You will often hear someone say, ‘New technology will compensate for peak oil.’ Or, ‘There will be a new energy source from a scientific advance.’ First, technologies can help, but we already have those technologies in the mileage you can achieve by conservatively driving a civic and combined cycle plants for the grid. Crash projects of light rail and bussing in all the major metropolitans would have an effect. But this would be a matter of just exploiting existing technologies to make a difference. Even though teleconferencing has matured over the last twenty five years, the demand for jet fuel has doubled. Technology will have no effect if we don't apply it. At that, it takes time for technology to have an effect. At the rate we are currently applying technologies; it will have a nil effect on the growing demand of China and India. Much less, just compensating for declines in older production.
Science is a well established institution. The principles of the scientific method and the observations that have been made over the last two hundred years make it very clear that there will be no ‘new’ energy source. Every force observed in the universe is conservative. That means there are no other sources of energy other than we know of. If there had been a homogeneous expansion of the universe, meaning hydrogen had not condensed into stars, there would be no available energy. Entropy would be maxed out. But we did get a universe that was well ordered. Hydrogen condensed into relatively small spheres in space that went thermonuclear. Our sun is a small dot in space at 10,000 degrees. The rest of space is very cold, close to absolute zero. As heat energy moves into and out of our bio-system, energy is utilized to create life as we know it. So, we already have a virtually limitless source of energy. The influx of energy for earth is 89,000 Terawatts. Our total demand for energy is 15 Terawatts. The only catch is the cost of utilizing solar energy. The best I’ve seen to date is the planed Southern California Edison solar project with an estimated cost of $2.00 a watt.
But, one Gigawatt is only .06% of 15 Terawatts. It would take a boat load of these projects to start making a dent.
Thank, Dan.
Demand for Jet Fuel
http://tonto.eia.doe.gov/dnav/pet/hist/mkjupus1m.htm
The Hirsch Report
http://lakeweb.com/money/Hirsch.pdf
Solar energy
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_energy
SCE - SES
http://www.renewableenergyaccess.com/rea/news/story?id=36224
2 comments:
"Our total demand for energy is 15 Terawatts. The only catch is the cost of utilizing solar energy."
Unfortunately converting energy in one form (solar) into another (hydrocarbons) is very inefficient. If half of your energy needs to be in the form of hydrocarbons (fuel, fertializer, plastics, and other petrochemicals) you'l; need far more than 15 TW of solar energy to maintain our existing systems.
World is rapidity heading towards collapse. We can see the beginning of the collapse in the poorest regions that are now suffering major fuel shortage, constant blackouts, and increasing civil disobedence. These crisis will work up the ladder and reach the west. Already we can see the crisis traveling across africa. The problems that originated from some of the poorest regions are now moving to the more stable regions. This is partly cause by a influx of refugees that are now fleeing their homelands, bring them chaos, and disease. Sooner or later refugess will flee into Europe and other industrialize regions.
The only logical course of action is to build lifeboats of self-sufficiency and wait out the comming collapse. No person or group is going to convince the world to change in time to avoid a collapse. Prepardness is no guarentee that one will come out of this unscathed, but the odds favor those that make preparations. While the west is unlikely to crash for sometime, preparation is likely to take far longer than you may have anticipated.
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