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Energy and Environment News Updates (and an open thread as Tapis JUST HIT $100!--see comments!)
Posted by Prof. Goose on November 6, 2007 - 8:00pm
Topic: Miscellaneous
Hi All,
I thought I'd post this here as the dumbeat is getting a bit stale.
Tapis has just hit US$100.13 at 12:20 (Brisbane time)
http://www.upstreamonline.com/market_data/?id=markets_crude
Cheers,
Justin in Brisi
I think the oil supply over the next 6-8 months will tell us a lot. No way at these prices people will be holding back regardless of what they say.
I've been checking the futures chain lately. Looking for contango while prices are rising. It looks like it's here. There is backwardation until September 2010 then starting November 2010 the future prices start rising. I've been watching for this because I feel it means that people in the energy and finance world are starting to clue in. It will be interesting to see if this pattern persists.
check it out here
Tim Morrison
Peak oil, global warming, and economic collapse are not the problems, they are the result of the problem. The problem is a collective action problem and an inability to make good long term plans.
"Our ignorance is not so vast as our failure to use what we know." -- M. King Hubbert
I think we're f---ed
I'm at home sipping the ONLY reasonable ethanol made from corn (single-barrel bourbon) -
Just got back from a lecture at UCLA given by one of the top fusion experts in the country. Title "Where in the world can we find clean, safe, long-lasting and economical energy sources for the 21st Century and beyond"
after a rather well-done presentation on the peaking of oil, nat. gas and coal, a brief discussion of renewable sources - it was on to his fantasy land - the answer to the title? H3 Fusion
Fusion that doesn't exist yet, based on an energy source that doesn't occur on earth naturally (and is only here based on the decay of tritium in tiny uber-expensive amounts)
he reminded me of the physicist, chemist and economist on the desert island joke - really, his solution was let's assume we have a working fusion reactor, and we are mining H3 (I know that should be subscript I don't know how to do that) from the MOON - that's right folks, there are millions of tons of H3 on the MOON - and we can just mine it from the regalith, ship it back to earth and fire it up in non-existent fusion reactors and we are SAVED!
he also praised LWBR's (light water breeder reactors) - but really couldn't answer my question about why they don't exist in the US if they are so useful
I spoke to another (UCLA-based) fusion prof after - he is less sanguine about the future - he thinks that fusion reactors are awfully expensive and complex (shades of Tainter) - and thinks we won't be able to sustain the development of them as things get bad...
he asked me how long I though LA would last as a city without cars - and I really didn't have an answer other than I have looked at orchards in Paonia, CO - still relatively cheap compared to homes in LA
....depressing lecture, I was hoping for the can opener to wash ashore during the talk...
I'm here in LA. I would have liked to have gone to this seminar, but didn't hear about it. If you don't mind, what was your source for the info on the seminar?
Re LA without cars, I doubt it will go "carless" in the near term, but there will likely be significant shortages. We will need some serious mass transit upgrading.
My father is a geophysics prof at UCLA - he got the email as part of their "Distinguished Speaker Seminar" series - and invited me as the family fast-crash doomer to come along and add some "reality" to the sci-fi talk....
it was interesting - the UCLA fusion prof with a much harder grasp of reality was a cuban exile originally - wonder if that gives him a much better understanding of how bad things can get - he thinks the powers-that-be will engineer a dieoff down to a more sustainable level...a scary thought...
he thinks the powers-that-be will engineer a dieoff down to a more sustainable level
We know that life is cheap to most people. (Unless it is yours - then it gets expensive) And we know that most people LIKE being comfortable.
So when you have an equation like this:
Total_Energy = Number_of_People x Personal_Energy_Useage
And Total_Energy is dropping - how do you balance the equation? Cut into Personal_Energy_Useage (and perhaps effect your comfort)? Or cut somewhere else?
Of course, if one is already using very little energy, then TPTB have very little to gain by eliminating one, do they?
Reducing one's personal energy use might be a good strategy to make oneself a little less vulnerable, on several different levels.
Odds are that the decision will be based on what is produced for the level of consumption. In that case very low consumption and zero contribution, or negative contribution, is probably not going to be a good place to be.
I'm slightly concerned about this idea of the powers-that-be engineering a dieoff down to a more sustainable level... a scary thought...
Whilst I don't like to give credence to such a wild idea, I do think the scenario isn't as blazingly insane as it appears to be. I'm not sure if this makes me a doomer, paranoid or something worse?
Historically monarchs and those in charge of countries have been capbable of the most obscene, massive and staggering acts of criminal violence directed at their own people and foreigners.
I think there is a definitely tendancy, especially in the United States, to contemplate and even condone the idea of a "die-off". I'm thinking specifically about the success of these ghastly, quasi-religious "novels" about the rapture and the wheat being seperated from the chaff... Now one can dismiss these writers as borderline lunatics and religious fanatics, but what of their readership?
Are these books just harmless crap, or do they represent something more sinister in the American psyche? Does it mean that there are a substantial number of Americans who would be aminable to the idea of genocide? Because it would appear this "God" is willing to instigate genocide, leaving only a few thousand behind. This is the "God" thing raised, or should that be debased? to the level of a ghastly, perverse, parody of Hitler. Not God the Father, but God the Annihilator! It's striking how many of these extreme, Christian cultists in the US have somehow turned the figure of Jesus into a muscular warrior armed with a sword, a figure that bears a remarkable resemblance to Nazi inconography.
If one looks back at the last sixty years one can see that there have always been fringe elements in the US that have toyed with the idea of nuclear war as a solution to the "communist threat", the point is, these extremists were always kept at arems length from the reins of power, they were counter-balannced by realists who were sane. Now, a radical, extremist, cult has taken over the Whitehouse! This makes a profound difference, and is why we are living in very dangerous times.
"Armageddon" would "solve" an awful lot of problems. The slate could be wiped clean and we could start again afresh, in a world rebourn. A new world, that will rise like a phoenix from the ashes of the old!
More then one way to engineer a die off.
The Mexican government by forcing tens of millions of their least productive citizens into the US, has in fact engineered a significant die off as far as they are concerned simply by shifting the burden to us.
The Cuban professor surely is aware of Cuba basically shipping their whole prison population to Florida. And he probably is aware that all these things can be reversed.
Two words:
Hydraulic Empire.
Thanks for playing, come again.
Hi MacDuff,
Who was the UCLA fusion expert? I know some of them there but not all...
ciao,
Bruce
he thinks the powers-that-be will engineer a dieoff down to a more sustainable level...a scary thought...
I don't believe this kind of thinking is too far fetched. For an "ends justify the means" type of person, this approach has obvious benefits. Reducing the population to 1/5th to 1/100th of current levels would allow the remaining resources to be stretched much further and even place us withing bounds of a sustainable population. Some might even justify it as being more humane than allowing mass starvation and war to 'naturally' correct the problem, with the side benefit of preserving infrastructure and conserving the resources a global war would entail.
My intent is not to advocate this policy, but merely point out how tempting this idea might be to those in power, especially if things become sufficiently horrible.
For what it's worth, in a private conversation on the subject of overpopulation with my Anthropology professor in 1992, he mentioned that there was a group of misanthropic biologists, from a number of universities around the world, looking into our 'options' to deal with overpopulation along this line of thinking. It could have been a rumor, but he appeared to believe it.
Hi GLT, MacDuff and interested others:
On Tues., Dec. 4 at 8:00 pm at the UC Santa Barbara Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics, Dr. Nathan Lewis, Cal Tech professor of chemistry will speak on: "Challenges for Global Energy". Free, but requires advanced reservation.
He is supposed to "...present an overview of available fossil fuel resources and estimate the remaining years of supply of oil, gas and coal..." etc.
Here's a link to the website, though they appear to be having problems with their server. www.kitp.ucsb.edu
This might be an opportunity to discuss and/or possibly inform.
You can come up to Paonia anytime and build a fusion reactor in my orchard.
Francois.
Hey, I used to live in Boulder and I've spent some time visiting (mtn biking) Durango - but never been to Paonia - do you have a local micro-brewery there yet?
what are you growing in your orchard?
Some orchards are no longer, but Paonia is still a great little town in the mountains. Farmers grow hay and raise cattle, hunting is big, there are a few wineries, and a great sense of community.
Come visit!
Francois
In nearby Hotchkiss we used to distill a lot of "ethanol," if you know what I mean ...
Just curious. Who was the speaker and who was the researcheryou talked to afterwards? I know some of these researchers and I am interested in their opinions on this topic. My general assessment is that fusion researchers ( I know quite a few as I am one) have varying degrees of awareness (and realistic assessment) of the global energy situation outside their own field. Similar to other scientists and much of the public I would presume.
The speaker was Gerald L. Kulcinski - from the University of Wisconsin, Madison - he's the Associate Dean for Research, Nuclear Engineering and Director of Fusion Technology
the UCLA prof after I'll leave annon. since I'm not sure he'd want his (doomerish) opinions put out there - smart guy though, and certainly aware of how tough a future we face...
Prof. Kulcinski has been peddling this lunacy (sorry about the pun) since the mid-1990s. Living in Madison, I have been treated to his vision five or six times now. Regular WI Public Radio listeners have also heard him describe his plans to turn the moon into a remotely control solar-powered mining colony extracting helium isotopes and transporting them back to Earth to feed a growing fleet of nuclear power plants. Come to think about it, "meanwhile, back on Earth" are the first words that come to my mind--and no doubt many others in the audience--upon the conclusion of his "Mining the Moon"--themed talks.
Friedrich Schiller: Against stupidity the gods themselves contend in vain.
Ok, you asked for it..
"thelocation is...
(turns to Sulu)
Praxis. A Klingon moon. Barren of indigenous life forms but-
SULU
- Essential as a resource. Praxis is their key energy production facility.
...
SPOCK
(continuing)
Two months ago a Federation Starship monitored an explosion on the Klingon moon Praxis. We believe it was caused by over mining and insufficient safety precautions. The moon's decimation means an almost eighty percent loss of available energy and a deadly pollution of their ozone.
Screenwriter; Denny Martin Flinn, RIP, August 24, 2007, age 59
O-=
MacDuff,
I agree that it doesn't seem like a particularly good time to count on unproven technologies. However, LWBR's (light water breeder reactors) have existed in the U.S. and could easily be built again. I worked on a successful LWBR project in the 1970's. Trouble at the time was that LWBR's and their fuel cycle were a bit more complex than standard light water reactors. Also uranium was cheap. Thorium Power is working on fuel assemblies that can be retrofitted into existing light water reactors to turn them into LWBR's, or at least make them come pretty close to breeding. I expect that LWBR's will be widely adopted relatively quickly - which means a decade or two in the nuclear business. Not going to solve peak oil, but might put a real dent in coal-fired power plants.
i agree this would help. lovelock recommends we embrace nookular so it probably makes sense. i havent finished reading his book yet, revenge of gaia. reads well so far.
nukes have killed far fewer people than all the other fuels combined, per terrawatt p roduced, right?
I think you mean He3, helium-3. H3: hydrogen-3 or tritium does not occur on the Moon or the Earth in quantity, though a commercially interesting bit is dumped in rivers at nuclear plants.
Chris
Chris - you are correct - it was He3, my mistake in typing under the influence of corn ethanol late at night
and something tells me that in an era of declining energy sources, we won't be lifting heavy equipment to the moon to bring back tons of He3 to fire up in non-existent fusion reactors
We have the theoretical framework in place to address the lifting end of this problem. A few years ago I came across a NASA article advocating the idea of using gas core reactor rockets to replace our conventional rockets. Apparently they think they can build something which can carry a tremendous amount of cargo and still have plenty of fuel capacity for powered reentry. As I understood from the article, the primary obstacle to implementing these rockets was political rather than technical.
This would place mining the moon within reach, although we still don't have a working fusion reactor to feed the He3 into.
Regarding fusion, I think you misunderstood something in the lecture. While fusion is a ways off because it is a difficult technology, there is no intention to bring tritium ("H3") from the moon. Tritium will be generated on-site via the interactions of neutrons from the plasma with a lithium blanket:
neutron + lithium-6 → tritium + helium-4
neutron + lithium-7 → tritium + helium-4 + neutron
That's true regarding H3, although there is a supply problem with lithium.
The intention for the "Second Generation" fusion reactors is to use a deuterium-tritium fuel (D-He3) - getting He3 from the Moon.
It seems premature to start designing 2nd Gen fusion reactors though. Wasn't the promise of fusion power "unlimited and cheap"? (This quote is still made everywhere). People are planning 2G reactors that use rare and expensive fuel. Did we run out of the unlimited cheap fuel already?
The Law of Receding Horizons...the horizon ain't just rapidly receding, we never saw it in the first place.
We already have a perfectly good fusion reactor in operation - it is called the sun.
And its waste is a long ways off. Plus, its operation is hard for humans to screw up in some way.
Not so, what about excess CO2 in our atmosphere?
Hi all, I've been reading TOD a while but this is my first post.
Mining the moon for He-3 is likely never to work. That's because it costs about five thousand dollars per pound to put something into low earth orbit. I'd love to see the hypothetical EROEI on He-3 mining/fusion production. :) It needs to be hypothetical of course because as far as I know, thus far no one has been able to get fusion to give a net positive energy return. Fusion, while we're learning a lot about it, is far away and won't help us in our present energy crisis.
Incidentally, this guy is not the only one who goes on about this, Harrison Schmitt (who was an Apollo astronaut and senator from New Mexico) also does.
--
Gentlemen! You can't fight in here, this is the war room!
The only feasible scheme would be to put the fusion reactors on the moon, then microwave the energy to geostationary sats to relay to earth. Even with that, the costs of building and maintaining the infrastructure would be literally astronomical - and thus of questionable EROI.
Of course it's just as likely that we will discover anti-matter di-lithium crystals and build replicators and transporters. Come on people, this is science fiction you're talking about here.
Richard Wakefield
London, Ont.
No one is ahead of their time, just the rest of humanity is slow to catch on.
You are correct. Laptops and iPods are science fiction too. Just not our science fiction.
Please turn in all your objects that were made by scientific progress. You can keep fire cause its pretty cold in London in the winter.
I'm not sure I disagree that Fusion is long way off and unlikely to save us, but your argument is weak. EVERYTHING was science fiction at one point.
Often science fiction disobeys physical laws. It's one thing to be scientifically possible and another to be scientifically impossible.
Within the possible one has to understand if it is practicle and within our understanding, what time frame and resources to implement. Mining the moon, getting fusion to run soon enough "to save us" is highly impracticle to implement, and thus is also a very week argument.
I understand the desire to want to keep the party going. I certainly would like to retire as did my father. But the reality is that this is not going to keep going. The threads are unraveling now, and the rate of that unraveling is going to increase.
To keep hoping for a magical techologicial rescue, especially such fanciful techosolutions, is, IMO, a gross misuse of resources. We need to focus on what is actually doable now. Forget moon missions, forget mars missions, forget atom smashers, and forget fusion. They belonged to a civilization that had cheep energy.
Richard Wakefield
London, Ont.
No one is ahead of their time, just the rest of humanity is slow to catch on.
Gentlemen! You can't fight in here, this is the war room!
Nice! Dr. Strangelove.
Richard Wakefield
London, Ont.
No one is ahead of their time, just the rest of humanity is slow to catch on.
5K/lb using current technology.
The energy cost to move something into LEO isn't all that great, its about the same as a 747 uses flying that same lb to Australia from Chicago. Boosting to the moon is significantly more expensive, but doable.
Since we don't have Fusion Reactors, I will simply assume that one we get a Fusion Reactor I will also have a beanstalk in place.
Electric motor up the beanstalk. Chemical rocket to moon. Rocket back to beanstalk, beanstalk down. He3+ can go via a linear accelerator ala "Moon is a Harsh Mistress"-Hienlen
Extra-Earth He3+ is a great source fuel source for the future, provided we make it through the current crises with a high level technology and civilization intact.
Then again, I look around the world and I not sure we are all that civilized.
So now we get to my favorite pie-in-the-sky scheme, the Space Elevator and other skyhook technologies.
It would help a lot with the economical feasibility of a Solar power satellite.
Also, a Space Elevator in the Moon would probably make any He3 recovery scheme cheaper.
Now, as always, these schemes will take 20-30 years.
And so it goes.
For a dose of re