If this is your first visit, be sure to check out the FAQ by clicking the link above. You may have to register before you can post: click the register link above to proceed. To start viewing messages, select the forum that you want to visit from the selection below. |
|
|
Thread Tools | Display Modes |
#41
|
|||
|
|||
More fuel for thought
"Dudley Henriques" wrote: I'm FAR from being any kind of an expert on these matters, but I can't help but wonder, considering the fact that the world's economies are so completely dependent on oil for survival, that the world has waited WAY too long on this issue and that we have already passed the point where the changes necessary and either implemented or discovered, can no longer be made in time to make any difference in the inevitable outcome; ......a self made dooms day scenario so to speak. Oil is $110/bbl and climbing. Gasoline is on a similar path. Those facts alone are already starting to give serious economic impetus to alternative energy development. Yeah, there's going to be pain, but watch the good ol' profit motive produce its usual surprising results in wind, solar thermal, PV, biodiesel, etc. -- Dan "The future has actually been here for a while, it's just not readily available to everyone." - some guy at MIT |
#42
|
|||
|
|||
More fuel for thought
Andrew Sarangan wrote:
Even if we discover some large oil reserve, it is only going to prolong the eventual demise of oil. Which a Brazilian Oil just happen to do the other day. The 3rd largest field ever found. I wonder how many other 1st, 2nd or 3rd largest oil fields are out there waiting to be found? Including those that we are pretty sure exist but are to deep for our current technology to make use of. While I agree that alternate forms of energy are a very good thing for very many reasons there is no reason to do anything at this point that will trash the world economy because there is still several metric butt-loads of crude out there. |
#43
|
|||
|
|||
More fuel for thought
Andrew Sarangan wrote:
On Apr 14, 11:00 pm, "Jay Honeck" wrote: If I am not mistaken, current world consumption is about 85 million barrels per day. The 4 billion barrels will last 50 days. I don't understand the reason for celebration. When you're addicted to something, even a tiny amount is cause for celebration. Whether it's 4 billion, or 400 billion barrels -- who cares? It's *ours*. Develop those fields now, and it's *that* much less oil we have to import from the Arabs. This is what's called a "good thing" no matter how you cut it. -- There is 30 horsepower of solar radiation falling on a Cessna 172's wing that we are simply throwing away. Unless I dropped a decimal somewhere, there is about 16 M^2 of wing area on a C-172. 30 HP is 22.4 kW; there isn't that much energy in sunlight. The challenge is extracting the full solar spectrum and storing it. But there are no fundamental scientific reasons why this is not achievable. You mean other than we haven't a clue how to do it in the real world? There are no fundamental scientific reasons why we can't: Convert light into electricity with 90% efficiency. Cure cancer. Produce sustainable fusion. Convert junk mail and coffee grounds into 100 LL. -- Jim Pennino Remove .spam.sux to reply. |
#44
|
|||
|
|||
More fuel for thought
Dan Luke wrote:
......a self made dooms day scenario so to speak. Oil is $110/bbl and climbing. Gasoline is on a similar path. Those facts alone are already starting to give serious economic impetus to alternative energy development. Oil is at an all time high because the dollar is at an all time low. All the money both foreign and domestic is moving into hard commodities. Gold and oil just happen to be the most popular two. If the dollar wasn't in the hole so badly the resent find off the coast of Brazil would have really depressed the oil futures market. |
#45
|
|||
|
|||
More fuel for thought
Alan wrote:
In article Stella Starr writes: Eh. I lived around there, had friends who went off to work in the North Dakota oil fields a time or two. Every time petroleum goes through the roof in price, someone reopens the oil shale fields, which require an astronomical amount of work and expenditure to wring oil from the rock. Back when oil was getting close to $30/barrel, an article on cnn.com commented that there was a huge amount of oil in oil shale, but it would not be economical to extract unless oil got to $40/barrel. Well, at $100 per barrel, it seems that the oil companies are hoping for even more profit when they finally decide to get it. Two things have happened: The cost of extraction from oil shale and tar sands (both of which have enormous amounts of oil) has gone up along with everything else. Current costs are estimated to be in the $80 to $100 per barrel range. Since a long term, large capital investment is required to do this, the oil companies waited to make sure the price was above, and going to stay above, the level where recovery was economical. Recovery from such sources is starting now, but in some places is being hindered by the NIMBY's and CO2 fanatics. -- Jim Pennino Remove .spam.sux to reply. |
#46
|
|||
|
|||
More fuel for thought
Bob Fry wrote:
"P" == Private writes: P I just found this on another forum, facts not verified, no P commentary made. Huge Dakota oil pool could change energy P climate debate Then let's get some facts. The USGS just released a new assessment of the Bakken. "3 to 4.3 Billion Barrels of Technically Recoverable Oil Assessed in North Dakota and Montana's Bakken Formation--25 Times More Than 1995 Estimate" http://www.usgs.gov/newsroom/article.asp?ID=1911 See also http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bakken_Formation. Apparently the Bakken formation has been known for decades, but its potential usable oil estimates not so well known. And the technically recoverable percentage increases continually with advancements in the technology. -- Jim Pennino Remove .spam.sux to reply. |
#47
|
|||
|
|||
More fuel for thought
On Apr 15, 12:55 pm, wrote:
Andrew Sarangan wrote: On Apr 14, 11:00 pm, "Jay Honeck" wrote: If I am not mistaken, current world consumption is about 85 million barrels per day. The 4 billion barrels will last 50 days. I don't understand the reason for celebration. When you're addicted to something, even a tiny amount is cause for celebration. Whether it's 4 billion, or 400 billion barrels -- who cares? It's *ours*. Develop those fields now, and it's *that* much less oil we have to import from the Arabs. This is what's called a "good thing" no matter how you cut it. -- There is 30 horsepower of solar radiation falling on a Cessna 172's wing that we are simply throwing away. Unless I dropped a decimal somewhere, there is about 16 M^2 of wing area on a C-172. 30 HP is 22.4 kW; there isn't that much energy in sunlight. On a clear day, the average solar power incident on the earth's surface is 1400Wm^2. http://hypertextbook.com/facts/1998/...utbundit.shtml That gives 22kW or 30 HP. Regardless of the exact number, the point is that there is significant amount of solar radiation that we are not making use of. The challenge is extracting the full solar spectrum and storing it. But there are no fundamental scientific reasons why this is not achievable. You mean other than we haven't a clue how to do it in the real world? Yes, we have lots of ways to to do it, but we have not figured out how to do that in a cost-effective manner that can be made for mass use. There are no fundamental scientific reasons why we can't: Convert light into electricity with 90% efficiency. We are already doing it, for specialized applications. Internal quantum efficiencies of certain semiconductor materials have approached nearly 100% within a narrow spectral range.The challenge is how to translate that to match the broad solar spectrum. The know-how exists, but there isn't enough investment to make it happen. Had we spent all the post-911 terrorist-aversion expenditures on something like this, we could be declaring independence from the middle east. I know that we spent several millions erecting a metal fence around our small GA airport. All it did was screw up the localizer signal and trap the deer population. I don't think even the administrators believed there was a terrorism threat here. On the other hand, NSF (National Science Foundation) budget has barely kept up with inflation in the past 10 years. This is where we count on for fundamental break throughs in discovery. Cure cancer. Produce sustainable fusion. Convert junk mail and coffee grounds into 100 LL. -- Jim Pennino Remove .spam.sux to reply. |
#48
|
|||
|
|||
More fuel for thought
On Apr 15, 11:52*am, Gig 601Xl Builder
wrote: While I agree that alternate forms of energy are a very good thing for very many reasons there is no reason to do anything at this point that will trash the world economy because there is still several metric butt-loads of crude out there. I don't know of anyone who is suggesting that we trash the world economy. But I think now is the time to devote some serious resources to find alternative, sustainable ways to keep our societies running. If we wait until the end is clearly in sight, we probably won't be able to afford to spend the resources it will take to solve the problem. If you want to get some good perspective on this kind of thing, read the book Collapse by Jared Diamond. It's a very clear-eyed, down-to- earth analysis of why past societies have flourished, but then ultimately collapsed. Over and over again in human history, societies have over-used their natural resources until they suffered a catastrophic collapse. This is the rule, not the exception. It is very rare in human history for a society to live in a way that is sustainable over the long term. Clearly, our current society is not sustainable, and if we ignore history we will be condemned to repeat it. Phil |
#49
|
|||
|
|||
More fuel for thought
|
#50
|
|||
|
|||
More fuel for thought
Andrew Sarangan wrote:
On Apr 15, 12:55 pm, wrote: Andrew Sarangan wrote: On Apr 14, 11:00 pm, "Jay Honeck" wrote: If I am not mistaken, current world consumption is about 85 million barrels per day. The 4 billion barrels will last 50 days. I don't understand the reason for celebration. When you're addicted to something, even a tiny amount is cause for celebration. Whether it's 4 billion, or 400 billion barrels -- who cares? It's *ours*. Develop those fields now, and it's *that* much less oil we have to import from the Arabs. This is what's called a "good thing" no matter how you cut it. -- There is 30 horsepower of solar radiation falling on a Cessna 172's wing that we are simply throwing away. Unless I dropped a decimal somewhere, there is about 16 M^2 of wing area on a C-172. 30 HP is 22.4 kW; there isn't that much energy in sunlight. On a clear day, the average solar power incident on the earth's surface is 1400Wm^2. http://hypertextbook.com/facts/1998/...utbundit.shtml That gives 22kW or 30 HP. Only if the angle between your collecting surface is 90 degrees with respect to the incident sunlight. Otherwise, multiply by the sine of the angle. So, if you are at Latitude 33 degrees north at noon in the middle of the summer, that angle is roughly 57 degrees and you get .84 times that, or roughly 18.5 kW for level flight. The sun moves at about 15 degrees per hour, so an hour later or earlier that angle is roughly 43 degrees and you are down to about 15 kW. I'll leave the calculation of what you get at other times of the year when the sun is low. The only way around this is to always fly with your wings perpendicular to the sun. Regardless of the exact number, the point is that there is significant amount of solar radiation that we are not making use of. Not from airplane wings there isn't. The challenge is extracting the full solar spectrum and storing it. But there are no fundamental scientific reasons why this is not achievable. You mean other than we haven't a clue how to do it in the real world? Yes, we have lots of ways to to do it, but we have not figured out how to do that in a cost-effective manner that can be made for mass use. We do not know how to do it even in a lab. There are no fundamental scientific reasons why we can't: Convert light into electricity with 90% efficiency. We are already doing it, for specialized applications. Internal quantum efficiencies of certain semiconductor materials have approached nearly 100% within a narrow spectral range.The challenge is how to translate that to match the broad solar spectrum. The know-how exists, but there isn't enough investment to make it happen. The best efficiency achieved in a lab to date is around 40% of the total incident energy of the sun's spectrum. Had we spent all the post-911 terrorist-aversion expenditures on something like this, we could be declaring independence from the middle east. Electricity has little to nothing to do with oil from the Middle East or anywhere else and never will unless either batteries are improved by an order of magnitude or electricity becomes cheap enough to synthesize oil at a cost comperable with sucking it out of the ground and refining it. -- Jim Pennino Remove .spam.sux to reply. |
Thread Tools | |
Display Modes | |
|
|
Similar Threads | ||||
Thread | Thread Starter | Forum | Replies | Last Post |
Low towing thought | Martin Gregorie | Soaring | 45 | March 13th 07 03:00 AM |
And you thought AMARC was bad.... | Ron | Aviation Photos | 18 | February 2nd 07 05:27 AM |
Thought Police | Michael Baldwin, Bruce | Products | 0 | November 17th 06 06:58 AM |
Just when I thought I'd heard it all:-) | Dudley Henriques | Piloting | 14 | November 23rd 05 08:18 PM |
A thought on BRS | Martin Gregorie | Soaring | 47 | April 29th 04 06:34 AM |