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Post by gridley on Sept 6, 2022 11:26:50 GMT
A summary of my understanding of the current world energy situation 1. Historical-political The industrial revolution was coal-powered. This led to the hegemony of the UK (which has large reserves of coal), and subsequently Europe. At the turn of the 20th century the major source of energy switched to oil. This favoured the USA, which has a lot of it. Europe acquiesced to this new reality and switched their ships and trains from coal to oil power. It left them vulnerable, however, as they had hardly any oil reserves of their own. For the political repercussions of this through the 20th century, see part 1 of 'Disorder' by Prof. Helen Thompson. Now the US hegemony is coming to an end. China, India, Russia and Brazil are beyond their control. The US seems to act as if it is still pulling the strings, but evidently is not doing so. This is leading to increasing instability, as events this year in Europe have shown. (As a European, I am mystified as to why the European governments take the decisions they do. I would have thought that they would have learned by now not to let themselves be the theatre of the power struggle between the US and Russia AGAIN.) 2. Peak oil Fossil fuels are a finite resource. This has led to a search for alternatives: nuclear and renewables, each of which has its downsides. Government endorsement of this search has led the energy companies to reduce investment in new sources. This brings short-term increase in profits to them, as fossil fuels are demand-inelastic, meaning that a small drop in supply leads to a huge increase in price. The consequences (social unrest, economic recession, food and fuel poverty) are the governments' problems, not theirs. There are other factors too, such as the social/psychological/economic effects of the lockdowns of 2020-21. The energy companies saw a drop in demand which left them exposed. It also caused many of us to review our relationship with the government, to look to ways to become more self-reliant. Is that a reasonable summary? What other factors should be included? As for the future of energy, I still have no idea. The mega-rich are hunkering down, in New Zealand or on large tracts of farmland in the middle of nowhere, which would suggest they can't see any other way through the transition time we are in. Hmm. Even in a summary I'd expand your consideration of hydro power (which had a huge impact in the development of US industry, which in turn played a significant part in the rise of what is often described as US hegemony). I'd also note the social factor that prior to ~1898 the US wasn't a world power and didn't particularly want to be, and from ~1943 to today has indeed been THE dominant military power on Earth... and doesn't particularly want to be. The latter point is often hotly debated - I'll point out that the US hasn't truly mobilized for war since 1945.
The UK is often said to have acquired its empire by accident. I'm not enough of a student of that process to debate that, but the US acquired its only large overseas "colony" (The Philippines) in 1898 and was already planning to let them go by the late 1930's. WWII actually DELAYED Philippine independence.
To say that the admittedly finite amount of fossil fuels in the world "led" to a search for alternatives I think implies a causal relationship that didn't exist when nuclear power was being developed. Nuclear power was just the obvious "what's next" because OF COURSE you keep progressing and developing new things. The US still gets a lot of its primary electrical power from coal, for that matter, and there are a lot of homes in the US that burn wood for heat.
I, however, also can not claim to know the future of energy. For a non-dystopian future we need to figure out sustainable fusion or unlock the artificial handcuffs we've placed on nuclear (or figure out anti-matter, matter conversion, or something else of course). Will we? No clue. Most "renewables" ironically aren't - while the energy source (wind, solar, etc.) is renewable the means of collecting it isn't.
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Post by walnut on Sept 6, 2022 12:26:59 GMT
Certainly not foolproof, no
NO high-energy system is foolproof, or proof against being exploited as a weapon. The only logical path is to ban cars, planes, transformers, bulldozers, cranes...
Even mentioning Three-Mile Island (where, please note NO ONE DIED and the radiation level outside the plant never exceeded the levels found every day inside NY's Grand Central Station main concourse) and Chernobyl shows either a massive misunderstanding of nuclear incidents or a complete lack of interest in rational discussion. Care to pick? Bonus question: what year did the Three Mile Island incident occur, and how many similar incidents (or worse) incidents have there been in the US since?
Yes, there's a difference between pressurized water reactors and boiling water reactors. The fact that some people still injure themselves every year making bonfires doesn't mean that we haven't learned how to control fire.
What we haven't learned to control is *ourselves* and our societies. The US, as a society, utterly bungled our last presidential election. Does that mean elections aren't safe anymore and we should stop having them?
Most US cities aren't at all safe places to be at present. Does that mean cities aren't safe and we should get rid of them? Wait... don't tempt me...
I see. Why won't a Chernobyl scale accident happen again? Given the abundance of coal still available, "Foolproof" is actually the reasonable standard here. Fukushima was relatively recent.
I'm not a nuclear engineer, but I do know risk and the concept of increasing variance over time, and 100 year floods.
I never hear of hectares of land being roped off permanently due to coal fired plant accidents.
I agree, the problem is "ourselves". and my confidence in "ourselves" could hardly be lower at this point. I don't want a diversity pick running the nuclear plant 5 miles from land I might own.
I appreciate the value of nuclear energy and I believe that we will certainly need it. |
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Post by glennkoks on Sept 6, 2022 13:52:26 GMT
A summary of my understanding of the current world energy situation 1. Historical-political The industrial revolution was coal-powered. This led to the hegemony of the UK (which has large reserves of coal), and subsequently Europe. At the turn of the 20th century the major source of energy switched to oil. This favoured the USA, which has a lot of it. Europe acquiesced to this new reality and switched their ships and trains from coal to oil power. It left them vulnerable, however, as they had hardly any oil reserves of their own. For the political repercussions of this through the 20th century, see part 1 of 'Disorder' by Prof. Helen Thompson. Now the US hegemony is coming to an end. China, India, Russia and Brazil are beyond their control. The US seems to act as if it is still pulling the strings, but evidently is not doing so. This is leading to increasing instability, as events this year in Europe have shown. (As a European, I am mystified as to why the European governments take the decisions they do. I would have thought that they would have learned by now not to let themselves be the theatre of the power struggle between the US and Russia AGAIN.) 2. Peak oil Fossil fuels are a finite resource. This has led to a search for alternatives: nuclear and renewables, each of which has its downsides. Government endorsement of this search has led the energy companies to reduce investment in new sources. This brings short-term increase in profits to them, as fossil fuels are demand-inelastic, meaning that a small drop in supply leads to a huge increase in price. The consequences (social unrest, economic recession, food and fuel poverty) are the governments' problems, not theirs. There are other factors too, such as the social/psychological/economic effects of the lockdowns of 2020-21. The energy companies saw a drop in demand which left them exposed. It also caused many of us to review our relationship with the government, to look to ways to become more self-reliant. Is that a reasonable summary? What other factors should be included? As for the future of energy, I still have no idea. The mega-rich are hunkering down, in New Zealand or on large tracts of farmland in the middle of nowhere, which would suggest they can't see any other way through the transition time we are in. I would agree with your summary. Only thing I would add is that yes fossil fuels are a finite resource but there are still ample supplies. Shale gas is abundant and there are still undeveloped crude reserves. In an effort to go green our governments have endorsed alternative energy sources. Sources that at this time can't meet our energy needs. I think the ruling elite plan to tax and regulate the fossil fuel industry out of existence in favor of greener less productive technology. The result will be increased energy costs for those who can least afford it. As usual it boils down to money and power. Those who control energy and food will attain more wealth and power of the masses. |
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Post by nemesis on Sept 6, 2022 17:45:01 GMT
This came up on my Twitter timeline.
Good explanation of our present troubles.
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Post by douglavers on Sept 7, 2022 12:14:10 GMT
Quite a sobering video. Clearly ESG and the attack on fossil fuels was eventually going to cause a major energy/economic crisis.
This was probably not expected for some time.
Along came COVID and the Ukraine war, and suddenly the timescale contracted.
Western Government efforts to inflate out of the COVID driven downturn plus an enormous spike in energy costs are causing
significant economic downturns coupled with massively increased inflation.[stagflation]. This is an economic car crash.
e.g. In the UK I have seen forecasts of inflation of 20% + by April 2023. On unchanged policy, the average household was expected to pay ~ 6,000
pounds per year in energy costs.
The new PM has promised a standstill in this process at large cost [? 200 billion pounds]. This is likely unaffordable.
Meanwhile, it may be dawning on the Western World that CAGW theory is erroneous. One can only hope that the next Northern Hemisphere winter is mild.
A side effect of ESG policy is that urea costs have also skyrocketed, as it is manufactured from natural gas. This presages starvation for millions of people.
I do not expect any apologies from ESG and Climate Change activists, but future historians will treat them harshly.
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Post by Sigurdur on Sept 7, 2022 13:49:53 GMT
The massive push for intercropping with legumes was suppose to mitigate high Nitrogen costs.
1. Intercrropping activates antagonism. Plants like the same plant species planted next to them. Hard to find a plant that appreciates a symbiotic relationship.
2. Intercropping uses moisture. IF you can't irrigate, you rely on nature for moisture.
There has developed a whole sham industry that is pushing for "Green" intercropping. The selling point is "soil health". Sounds wonderful. Right??
Problem is, production goes down for the desired crop.
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Post by gridley on Sept 8, 2022 23:00:28 GMT
NO high-energy system is foolproof, or proof against being exploited as a weapon. The only logical path is to ban cars, planes, transformers, bulldozers, cranes...
Even mentioning Three-Mile Island (where, please note NO ONE DIED and the radiation level outside the plant never exceeded the levels found every day inside NY's Grand Central Station main concourse) and Chernobyl shows either a massive misunderstanding of nuclear incidents or a complete lack of interest in rational discussion. Care to pick? Bonus question: what year did the Three Mile Island incident occur, and how many similar incidents (or worse) incidents have there been in the US since?
Yes, there's a difference between pressurized water reactors and boiling water reactors. The fact that some people still injure themselves every year making bonfires doesn't mean that we haven't learned how to control fire.
What we haven't learned to control is *ourselves* and our societies. The US, as a society, utterly bungled our last presidential election. Does that mean elections aren't safe anymore and we should stop having them?
Most US cities aren't at all safe places to be at present. Does that mean cities aren't safe and we should get rid of them? Wait... don't tempt me...
I see. Why won't a Chernobyl scale accident happen again? Given the abundance of coal still available, "Foolproof" is actually the reasonable standard here. Fukushima was relatively recent.
I'm not a nuclear engineer, but I do know risk and the concept of increasing variance over time, and 100 year floods.
I never hear of hectares of land being roped off permanently due to coal fired plant accidents.
I agree, the problem is "ourselves". and my confidence in "ourselves" could hardly be lower at this point. I don't want a diversity pick running the nuclear plant 5 miles from land I might own.
I appreciate the value of nuclear energy and I believe that we will certainly need it. Re: Fukushima: see the above note about PWR vs BWR.
Yes, the Soviets screwed something up. We should TOTALLY not do things the Soviets screwed up. Like grow grain. Clearly, growing grain is REALLY hard and if you try to do it in a rich agricultural area you'll eventually have a famine. Or we could go out a limb here, and say Soviet quality control was terrible, their ability to make ANY reliable precision machinery (including, say, high pressure pumps, turbines, etc.) was dubious at best, and that industrial standards have increased radically since the fall of the Soviet Union, much less since they built the Red C, not to mention we've learned from half a century of experiments and near-misses.
You're safer on an airplane than you were in the 1970's. Is it really hard to believe you're also safer next to a power plant than you were in the 1970's? You STILL don't want to fly on a Russian-designed commercial airliner (there's a reason you don't see them flying around the US). They really aren't safer than the ones we were building in the 1970's. Don't even ask what the ones the Soviets were building in the 1970's were like.
If being 5 miles from a nuke plant bothers you, please stay at least 10 from the nearest pile of coal tailings... assuming your only concern is radiation. If air quality bothers you too, you'll want to be further back... and WAY further from the coal-fired plant itself. |
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Post by walnut on Sept 9, 2022 0:28:02 GMT
I see. Why won't a Chernobyl scale accident happen again? Given the abundance of coal still available, "Foolproof" is actually the reasonable standard here. Fukushima was relatively recent.
I'm not a nuclear engineer, but I do know risk and the concept of increasing variance over time, and 100 year floods.
I never hear of hectares of land being roped off permanently due to coal fired plant accidents.
I agree, the problem is "ourselves". and my confidence in "ourselves" could hardly be lower at this point. I don't want a diversity pick running the nuclear plant 5 miles from land I might own.
I appreciate the value of nuclear energy and I believe that we will certainly need it. Re: Fukushima: see the above note about PWR vs BWR.
Yes, the Soviets screwed something up. We should TOTALLY not do things the Soviets screwed up. Like grow grain. Clearly, growing grain is REALLY hard and if you try to do it in a rich agricultural area you'll eventually have a famine. Or we could go out a limb here, and say Soviet quality control was terrible, their ability to make ANY reliable precision machinery (including, say, high pressure pumps, turbines, etc.) was dubious at best, and that industrial standards have increased radically since the fall of the Soviet Union, much less since they built the Red C, not to mention we've learned from half a century of experiments and near-misses.
You're safer on an airplane than you were in the 1970's. Is it really hard to believe you're also safer next to a power plant than you were in the 1970's? You STILL don't want to fly on a Russian-designed commercial airliner (there's a reason you don't see them flying around the US). They really aren't safer than the ones we were building in the 1970's. Don't even ask what the ones the Soviets were building in the 1970's were like.
If being 5 miles from a nuke plant bothers you, please stay at least 10 from the nearest pile of coal tailings... assuming your only concern is radiation. If air quality bothers you too, you'll want to be further back... and WAY further from the coal-fired plant itself. I'm not too far from this one (neither is the whole town of Stigler), how worried should I be?
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Post by gridley on Sept 9, 2022 11:24:15 GMT
Re: Fukushima: see the above note about PWR vs BWR.
Yes, the Soviets screwed something up. We should TOTALLY not do things the Soviets screwed up. Like grow grain. Clearly, growing grain is REALLY hard and if you try to do it in a rich agricultural area you'll eventually have a famine. Or we could go out a limb here, and say Soviet quality control was terrible, their ability to make ANY reliable precision machinery (including, say, high pressure pumps, turbines, etc.) was dubious at best, and that industrial standards have increased radically since the fall of the Soviet Union, much less since they built the Red C, not to mention we've learned from half a century of experiments and near-misses.
You're safer on an airplane than you were in the 1970's. Is it really hard to believe you're also safer next to a power plant than you were in the 1970's? You STILL don't want to fly on a Russian-designed commercial airliner (there's a reason you don't see them flying around the US). They really aren't safer than the ones we were building in the 1970's. Don't even ask what the ones the Soviets were building in the 1970's were like.
If being 5 miles from a nuke plant bothers you, please stay at least 10 from the nearest pile of coal tailings... assuming your only concern is radiation. If air quality bothers you too, you'll want to be further back... and WAY further from the coal-fired plant itself. I'm not too far from this one (neither is the whole town of Stigler), how worried should I be?
Not very. Just more worried than if it were a nuke plant. |
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Post by missouriboy on Sept 16, 2022 14:19:37 GMT
Leased Floating LNG Terminals - Keeping the gas on (for the winter or beyond) in the Rhine industrial heartland?
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Post by missouriboy on Sept 16, 2022 14:49:52 GMT
Winter in Europe will be interesting. Will the current disaster forecasts play out? Or are they like climate models? I assume that without North Sea oil and gas (even though in decline) the situation for the cousins would be much worse.
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Post by douglavers on Sept 16, 2022 22:24:50 GMT
From Jane's comment of 6th Sept: "admittedly finite amount of fossil fuels in the world".
In an absolute sense, this is undoubtedly true.
However, in the shorter term - perhaps 200 years - sources of carbon are more than abundant.
eg - lignite. My state of Victoria has the largest brown coal field on the planet. No-one knows its true size, as
that has never been properly measured. A guess might be 65 billion tons +.[It might be much larger. Where it is being mined at present, the
seam is 250 metres thick. 100 kms further East, the seam is still about 60 metres thick. It is believed to be continuous]. Even with a fuel of
perhaps only a quarter of black coal's heat content, that is a lot of coal.
Methane clathrates. These may represent the largest carbon reservoir on the planet, at the deepwater base of nearly all continental shelves.
We have not developed the technology to mine this resource yet.
Shale Gas. These reserves are large and very widespread. Around Blackpool, the UK is thought to have enough shale gas for many decades.
The problem with this is populations brainwashed into thinking carbon dioxide is evil. My view is that our planet is now cooling rather quickly,
and people will gradually realise this. I am hoping bad things will happen to the CAGW advocates at that point, but that is likely wishfull thinking.
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Post by nonentropic on Sept 16, 2022 22:33:12 GMT
Yes Doug, infinite in the sense that we will never get to the end just as "stone-age" was not the end of stone usage.
As a point, a cubic km is a billion or so tonnes so every 4 square km of your place is a Billion or so and Victoria has far more than some notional 65 billion tons.
We will think of something else before usage is constrained.
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Post by ratty on Sept 16, 2022 22:44:51 GMT
From Jane's comment of 6th Sept: "admittedly finite amount of fossil fuels in the world". In an absolute sense, this is undoubtedly true. However, in the shorter term - perhaps 200 years - sources of carbon are more than abundant. eg - lignite. My state of Victoria has the largest brown coal field on the planet. No-one knows its true size, as that has never been properly measured. A guess might be 65 billion tons +.[It might be much larger. Where it is being mined at present, the seam is 250 metres thick. 100 kms further East, the seam is still about 60 metres thick. It is believed to be continuous]. Even with a fuel of perhaps only a quarter of black coal's heat content, that is a lot of coal. Methane clathrates. These may represent the largest carbon reservoir on the planet, at the deepwater base of nearly all continental shelves. We have not developed the technology to mine this resource yet. Shale Gas. These reserves are large and very widespread. Around Blackpool, the UK is thought to have enough shale gas for many decades. The problem with this is populations brainwashed into thinking carbon dioxide is evil. My view is that our planet is now cooling rather quickly, and people will gradually realise this. I am hoping bad things will happen to the CAGW advocates at that point, but that is likely wishfull thinking. I've been thinking that since November 17th 2009.  |
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Post by douglavers on Sept 18, 2022 11:34:32 GMT
[[I've been thinking that since November 17th 2009.]]
What happened on that date?!
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