266 comments on DrumBeat: July 28, 2006
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266 comments on DrumBeat: July 28, 2006
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Further, if we should really have a hard time before we can complete our investment in new infrastructure, then it will make finishing it that much harder. I think after the fall of Rome, civilization fell too far too fast, and look how long it took to dig its way back out.
"One cannot leap a great chasm in 2 bounds" - You either get to the other side in one, or you fall in the hole.
My approach might ( I stress might) if we really reduce fossil fuel consumption immediately. We can't go cold turkey the infrastructure won't allow it.
The problem I see is there is no real proactive plan to reduce consumption of fossil fuels. Until we try and power some things with renewable, and prove how little energy will be available, there will be no target for energy consumption per person to shoot for. I see too many people voicing the concept of using all the fossil fuels we want until it is well past peak and then we will shift to "the new energy sources". That approach is dangerous.
Better to force consumption now, and start using alternatives now, giving us some emergency stored fossil fuel to make the 50 year transition. This approach is really for the developed countries to implement. The third world doesn't consume that much fossil fuel except as food. The world needs to know there isn't the carrying capacity for 6.5 Billion people. Not enough energy, not enough food without the energy. What is the carrying capacity using renewables? I haven't a clue but we better find out soon.
The goal needs to be a planned steep decline in use of energy and population. The alternative is dropping off a cliff. Both energy and population will crash. We will end at the same place wether we engineer the decline or we crash. The difference is what is left of civilization via the two paths.
Renewables can provide more than enough. Wind in the US could generate twice the electricity we use now. The earth receives 100,000 terawatts of solar energy continously from the sun, and humans use the equivalent of 4.5 terawatts on average.
It's late so you may not see this before this thread goes to thread heaven.
We all want to believe that there are alternatives that will work. But, the reality is that homo sapiens are sucking every resource dry - water, aerable land, gas, oil, the sea, minerals, forests; everything.
It is a package deal. Gaia if you will. There are no magic answers. I say this from personal experience since I embraced alternative energy and a concern for sustaible living 30 years ago. I'm not into theoretical arguments about alternatives.
I'm not going to tell you are wrong because a change in reality only comes through experience.
Todd
Well, I agree that there are serious problems with all of these. I haven't had time to research all of them thoroughly. But TOD is dedicated to peak oil, and I have had time to research PO and energy thoroughly, and as far as I can tell peak oil is NOT peak energy. I find that encouraging.
"It is a package deal. Gaia if you will. There are no magic answers."
I'm not sure what you mean by this. It sounds a little...err...faith based. This seems unclear and fuzzy. I respect the role of intuition, but I find that I don't understand something in a clear way I get in trouble.
"I say this from personal experience since I embraced alternative energy and a concern for sustaible living 30 years ago."
I've been interested in these things for more than 30 years too, ever since I read the Club of Rome's report.
"I'm not into theoretical arguments about alternatives. I'm not going to tell you are wrong because a change in reality only comes through experience."
Well...talking about this, and learning from each other, is what we do here. I know there are people feeling pessimistic, but that alone doesn't really tell me whether that makes sense, or give me a chance to change your mind. I think you shouldn't give up on things, and that includes not giving up on communication - we can't come to a consensus on things unless we talk about them.
One thing that interests me about renewables is that there seems to be a tacit assumption that, because they're renewable, they don't have a significant downside to their use.
All that solar energy being dumped on the Earth isn't going to waste, for example. Much of it heats the atmosphere and the hydrosphere, which makes conditions amenable for life. I wonder what environmental changes would result if humanity were to capture a significant chunk of solar energy, say 10 or 20 percent (20,000 terawatts), and redirect it through technological infrastructure. Sure, waste heat would contribute to keeping things warm (perhaps too warm!), but it would be distributed through the atmsophere in a different way. Could be detrimental.
I wonder what harnessing 4.5 to 9.0 terawatts via wind energy would due to local environments? Wind turbines tap into fluid momentum, and must produce a lot of friction on airflow. On a massive scale, wind "farms" could, perhaps, alter local wind-climates (at the surface), which may also have some interesting effects on local ecosystems.
Just some ideas. I would like to see more deep thought on just what the true ramifications may be for a full-scale "power-up" on renewables.
-best
Yes, I provided that link a few days ago :
Sow the Wind, Reap the Drag Coefficient (Dept. of "We are as gods, and might as well get good at it")
The thing you have to keep in mind is that the solar energy is typically absorbed as heat now. The likely places for solar panels is existing structures. PV might change the albedo a little, but not a whole lot. There are a lot of buildings with dark roofs, which absorb a lot already - PV might actually absorb less.
Heat engines (coal, nat gas, gasoline ICE's) throw
off 3 units of heat for every unit of electricity generated. IF solar absorbed an additional .1 unit for every unit generated, that would be a 30 to 1 difference, and that doesn't even include the reduction in CO2 and global warming.
If you were really concerned, it wouldn't be a big deal to make some human structures a little lighter to compensate for a little more absorption at the solar panels. Really, the whole effect is negligible.
However, I think the change of albedo would become significant if the goal is to collect a high percentage of insolation. If, for instance, an attempt to collect 80-90% of total insolation was successful, then the Earth's albedo must change from it's estimate of around 0.30.
Anyway, I'll keep thinking...
-best
Sure. Of course, that would be about 20,000 times as much energy as we use now. I think it's safe to say that human energy use will level out a long time before that.
- I think Americans could learn to drive about 10% less by carpooling, combining trips, vacationing closer to home, and god-forbid maybe even taking some trips on foot or bike.
- Reinstitue the 55 mph speed limit.
- Use the A/C in the car less.
These three steps could bring an immediate 10 to 20% reduction in gasoline use and could buy us a few years to make longer term and more dramatic changes such as:- increased electric rail in cities and towns.
- dramatic reductions in personal automobile use.
- returning to rail and river as the main means of shipping.
- slowly migrating out of the suburbs and megalopolises and back into our small cities and towns. My little town alone (pop. 15000) has 500,000 sq ft of unused space above the shops of our 6 or 7 block downtown retail district. In the 19th century, these were used as apartments. Today no one lives there bc/ of the lack of parking, but they could very easily be converted back to 500 or so housing units without any new construction. These floors are literally just sitting empty or maybe store the owner's junk. On several of our streets, the rails that haven't been used by electric trolleys in 60 years are still in place.
I see the "powerdown" as a return to a late 19th century standard of living. Lots of walking, mass transit, a substantially increased percentage of people working in agriculture, less cross country and international travel. more river and rail transport.The future may look a lot like the past:
I remember sharing rides being fairly common in the 70s when I was a kid. If one person had a car, there were several people who knew them and a ride for the one person into town often ended up being a ride into town for a couple of their pals too. In fact a person would be considered standoffish, greedy/cold if they always drove by themself. We'd have really been hurting without welfare though. As 'rough' as my memories of the dirty 70s, are, they'll be nothing compared to the 2nd great depression coming up.
Also, reinstating the 55 mph limit will not necessarily make people drive 55 mph. I actually think the limit has little bearing on how fast people actually drive.
My car's a darkish color and heats up quite a bit, I have to run the AC once the outside temperature exceeds 75F! I could avoid using the AC a lot more if it were a much lighter color, and didn't have a huge expanse of black dashboard under the sloping windshield. Anyone who has a Prius knows what I mean.
The A/C unit aboard a car will use up energy if for no other reason being that it causes the engine to have a faster idle. That causes the gas mileage drop. With my Kia Rio of Year 2001 the car has the mpg as above. 28 in winter and 24.5 in summer. Aggressive driving is no help! :)
It's easy to combine trips on a commuting mission. You can stop off at this or that mall on a mission home but you still use that damn gas for the mission home. That is the problem for the commuter. I use 3 fifths of gas each way as of now. I will use two fifths each way once I move. In a push-come-to-shove case, I will be able to use a bus as a "booster rocket" to get a bicycle toward where I work.
It's plenty about time that suburbanitic people think in terms of gas use instead of "minutes". That is, "gallons away" or "liters away". See above, and I think in terms of a "fifth" with the gas! Just yesterday, I saw a gas station with a sign of $3.76-and-the-9 a gallon. One penny short of a buck a liter. That was for the premium stuff. Buck a liter gas is coming, like it or not.
That with suburbanitic people thinking in terms of "minutes away" has always escaped me. The assumption is always that you use a car. If you don't always use a car, miles (or kilometers) becomes the better measure of distance. Time will depend on distance and transit use, and your walking. If you walk fast, you get to reduce travel time.