Author Topic: Please help this is taking to much of my DB time  (Read 8544 times)

Offline spiceant

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Please help this is taking to much of my DB time
« on: February 01, 2006, 04:11:36 PM »
eversince I have visited and red the 2 pages of http://www.lifeaftertheoilcrash.net/ I cant stop visiting and haunting both the above sit and www.peakoil.com my mind keeps tricking me into thinking either 2 are more important then DB
then again it really is... aaahh...
HHEEEEELLLPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPP

Offline Numsgil

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« Reply #1 on: February 01, 2006, 05:51:04 PM »
While it is true and has been for some time that world oil production is finite and demand is not, I don't think a doomsday prediction is quite accurate.

BioDiesel fuels and Alcohol based fuels are the most obvious short term solution.

These are not "experimental" as your article claims, but are quite mainstream in many areas.  Alcohol based fuels are particularly ubiquitous in Brazil, I believe (it may be another SA country, but I think it's Brazil) where all gas stations are required to provide both and have been since the 1970s fuel shock.  Sugar beets provide the fuel source for Alcohol fuels, which is obviously a renewable resource.

In fact, the main detrimate to the development of alternative fuel sources has been the cheap cost of oil.

Will there be a small dip in our economy?  Possibly.  Will it mean the end of the world?  I doubt it.  I likewise doubt that it will be on par with the 1930s depression.

Offline spiceant

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« Reply #2 on: February 02, 2006, 07:15:39 AM »
on page 2 it reads that biofuels such as ethanol and biodiesel cost more energy to produce then it there's in it. Now I'm preassuming the 2 fuels are quite cheap because they can be produced using relatively cheap machinery, which currently still have cheap energy available to them.
Can biofuels fuel their own means of being produced and transported so that it nets a positive amount of commercially available biofuel?

Offline PurpleYouko

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« Reply #3 on: February 02, 2006, 09:00:10 AM »
Basically, ethanol can be produced by fermenting and distilling grass or corn stems.

The energy involved to distill it is fairly low and can even be set up to run from solar power (if they get clever enough). Most of the energy is stored in the grass by months of exposure to the sun and rain.

Don't know much about biodeisel but I would assume that it is a bi-product of the distillation process of the ethanol since organic material breaks down to many different length alkane chains under the correct conditions.
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Offline Numsgil

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« Reply #4 on: February 02, 2006, 09:27:38 AM »
Brazil has been running on alcohol fuels for 30 years and they seem to be doing alright.  My school uses biodiesel for many of their vehicles.

It would be disasterour if all the oil in the world just disappeared, but it won't.  As it gradually declines, our dependance on it will decrease as new technology becomes available.  The main reason we're so dependant on oil is that the supply is so large.  There's no reason bot to be when it's so cheap.

Take the short hicup in oil prices over the summer.  The result?  Car makers are now more aggressively producing and advertising their 40 MPG cars.

Offline spiceant

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« Reply #5 on: February 02, 2006, 09:43:20 AM »
Quote
Brazil has been running on alcohol fuels for 30 years and they seem to be doing alright. My school uses biodiesel for many of their vehicles.
What do you define under brazil in this sentence? everything from power plants to cars to tractors? the way from soil to crop to biofuels is very long and dependant on a lot.
Soil needs to be worked and fertile, infertile land can be fertilized (by fertilizers derived from gas at the moment), crops need to be worked, harvested and transported to where they are processed, turned into fuel and distributed. The required crops dont grow everywhere. can the product fuel all of the above?

Offline PurpleYouko

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« Reply #6 on: February 02, 2006, 11:21:21 AM »
There has also been a lot of research into Hydrogen powered vehicles of late.

Pretty much any regular internal combustion engine can be very slightly modified to run on Hydrogen gas.

Hydrogen one of the most abundent elements in the entire universe and when you burn it, you just get water. No polution. No green house gasses.

How do we make it?

No problem at all. Electrolysis of water will separate it into Oxygen and hydrogen. This doesn't require a particularly high voltage or current either. In fact a solar panel on the top of your car (in sunny areas of the world) will produce a significant amount of fuel per hour at a cost of absolutely nothing to the car's owner or to the environment. All you need is a tank of water and a sunny day. Even the water can be recycled and condensed from the car's exhaust system for re-use.

Obviously, if you drive a lot then the sun won't be able to keep up but while you are parked up at the mall or at work, your gas tank will be constantly recharging itself.
Plug your car into your house's electricity supply overnight to recharge too.

Where does the electricity come from? Does that mean more oil being burned?

In the USA, we are just beginning to move into a new phase of the construction of nuclear fueled power plants. The planet has enough fissionable fuel to last a couple of billion years so we sure aren't going to deplete it.

How about polution?

Nuclear power is the cleanest energy source (short of solar power) known to modern science. Contrary to popular belief it doesn't even create radiation hazards. All it does is to refine and concentrate radiation sources that already exist. Basically just bringing them all into one place. After this, reactors actually speed up the decay of radioactive nuclei by bringing a critical mass of the stuff together and thereby causing an accelerated fission process which eventually ends up with lead.

I certainly won't be losing sleep over any shortage of oil. There are bunches of alternatives and they are all cleaner and cheaper in the long run. Only development cost will drive the prices of alternative technology a little higher in the short term.
« Last Edit: February 02, 2006, 11:21:39 AM by PurpleYouko »
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Offline Numsgil

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« Reply #7 on: February 02, 2006, 12:13:54 PM »
Quote
Quote
Brazil has been running on alcohol fuels for 30 years and they seem to be doing alright. My school uses biodiesel for many of their vehicles.
What do you define under brazil in this sentence? everything from power plants to cars to tractors? the way from soil to crop to biofuels is very long and dependant on a lot.
Soil needs to be worked and fertile, infertile land can be fertilized (by fertilizers derived from gas at the moment), crops need to be worked, harvested and transported to where they are processed, turned into fuel and distributed. The required crops dont grow everywhere. can the product fuel all of the above?
It's been a while since I looked it up, but I believe Brazil has managed to decrease its foreign dependance on oil by 70% since the 1970s.  Take that as you will.

Offline spiceant

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« Reply #8 on: February 02, 2006, 01:19:53 PM »
Hydrogen powered vehicles are certainly feasible on small scales (villages for example) but can it really produce fuel for the growing world industry? Hydrogen in itself does not appear in significant quantitys in nature, it takes about 120% of the energy to produce hydrogen out of water compared to the energy you can get from it.  This means it is not a means of producing energy but rather transporting or converting it, like uranium -> fission -> hydrogen -> car.

Solar panels arent free and they dont come falling out of the sky when and where they are convenient. Solar panels are as of the moment quite cheap because they dont cost a lot to make. Solar panels use silicons

Quote
How about polution?

Nuclear power is the cleanest energy source (short of solar power) known to modern science.

The process of fission certainly does not generate a significant amount of pollution. Mining and enriching uranium does produce pollution and at the moment still uses fossiel fuels. In addition nuclear power is quite risky as the involved material is vulnrable to terrorism and public opinion (public opinion is sobering up on this, though).

Nuclear fission cannot be used to power all of the vehicles in the world (both literally and practically). practically none of the cars on the world can currently use hydrogen as fuel. in addition the world does not appear to be transiting from fossil fuels to alternatives neither does it appear to be going to in time.

I find this article quite usefull (9 critical questions to ask about alternative energy)
http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/..._questions.html
« Last Edit: February 02, 2006, 01:32:53 PM by PurpleYouko »

Offline Numsgil

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« Reply #9 on: February 02, 2006, 01:40:27 PM »
At present oil is used in every aspect of modern life because it's cheap.  Jack up the price to 500% or even 1000% and I think we'll see dependance on it drop.  The free market is quite good at sorting through to find the best solution.  It just so happens that at the moment the best solution is oil.

100 years ago whale oil was the solution.  Obviously whale oil was not a renewable resource.  As the supplies of whale oil dropped (and thus became more expensive) people found an alternate fuel source (petro oil).

The gradual decline in oil supplies shouldn't worry you.  The chance of a major hiccup in the oil supply (an oil "shock") is another story.  That should worry you.  We are not equipeed for such an eventaulity.  Oil shocks should be keeping you up at night, not oil reserves.

Offline PurpleYouko

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« Reply #10 on: February 02, 2006, 02:01:27 PM »
Quote
Solar panels arent free and they dont come falling out of the sky when and where they are convenient. Solar panels are as of the moment quite cheap because they dont cost a lot to make. Solar panels use silicons

Sun is free though, once you have the panels in place.

Quote
The process of fission certainly does not generate a significant amount of pollution. Mining and enriching uranium does produce pollution and at the moment still uses fossiel fuels. In addition nuclear power is quite risky as the involved material is vulnrable to terrorism and public opinion (public opinion is sobering up on this, though).

Right but once the dependence on fossil fuels is reduced, the mining vehicles will be electrical. Actually most of the big open cast mining machines already are electrical and pretty much all underground vehicles have to be. The trucks that transport the stuff out of the mine site aren't though. But they could be.

A modern nuclear power plant isn't anything like as vulnerable as the popular press likes to make out. They mostly use very low enrichment uranium which couldn't cause a nuclear explosion no matter what happened to it. There could be potential radiation leaks if terrorist could get a bomb into such a plant but most likely nothing particualrly serious. Something like Chernoble would be damn near impossible in a modern power plant.

Public opinion is the biggest hurdle without a doubt but as you say, people are starting to see nuclear power as the better choice.

Quote
Nuclear fission cannot be used to power all of the vehicles in the world (both literally and practically). practically none of the cars on the world can currently use hydrogen as fuel. in addition the world does not appear to be transiting from fossil fuels to alternatives neither does it appear to be going to in time.

Actually most existing cars would run on hydrogen right now with only some very minor adjustments to their ignition systems. Hydrogen burns in a very similar way to vaporised gasoline.
You are right that it would be impractical to run all the cars in the world on nuclear fuel but it would be possible to supply enough electricity by clean methods such as wind, tidal, solar, nuclear and hydro that all the cars could be fitted either with self generating/plug in solr/mains electricity hydrogen converers. (make Hydrogen while the sun shines and plug into your house overnight)
Also, excess (cheap rate night time) electricity could be used to make hydrogen on a larger scale an dit could be stored in cylinders which could be plugged into cars as modules rather than generating their own.

This is all theoretically possible but is unlikely to happen while the giant oil companies still control many world economies. They have several billion reasons per year to persuade us all to remain addicted to oil.
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Offline PurpleYouko

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« Reply #11 on: February 02, 2006, 02:21:13 PM »
Interesting site you linked to there. I don't think the author was very scientific in his approach though. Take this quoete for example.

Quote
There are only four original sources of energy on this planet: the sun, gravitational forces, earth's interior, or nuclear power.

This is just plain wrong!

Only 3 of these are correct. There are no such thing as "Gravitational forces"
He goes on to say that hydro electric power is "Gravitational". But the movement of water around the atmosphere can also be traced back to solar power. The sun evaporates the water and gives it the energy to rise into the clouds. then it falls as rain and provides power to Hydro plants. All "Gravitational" forces in this case are actually Solar.

There is also another energy source which he doesn't mention.
"Kinetic"
The Earth, Moon and planets have momentum and this can be converted to usable energy by tidal dams and various other devices. Tides are moved by the Kinetic energy of the Moon as it travels around the Earth so converting this to energy via applying resistance to tidal motion is actually going to slow the moon down very slightly.

The rest of the article has a good bit of fact in it but is approached from an extremely over-critical way.

take this passage..
Quote
Even using turkey offal, one must account for 1) the feed, 2) what fertilized the feed (natural gas), 3) how the feed was planted, 4) harvested, 5) irrigated (oil and gas), and 5) how the turkey got to market (oil). Thermal depolymerization should be more properly viewed as a form of recycling. But this process will never have the net energy of the original fossil fuels. As fossil fuels dwindle, so will the source material.

This is ONLY true if the turkeys are farmed for no reason other than to collect their poop. In actual fact turkeys are farmed and will continue to be farmed whether we collect it or not. The poop is a complete by-product of a food growing industry which will continue regardless. With that in mind the poop is actually completely free. It costs nothing extra to produce yet it could yield a very large payback.

The article is very un-necessarily negative and takes no account of many highly important factors. If this were being submitted for peer reviewed publication it would never make it past my desk for one.
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Offline Endy

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« Reply #12 on: February 02, 2006, 04:45:59 PM »
Site looked more demogauge-ish than anything else.

I figure the world without oil would probably be a better place all in all. I'd imagine there'd be clean nrg sources everywhere and synthetic fuels fulfilling roles formerly held by oil. Oil may have given us the advanced society we have now, but now that we have it, perhaps it wouldn't be such a bad thing to leave the polution behind.

Strangely enough President Bush has started seriously backing away from the use of foriegn oil and started funding research on clean fuels(he was head of an oil company so some of that may just be rational self interest mixed with an anger at having to involve us in MidEast politics).

Probably the best plan would be a gradual reduction in oil products and an increase consumption of alternative fuels/products. The market will move us there anyways someday but it doesn't hurt to help things along.

Offline spiceant

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« Reply #13 on: February 02, 2006, 05:16:02 PM »
Quote
Quote
Solar panels arent free and they dont come falling out of the sky when and where they are convenient. Solar panels are as of the moment quite cheap because they dont cost a lot to make. Solar panels use silicons
Sun is free though, once you have the panels in place.

Very optimistically speaking, solar panels have a maximum lifetime of about 30 years and dont produce energy at night. Windmills have worse lifetimes, dams require maintenance (altough dams will probably be very efficïent).

Quote
Quote
The process of fission certainly does not generate a significant amount of pollution. Mining and enriching uranium does produce pollution and at the moment still uses fossiel fuels. In addition nuclear power is quite risky as the involved material is vulnrable to terrorism and public opinion (public opinion is sobering up on this, though).
Right but once the dependence on fossil fuels is reduced, the mining vehicles will be electrical. Actually most of the big open cast mining machines already are electrical and pretty much all underground vehicles have to be. The trucks that transport the stuff out of the mine site aren't though. But they could be.

A modern nuclear power plant isn't anything like as vulnerable as the popular press likes to make out. They mostly use very low enrichment uranium which couldn't cause a nuclear explosion no matter what happened to it. There could be potential radiation leaks if terrorist could get a bomb into such a plant but most likely nothing particualrly serious. Something like Chernoble would be damn near impossible in a modern power plant
Trucks dont run on electricity, I think you are underestimating transporation, it doesnt run on electricity and it probably wont be in the near future. Ouer food travels more then 500 miles before making it to ouer stomachs, for example. Conveniantly large suplys of uranium arent located everywhere.
Also the electricity of the mining machines is not the fuel itself but rather the fuel that the electricity in the first place.
Issues with nuclear plants include what is exemplemantary in Iran right now: As fossil fuels run out political pressures will grow and nuclear power plants become desired everywhere. A nuclear plant is a big leap closer to nukes.
Even then, nuclear power plants require about 3-5 billion dollars to construct and thats completely forgetting when we have to decommission then. The plant itself doesnt produce the the fuel for cars, boats, planes and trucks. Pressure on the uranium resource would explode if we managed to build the thousands of required nuclear plants.

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Actually most existing cars would run on hydrogen right now with only some very minor adjustments to their ignition systems. Hydrogen burns in a very similar way to vaporised gasoline.
even if car engines were modified to run on hydrogen, hydrogen at roomtemperature is a gas (with a very low energy volume) and must be compressed in safe fuel cells before it can be used as a fuel conveniently. The fuel cells are the smack in the face for hydrogen based engines as they cost to much to be a convenient replacement for every vehicle currently on the highway or even every vehicle in the future. The fuel cells require platinum, silver and copper in order to be a safe fuel cell. These 3 resources have already become scarce and will certainly become even more expensive if we were to build all the required fuel cells today. Fuel cells themselves dont last much longer then a few years, either.
Nuclear power plants take about 10 years to build and dont power the billion cars, millions of planes and boats by themselves.

Quote
Quote
There are only four original sources of energy on this planet: the sun, gravitational forces, earth's interior, or nuclear power.
This is just plain wrong!

Only 3 of these are correct. There are no such thing as "Gravitational forces"
He goes on to say that hydro electric power is "Gravitational". But the movement of water around the atmosphere can also be traced back to solar power. The sun evaporates the water and gives it the energy to rise into the clouds. then it falls as rain and provides power to Hydro plants. All "Gravitational" forces in this case are actually Solar.
Hydro electric power plants produce energy out of nuclear power, the sun commits to fusion, emits energy and causes clouds (building up the amount of gravitational energy) to rain on mountains which in turn produces rivers that produce electric current with the help of hydroelectric plants, ultimately by nuclear power.
The author may not have had his facts perfectly straight, accurate and clear but I dont think your argument holds.

Quote
There is also another energy source which he doesn't mention.
"Kinetic"
The Earth, Moon and planets have momentum and this can be converted to usable energy by tidal dams and various other devices. Tides are moved by the Kinetic energy of the Moon as it travels around the Earth so converting this to energy via applying resistance to tidal motion is actually going to slow the moon down very slightly.
Tidal power plants have very few feasible locations and will very probably not make a significant contribution to a hydrogen future. We might also cause the moon to break orbit but thats a lunatics thought at the moment ^_^
I googled 'tidal power' to type a remotely educated response to this.
All birds release energy every time they poo, if we catch the kinetic energy from the falling poo we can turn it into energy, but it wont make a significant amount of energy. Now tidal power isnt best compared to this but I hope it clears up my opinion on tidal power. It can be combined with other alternatives but that is the limit.
I'v still posted a message about tidal power as an alternative on peakoil.com because it wanst mentioned yet, hoping to get some better answers there.

Quote
The rest of the article has a good bit of fact in it but is approached from an extremely over-critical way.

take this passage..
Quote
Even using turkey offal, one must account for 1) the feed, 2) what fertilized the feed (natural gas), 3) how the feed was planted, 4) harvested, 5) irrigated (oil and gas), and 5) how the turkey got to market (oil). Thermal depolymerization should be more properly viewed as a form of recycling. But this process will never have the net energy of the original fossil fuels. As fossil fuels dwindle, so will the source material.
This is ONLY true if the turkeys are farmed for no reason other than to collect their poop. In actual fact turkeys are farmed and will continue to be farmed whether we collect it or not. The poop is a complete by-product of a food growing industry which will continue regardless. With that in mind the poop is actually completely free. It costs nothing extra to produce yet it could yield a very large payback.

The using of the poop would still require an extra investment that may well cost more then it produces. And will probably cost more energy then we can get it out of it. Even if it nets positive energy return it will not be within a remote proximity of oil.

I also believe it deserves a notice that transition to alternatives will probably not be remotely peacefull, considdering the big oil countrys basicly lead ouer countrys with ouer massive oil dependance of the moment.

Quote
The article is very un-necessarily negative and takes no account of many highly important factors. If this were being submitted for peer reviewed publication it would never make it past my desk for one.
I agree the article is not very extensive, but I believe it was kept this way because it is relatively short so that people would put effort into reading it in detail.
The article isnt particularily optimistic but I fail to understand how the article is over-critical or how any other article can be over critical.

I believe that the articles I linked are clearly not something you want to read or know :lecture: . I believe that the named phenoma go against everything you, your friends and the media want and you for that reason choose to deny it wether you consciously know it or not.
But I would love to have my statements discharged because I hate the future I imagine right now.

I will try to reduce my use of double quotes.

Goodnight everything.
« Last Edit: February 02, 2006, 05:20:47 PM by spiceant »

Offline Numsgil

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« Reply #14 on: February 02, 2006, 10:04:29 PM »
Are you wanting to get us to make you feel better or are you wanting to debate us, cause now I'm confused.

The sites you linked to seem a bit alarmist.  Propoganda is what I'd call it.  Hardly neutral in its POV as good scholarship would be.  As such, people with scientists' minds (like most of us here) are going to approach it skeptically from the start.