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The fly in the ointment here is the "H" or Hydrogen. There is no free hydrogen anywhere on earth. It takes more energy to extract hydrogen from water than you get when it is re-oxidized and becomes water again.
Just saying that these elements are out there and all our needs can be satisfied from them says nothing. Well, it says nothing to anyone with any knowledge of thermodynamics anyway.
But of course the solar rollers believe we can build thousands of square miles of solar panels and extract all the hydrogen we need from water. But all this is nothing more than a pipe dream. It is a little like fusion energy, fifty years in the future, and always will be.
Ron Patterson
Or bussard fusion which could be just a few years away:
http://iecfusiontech.blogspot.com/2007/12/bussard-fusion-update.html
I like how Ron is so positive about what the future will bring, doesn't think there is absolutely any chance he is wrong. Although I think new science and tech will save the future, even I know there's a chance that is wrong and things will go bad. I think my favorite quote of the year on the forums was "absolute statements amuse absolutly" can't remeber who wrote it, but very telling. There was also someone who had a great prediction from 1880 about NYC, where the guy predicted in 100 years NYC would be overrun by horse manure, pretty amusing. The point of all this? No one not even Ron can predict the future with 100% certainty, only a fool would believe so.
unfortunately other than Bussard (now gone) and those who are continuing his work, nobody who works in fusion seems to think it will work - I've spoken to a few physicists who work in fusion and none of them believe the Bussard type fusors are the way to go...not my area of expertise by a long shot, but doesn't make me hopeful that the (fusion) cavalry is going to ride in at the last minute and save us all...
I agree the future is quite unknowable - but I would argue that some truly awful "nasty, brutish and short" futures are included (and perhaps more likely?)
on the other hand Indium was supposedly as common as silver, so how could we have only 10 years left? (and it has not been a sought-after element for very long, unlike silver) - not sure I'm buying into peak Indium yet...
I can make an absolute prediction that I am certain is right - everyone of us is going to eventually die.
It's that "eventually" that's the tricky bit. . .
Are you aware that so far only about half of the people who ever reached the age of 1 have died?
Which just goes to show how much of the world's resources we must plunder to keep the current population alive and happy for the remainder of our natural lives...
Not a nice thought.
Wrong! Not just wrong but terribly wrong. A quick google check of "How many people have ever lived on earth" brings up several estimates.
And:
But of course it does not say how many of those 106 billion lived to reach the age of 1. But you can be sure it was far more than one in 30, the number it must be if half the people who reached the age of 1 are alive today.
So only 1 in 15 to 20 people who ever lived are alive today.
Ron Patterson
Yeah, estimates since agricultural development, are as high as 100 billion, but with much of the time in that 10,000 year period having infant mortality rates as high as 1 in 2, about 50 billion have reached 1 year old - so today it's about 1 in 8 people alive compared to the total who have reached 1 year...
Now, if you look at resource use, I would suspect that our resource use, for the people alive today, will far outweigh all the rest of human history.
AntiDoomer, your critique of my post can best be described as "whining". I posted my opinion that thousands of square miles of solar panels to generate hydrogen from water and save the world form peak oil was a dream, and like fusion energy, always somewhere in the future.
You replied with a URL that on the Bussard reactor that ended with this statement:
"Someday, they said, if they're right, a machine just 20 times bigger than the one sitting in the corner on Parkway Drive could run the city of Santa Fe."
Someday indeed! And I made no absolute declarations in my post. But I do believe that crude oil will begin its decline in five to ten years, perhaps less. And the fusion reactor that will solve all our problems is coming down the pike someday! We cannot wait for someday AntiDoomer.
If peak oil hits the economy hard, and I believe it will, research money will be the first to go, especially research money that only promises a "perhaps someday" reward.
Ron Patterson
One Glaring problem with fusion is how to extract energy from it. Half of the energy output of D-D fusion is fast neutrons which are extremely difficult to trap and convert into thermal energy. These fast neutrons also have a nasty habit of embrittling materials as well as transforming them into radioactive isotopes. Fusion has the radioactive madas touch. Everything in reach will become radioactive.
That's exactly the point for why Bussard's polywell fusion is potentially so interesting. He believed the machine would support Boron-proton fusion, which is a much much cleaner process.
One description of this:
For more details: (Should Google Go Nuclear?, Polywell, Aneutronic Fusion).
theantidoomer,
Thanks for posting that link. It's nice to hear that Bussard's polywell work is still progressing.
W.
Please.
We researchers and engineers who churn out this miraculous stuff for you to brag about are dismayed by your lack of understanding.
Have you any idea what compromises and limitations we have to fight each day just to keep adding tiny refinements to existing technologies? And how long its been since anything 'revolutionary' has been discovered?
We're no longer plunging into the unknowns, full of undiscovered unpredictable new fangled things. That was over hundred years ago. Today we know rather well what might be possible. Rather we are like stuck in a small box of limits of laws of physics, tediously stretching our limbs for better positions, with ever diminishing returns...
But surely more money will create more innovation and release us from our troubles?
What do you mean by more money? Double my budget? Ten times the dimes I have? So a hundred times then. Ok, that'll buy me some latest equipment, hire a couple of research teams on projects I'd been keeping in the closet, and maybe a new building for them. Let's see ... no, you didn't even double my 'innovations'. And by the way, now I'll need that same or increasing amount of money every year from now on just to stay in place.
Money is linear but research subjects are infinitely exponential. Give me any amount of money, and I'll spread it out so thinly on all the possibilities that nobody will notice the difference. So you have to make choices. Not just ball park guesses but actually very specific and highly defined narrow projections on where it's worth placing the buck.
And then you go to work. You spend 5 years collaborating with your international colleagues to experimentally test some of the most likely projections. You end up with a candidate or two and spend your next 5 year's budget to make the experiments that define enough data to see some of the engineering limits of its applications. Then a venture capital firm jumps on some fruitful looking angle of your technology and you spend another 5 years waiting if they can get their shit together and make anything out of it. Oh, too expensive for the current market conditions? - damn, back to the drawing board. And so on and on...
So, you see, I find it hard to share your optimism. Perhaps you'd like to share with us your ideas and experiences on why we should think that after a hundred years, our modern, mature, pumped dry and streched to the limit -technology has the capacity left, or the time to deploy, solutions or even significant mitigations to problems like PO or GW?
Ransu, great post. I read it twice. I could not stop chuckling at your venting of your frustration. Of course I know it was not funny to you but nevertheless I could not stop laughing.
A far better rebuttal to TheAntiDoomer than I could ever give.
Thanks again.
Ron Patterson
ransu, great post - right about dead on what the less technocopian fusion researchers describe...
I know one fusion physicist who (quietly on the side) said to me that he sees societal collapse before we solve the engineering issues of fusion - I'm afraid his view is far closer to mine than the "we can mine helium 3 from the moon and run society forever!" camp....
the test reactor that they just groundbroke in France, I wonder if it will even be finished when budgetary problems hit? and that's a test, not adding anything to the grid at all...
ransu,
The frustration is understandable.
While you're crying in your beer I'd like to hear how the unified theory of physics goes - since you implied it with "Rather we are like stuck in a small box of limits of laws of physics,"
Ah, did I? Well, may I then too assume you imply that the existance of water-proof unified theory is required before one is allowed to critically look at what can be achieved?
As for crying into my beer, may I be excused for doing so when surrounded by antidoomer people spouting silly nonsense without the slighest understanding or experience in experimental physics or real world engineering?
My point was the species is still learning the physics laws, so the box size is unknown ...and then there is that real world engineering ...that costs ...money.
Yeah, reality is a hard taskmaster !!
Ok, the box I was talking about is the conceptual frame, which consists of our understanding of physics, a frame you need in order design any kind of experiments in science or applications in engineering. We know this box well, we've been bouncing on its sides for long enough now, and its getting tight for us already. We see clearly all the walls and have measured the angles between them, so it sure looks like a box to us, inside of which we are stuck. Now, we cannot quite see if the seams join in the corners so there is some small uncertainty left, hence we can't make up our minds on the unified box theory yet...
Now, what you mean is well known - the limits have been discussed here on TOD many times. Your box is the reality. Specifically for us, at this time, this globe. With all our physics and chemistry books and datasheets full of statistics on ecology of populations, we just don't seem to 'get it'. As a species we're the kid in the classroom who slept during all the lessons when nature spoke of the rules and limits, which govern everything. Now we're sweating it out at the exam, trying to make up stuff in the answer sheet.
Re: "the conceptual frame,"
Thanks for the clarification.
This post explains exactly why I left the field of environmental ecology (entomology) and became a computer analyst for a private company. I decided the effort to succeed in science far outweighed the returns. I am glad that there are some folks left in the world with the stamina to keep up scientific effort, but it becomes more difficult every passing year. My tolerance for it all ran out after ten years.
I salute you and sympathize with your struggle. I decided to try for a more normal life...kids and a salary to support them.
Ransu,
Excellent post. A lot of intelligent folks still don't seem to 'get' either the time constraints this particular civilization is under or the Tainteresque diminishing returns on investment in complexity, which are huge at this point in mature fields.
I spoke with Bussard last year about his approach, not because I thought it would work, but because it was one of the few long-shot approaches which might not prove to be impossible, and if it wasn't impossible, it seemed to possibly have the characteristics which could allow it to be retrofitted into current systems in a reasonable time. (ITER-style tokamaks won't ever be built out significantly even if they work fine). In other words, a hail-mary pass.
In other words, a desperation move. We're down to desperation moves at this point. His work was funded by the Navy instead of by what I had in mind, which was fine by me. I'll be amazed if anything comes of it, but it'd be nice.
Anyone who thinks there are plenty of tech answers out there to human overshoot really, really, doesn't understand the problems.
Keep posting!
ITER-style tokamaks won't ever be built out significantly even if they work fine
Could you elaborate ?
Tritium can be breed over time.
Even if more costly than fission nukes, anti-nuke nations should be interested in them (Italy, Germany, Denmark, etc.)
Best Hopes for Fusion,
Alan
Disclaimer: I'm not a practicing physicist, or an expert in fusion. If I have any expertise - debatable - it's in visualizing a number of things simultaneously and not shrinking from what I see.
I think ITER-style tokamaks will function as advertised. I see no flaw in the theory; the physics are unremarkable and in many ways elegant. On an artistic level, I support it as an object of complex functional beauty.
My skepticism has everything to do with "receding horizons". Even if the thing cranks ahead on schedule, commercial versions are supposed to be designed by what, 2040? And the first one maybe built out by 2050? And how many of them do we need?
I'm afraid that once we get a couple of decades into the future, fiscal and geopolitical systems will be in a fair deal of chaos, for reasons frequently discussed here. "Just in time" supply chains, won't be. Impoverished and increasingly hungry/disgruntled populations may complicate things significantly.
Beyond that, though, I suspect that the falling EROEI will begin to qualititatively affect the level of complexity which is sustainable by a globe-girdling civilization. A high-tech masterpiece like a functional tokamak will require, by its nature, designing to the limits of alloying and fabrication technologies. Our current reality, in which nearly any element is available in a reasonable time at a reasonable price, is the output of the most complex evolved extractive system ever to exist, operating at its all-time peak efficiency. That evolved infrastructure is an integral part of things from tokamaks to space shuttles, they don't exist independently of it; and that infrastructure is changing in fundamental ways. It will not well tolerate or recover from hiatus.
Building rail is great precisely because it does NOT require the current infrastructural complexity.
Don't misunderstand; I'm not opposed to giant tokamaks. I even think that a few will be built and will function for awhile. I would help if I could. But unless some plague were to wipe out 90% of the human population and buy more time, I don't see it happening. The project isn't being pursued with the necessary desperation and probably isn't scalable.
I was that odd environmentalist who was for O'Neill colonies, superconducting supercolliders, and mankind as the responsible high-tech stewards of a healthy oasis in space. My preferences went unrealized; and continue to be.
best hopes for my being wrong about reality.
I understand your point. One analogy would be German (and Japanese) efforts during WW II, where certain available resources (oil & mercury in Japan, oil & rubber in Germany) were far short of requirements, and bombs kept falling on the infrastructure.
I do prefer robust infrastructure (hydroelectric dams kept producing in North Korea and Albania despite isolation, and PRK RRs as well).
Still, if a workable economic design of a tokamak can be built, I think more will be built at erratic speed and places. Not a smooth curve of worldwide construction but brief clusters here and there.
The Nordic areas might be one center of design and construction post-2050. A disciplined and desperate Japan might be another. Perhaps Russia, the USA (the USA has a large strategic stockpile), EU or even Brazil.
And the remaining islands of high tech metallurgy & electronics (the two most critical basic skills to building tokamaks) could trade with each other.
Best Hopes for Fusion,
Alan
There are tech answers to population overshoot. The problem is getting people to use them. :)
Paradoxically, they're only answers IF people use them. That, as it turns out, is a damn big IF.
As a chemical engineer currently debottlenecking a polyimide film production line, I can absolutely understand the intense time, effort, and capital required to make incremental improvements to established processes.
I don't have experience with determining the feasibility of theoretical projects; however, I imagine the same generalities apply as materials, technologies, and markets evolve over time.
Progress is neither quick nor easy.
Technical improvements are hard won any more, but we don't have much in the way of technical problems. Political and organizational improvements can come in a flash. We desperately need some of those, starting with leadership that is a little less useless than the Bush administration ...