fact that you can just make more pv cheaper
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Oct 1, 2018 23:42
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QuarkJets posted:Do we also no longer have access to water? Or oxygen? Getting hydrogen from water is a lot more energy-intensive than getting it from steam reformation of fossil fuels. So it would be more expensive. Which means we wouldn't grow as much food. Which means the human carrying capacity of agriculture would be diminished. Which means that at the margins, more people would starve. Baronjutter posted:Sorry for the more 101 level question, we hear a lot about advanced in PV cells but what happened to the solar design that just uses mirrors to heat up a big tube in the middle? Is that considered a more outdated technology now or does it still have its place, and if so, what determines which form of solar is best for the situation? Concentrated solar power is more expensive than photovoltaic, and doesn't work well at all with diffuse sunlight, so you really can't build it at all in places that get any significant cloud cover. Since such systems operate by heating up a working fluid, they can continue to generate power after the sun goes away (until the thermal reservoir of the fluid cools down), so it can load-follow to a small extent that PV can't.
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Oct 1, 2018 23:52
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Baronjutter posted:Sorry for the more 101 level question, we hear a lot about advanced in PV cells but what happened to the solar design that just uses mirrors to heat up a big tube in the middle? Is that considered a more outdated technology now or does it still have its place, and if so, what determines which form of solar is best for the situation? That's a parabolic trough, which is a type of Concentrated Solar Power design. There are several of these around the US and Europe, such as the Solana plant in Arizona and the SEGS plants in California. They're kickin' rad and chuggin' along. They're actually somewhat expensive to build, you need a ton of steel and expensive glass among other things, and they're relatively complex systems that can only really be deployed at large scales. They also need direct sunlight, they don't work at all through clouds unlike PV systems. But it's also a lot easier to incorporate thermal storage, so there's still a lot of value in continuing to build these kinds of systems. Meanwhile PV panels have been seeing significant reductions in cost over the last decade and they can go on your roof. I think that consumer demand has been helping to drive manufacturing advancements that decrease costs. They're king when it comes to cost effectiveness. If given the choice between one technology or another for a specific site, I'm not sure what specific data might go into that decision. Rather, the way this usually goes in the private sector is that someone has a specific design in mind and they go and try to get it funded, and they pick a suitable site based on the requirements of the design. For instance the Solana plant was built by a company based in Spain that has some proprietary knowledge related to parabolic troughs, so of course they went with that kind of design rather than a PV design.
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Oct 1, 2018 23:56
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Phanatic posted:Getting hydrogen from water is a lot more energy-intensive than getting it from steam reformation of fossil fuels. So it would be more expensive. Which means we wouldn't grow as much food. Which means the human carrying capacity of agriculture would be diminished. Which means that at the margins, more people would starve. Yes; but you and I are talking about the ramifications of significantly more expensive fertilizers, whereas that other guy was talking about the ramifications of having no industrial fertilizer at all. Even if natural gas went away completely tomorrow, you'd have the former scenario, not the latter.
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Oct 1, 2018 23:59
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QuarkJets posted:Yes; but you and I are talking about the ramifications of significantly more expensive fertilizers, whereas that other guy was talking about the ramifications of having no industrial fertilizer at all. Even if natural gas went away completely tomorrow, you'd have the former scenario, not the latter. Yeah. In general "What happens when we run out of [x]?" isn't really a meaningful question.
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Oct 2, 2018 00:07
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PV cell technology is still not good enough. Even if cells were 99% efficient, we still wouldn't be able to satisfy our needs. Plus the manufacture of pv cells is itself polluting. And requires rare ores. Solar energy is becoming cheaper because of subsidies.
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Oct 2, 2018 06:32
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Blue Star posted:PV cell technology is still not good enough. Even if cells were 99% efficient, we still wouldn't be able to satisfy our needs. Plus the manufacture of pv cells is itself polluting. And requires rare ores. Solar energy is becoming cheaper because of subsidies. Even if you ignore subsidies, PV has been falling in price dramatically. Demand (which is helped by subsidies) has pushed economies of scale to the point that PV panels are more efficient and cheaper now than they were 20 years ago despite demand being greater now. But yes, PV is not enough. No one here denies that (to my knowledge). Luckily there are all kinds of effective ways to generate power
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Oct 2, 2018 06:41
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Blue Star posted:PV cell technology is still not good enough. Even if cells were 99% efficient, we still wouldn't be able to satisfy our needs. Plus the manufacture of pv cells is itself polluting. And requires rare ores. Solar energy is becoming cheaper because of subsidies. While we're waiting for nuclear to cover 100% of demand it's probably ok to get like 5-10% from solar.
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Oct 2, 2018 07:03
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QuarkJets posted:But yes, PV is not enough. No one here denies that (to my knowledge). Luckily there are all kinds of effective ways to generate power Solar would be plenty for most homes and even many offices, if only people took insulation seriously. 70% of a home's energy use goes towards the heating and cooling of air and water (i.e. heat, air conditioning, refrigeration and hot water), and all of those can be greatly assisted with forms of insulation that are being ignored, like vacuum insulated panels. The only energy sinks left are lighting, consumer electronics, and cooking, and all three continue to have efficiency advances (LED light adoption, die shrinks for CPUs, insulated cooking like InstantPot gaining popularity). PV and battery storage are both getting cheaper. Don't forget that the Tesla gigafactory is the largest battery factory in the world, and also the largest factory in the world, with the highest energy density battery cell in production. When that really ramps up it'll help both grid and home PV storage. 8% of America still lives in trailers so there's plenty of homes with godawful insulation existing now, and many buildings can never be practically retrofitted with better insulation, but at least it doesn't add too much to the expense of newly built houses to make them passive solar.
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Oct 2, 2018 08:52
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Zero VGS posted:8% of America still lives in trailers Also yes once you've been somewhere with good insulation (scandigoons) anything else is just depressing. One winter it got down to -25c, the house was +20 with the radiators barely warm to the touch. Insulation is good yo
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Oct 2, 2018 11:14
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Hydrogen electrolysis from water isn't that much more expensive than producing it from natural gas. Even doubling or tripling the cost of one input into the process wouldn't make fertilizer suddenly uneconomical. Food prices are already pretty low, so even if the cost of cabbage doubled we wouldn't see starvation from that alone. Besides, it's not like the Haber process is the only process there is. There were other processes developed, like one that uses electricity, but they lost out because they were more expensive. Natural gas getting too costly to use to make hydrogen would just mean we'd switch to what ever the next costliest solution is. Finally, it's not like one day there's just going to be an end to natural gas. It's a cost curve, a long drawn out process where it gets more and more expensive, not a sudden shock that would just upend society one unexpected day. In fact, the best thing that could happen would be expensive fossil fuels. They'd make wind, solar, and nuclear seem like a dream and more economically viable. Most of the issue with climate change is that we're essentially putting the actual costs of generating power from burning fuel onto the future (and a lot onto things like the health care costs from the air making people sick in large urban areas.) Essentially our problem is that we're not paying from our pocketbooks the full cost of the energy we're tapping into. Scarcity would be good.
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Oct 2, 2018 11:52
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Killer-of-Lawyers posted:the best thing that could happen would be expensive fossil fuels simple: burn all easily accessible fossil fuels
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Oct 2, 2018 11:59
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I CANNOT EJACULATE WITHOUT SEEING NATIVE AMERICANS BRUTALISED!
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Galaxy Brain: Tax all fossil fuels.
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Oct 2, 2018 12:04
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nvm
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Oct 2, 2018 12:05
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Killer-of-Lawyers posted:Galaxy Brain: Tax all fossil fuels. That sounds dangerously like
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Oct 2, 2018 12:30
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Well, we could move the tax to the end products of fossil fuel use, like gasoline, exempt powerfull lobbies and businesses that lobby us, and make sure that as much of the tax as possible is paid by poor people with inefficient cars! That way we aren't overreacting
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Oct 2, 2018 12:52
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evil_bunnY posted:The what now? That's astonishing. Really? They're dirt cheap to build and set out on cheap land. And it's not like the not-legally-a-trailer modular homes are much different in their core. An important aspect is that much of the "could still be moved if needed" types in the country were built in the 90s and earlier, due to changing regulations. The types that have proper permanent foundations are more likely to be built and installed these days, especially since way fewer places have laws against them.
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Oct 2, 2018 14:49
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StabbinHobo posted:people like you are such utter loving scum. you're just using your mean stupidity and self centered nihlism as an excuse to do nothing, so the rest of us have that much more slack to pick up. They're worse than denialists because they don't just give people an excuse to do nothing, they encourage people to do the wrong things. Climate change is not going to be a hollywood disaster movie. In fact we're already in climate change right now, and it's going to be more of what we're already experiencing: stronger hurricanes, wildfires, droughts, population displacement. We need to prepare for those problems, not dig bunkers in bumfuck and learn how to spin wool.
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Oct 2, 2018 15:45
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hobbesmaster posted:I'm not sure solar is going to be very useful during a nuclear winter. Wildly overstated. "Nuclear Winter" assumes everyone decides to do ground-bursts for some insane reason, when air-bursts are far more effective for everything besides bunker busting. Sure, worry about an nuclear exchange, 100% (My money is on India/Pakistan/China), but don't worry too much about a nuclear winter. And yes, I'm not an expert, but I talk to the dudes who do the simulations, and that's their statement on the matter. StabbinHobo posted:people like you are such utter loving scum. you're just using your mean stupidity and self centered nihlism as an excuse to do nothing, so the rest of us have that much more slack to pick up. Totally not emptyquoting. The Dipshit fucked around with this message at 18:37 on Oct 2, 2018 |
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Oct 2, 2018 15:50
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Zero VGS posted:
This is absolute truth. I can't get imgur to work right now, and I don't know if embedding found images is still frowned upon. It is downright depressing how many ancient single wide trailers I see with $500+ monthly power bills in a cold month.  Even outside of that, most people are terribly inefficient and really do not understand how their behaviors affect energy usage. "I don't understand why y'all have to charge us more in the winter/summer" is a statement I've heard many times.
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Oct 2, 2018 19:18
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angryrobots posted:This is absolute truth. I can't get imgur to work right now, and I don't know if embedding found images is still frowned upon. It is downright depressing how many ancient single wide trailers I see with $500+ monthly power bills in a cold month. Here is an imgur link 
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Oct 2, 2018 22:24
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Phanatic posted:It's not really necessary since the fuel cost even with a once-through fuel cycle is approximately negligible for nuclear power. It's a fair point, but what about the costs of storage over thousands of years? Is that not a good argument for reprocessing? Also, 'Atomic Accidents' has the thesis that the BWR reactors are great for naval applications, but for commercial applications it is not great, as accidents threaten to be really, really expensive. I think thorium salt reactors have, I'm not sure, become some sort of internets cliché, but the book was of the opinion that some RnD money would go a long way to developing new, better commercial designs, ones that maybe have smaller, cheaper units, to limit the cost and damage of accidents. I mean, if America has literally lost its ability to construct nuclear power plants, seems like a good time to work on new designs
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Oct 3, 2018 01:07
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Nebakenezzer posted:It's a fair point, but what about the costs of storage over thousands of years? Is that not a good argument for reprocessing? That's ultimately not much more than the cost of storing it 50 years. And again, most waste is not spent fuel, so you can not really reprocess it.
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Oct 3, 2018 01:18
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angryrobots posted:This is absolute truth. I can't get imgur to work right now, and I don't know if embedding found images is still frowned upon. It is downright depressing how many ancient single wide trailers I see with $500+ monthly power bills in a cold month. The Department of Energy certainly isn't helping, I just noticed this blurb on their website: https://www.energy.gov/energysaver/save-electricity-and-fuel/lighting-choices-save-you-money/incandescent-lighting quote:Incandescent lamps are often considered the least energy efficient type of electric lighting commonly found in residential buildings. Although inefficient, incandescent lamps possess a number of key advantages--they are inexpensive to buy, turn on instantly, are available in a huge array of sizes and shapes and provide a pleasant, warm light with excellent color rendition. Some CFL bulbs had a limited spectrum, but all the modern 2700k LED bulbs give off practically identical spectrum as incandescent, and can be had at a buck each (where I buy them they're $10 for $10 and you get a $10 gift card, making them effectively free, they've been running that promo for a few years now and I've gotten like a hundred of them for my house and all my rentals). Yet assholes like GE are for some reason still trying to market incandescent bulbs to morons by using audiophile logic, and the DoE seems happy to perpetuate that myth. There's a new startup I saw in Home Depot doing the same bullshit, less efficient bulbs that supposedly have some magical color temperature abilities: https://www.cnet.com/reviews/finally-light-bulb-review/ But yeah, not only do trailers and manufactured homes bleed out heating, but they're usually occupied with people who just aren't well-educated in efficiency, and thus will keep things like a CRT TV, not realizing that a $50 Walmart LED TV will pay for itself in 8 months. Yes, as of 2014, 46% of households still had a fuckin' CRT: https://cta.tech/News/Blog/Articles/2014/April/The-Long-Goodbye-46-Percent-of-Households-Still-Ha.aspx The cost of wattage for all those appliances is then doubled in the summer, as the air conditioning has to work extra to counter the heat they give off. A lot of people use space heaters in the winter when heat pumps would work fine in all but ultra-cold temps. Most of this is people simply can't afford upgrades, I can't blame them for making these decisions when they have 12 bucks in the bank account. But there's a nationwide free weatherization program for people in poverty and no one takes advantage of that, when simply stopping drafts in the house is the cheapest thing to do and makes the biggest energy difference in any house, large or small. My mom just got it and they hooked her up with new air conditions, fridge, dehumidifier, weatherstripped all the windows, foamed up all the cracks in the basement, and filled all the hollow walls of the house with blown cellulose, all for free. However, this took something like a year and a half of calls and letters to get everything carried out. If the DoE moved at more than a snails pace and advertised this better, I'm sure many more people would spring for it. Putting weatherization people to work and saving people a ton of money that they can put into the economy elsewhere seems like it should get bipartisan initiative, but what do I know.
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Oct 3, 2018 02:16
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karthun posted:Here is an imgur link Well that's embarrassing being #1, but at least our top two form of energy are hydro and nuclear with coal and gas a distant 10% each. I'm honestly surprised it's so high. No one has AC in Canada unlike the US where vast swaths of the country seemingly depend on it for basic survival, and electric heating is also rarer in the places that need a lot of winter heating. Baronjutter fucked around with this message at 02:39 on Oct 3, 2018 |
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Oct 3, 2018 02:36
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