FF vs. Solar

[texaslabrat]

Brian H wrote:

texas is right to some extent — where war is caused by desperation or actual imposed inequality. This is the minority of cases, of course. Try coming up with examples. There aren’t many.

Coming up with examples where competition for resources was the underlying cause for war? Um, WWII pacific theater (Japan attacking the U.S. largely out of desperation from the embargoes set on it by America). Both Gulf Wars (do you really think we would be involved in the Middle East if we didn’t need the oil?). The current “cold war” brewing with China at the moment. The attempted assisted coup in Venezuela not too long ago. And that’s just in the past 60 or so years that we personally were involved in. Leaders might rally the troops with calls of service to a higher power or whatever…but in the end it’s usually about money or its equivalent in natural resources. Extremely cheap power mitigates that to a very large extent. As I said, exceptions to every rule but history is chock-full of examples of this.

A huge breakthrough in solar power would also be welcomed (I don’t see that one must exist to the total exclusion of the other)..though that obviously has a capped limit in the amount of power per square meter that falls on the earth. Every watt helps though! Especially given the very real possibilities of the decades it might take for FF to be fully commercialized and socially accepted….solar and other renewables can prove valuable in the mean time.

[Brian H]

Henning wrote: Take a look at the Spanish electrical power supply. Last few days have been quite windy. Especially take a look at 2009-11-08 (that’s 8th of November 2009 año del dios). More than half of Spanish power production has been accomplished by wind (light green area, called Eólica). Then add 20% of other regenerative production (dark green area, Resto reg. esp.).

That energy has been fed into the grid, because the meteorological office could determine time and location of favourable conditions, and advice the other producers. No power outages occurred.

Therefore regenerative energy production is viable for Spain. If they continue their efforts like the last ten years, they’re more or less set.

Conventional energy production is a backdrop, if the doesn’t blow enough, the sun don’t shine. Nuclear (fission energy) is a money dump – you need to clean up the mess afterwards, nuclear waste and nuclear sites. Aneutronic fusion is still a dream and will as well stay that, although we’re working on it but DON’T COUNT ON IT!

So stop whining about “regenerative energy will never make it” and “there is no greenhouse effect”! Period.

Wind power can drop to 0 at any time, and is strongest when least needed (at night). Therefore there must always be 100% conventional baseload backup. It’s one of the stupidest wastes of money ever conceived. http://www.windpowerfacts.info/

A critical fact to understand is that just because a power source is an alternative, or a renewable, does NOT automatically mean that it is better than any conventional or fossil fuel source! In other words, electrical energy alternatives/renewables should not be given a free pass on common sense scrutiny, and the use of scientific methodology, in objectively evaluating their merits. …

Whether an alternative/renewable is acceptable is a highly technical matter that should be decided on the basis of a comprehensive, independent, objective and transparent evaluation of three key conditions:
a) its technical performance, b) the economics of the power produced, and c) its FULL environmental impact.

All independent evidence to date indicates that industrial wind power fails on all three of these critical counts.

Renewables are boondoggles, with very few, very limited, very local exceptions.
Spain is one of the biggest ‘dogglers: http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/d4201676-c4f2-11de-8d54-00144feab49a.html?nclick_check=1

More than eight out of 10 US stimulus dollars spent on wind energy farms have gone to foreign companies, according to a report by the Washington-based Investigative Report Workshop, a non-profit journalist group.

Of the $1.05bn handed out in grants so far – the majority since August – 84 per cent has gone to European companies, with the US subsidiary of Iberdrola Renewables, the Spanish company, taking the largest share.

Officials in Barack Obama’s administration say the $22bn set aside in the $787bn stimulus for alternative energy funding is designed to create or retain jobs and stimulate economic activity. But the report, shared with the Financial Times, shows the majority of jobs are likely to have been created overseas.

And if you feel like some real science, try FALSIFICATION OF THE ATMOSPHERIC CO2 GREENHOUSE EFFECTS WITHIN THE FRAME OF PHYSICS.

[Brian H]

texaslabrat wrote:

texas is right to some extent — where war is caused by desperation or actual imposed inequality. This is the minority of cases, of course. Try coming up with examples. There aren’t many.

Coming up with examples where competition for resources was the underlying cause for war? Um, WWII pacific theater (Japan attacking the U.S. largely out of desperation from the embargoes set on it by America). Both Gulf Wars (do you really think we would be involved in the Middle East if we didn’t need the oil?). The current “cold war” brewing with China at the moment. The attempted assisted coup in Venezuela not too long ago. And that’s just in the past 60 or so years that we personally were involved in. Leaders might rally the troops with calls of service to a higher power or whatever…but in the end it’s usually about money or its equivalent in natural resources. Extremely cheap power mitigates that to a very large extent. As I said, exceptions to every rule but history is chock-full of examples of this.

A huge breakthrough in solar power would also be welcomed (I don’t see that one must exist to the total exclusion of the other)..though that obviously has a capped limit in the amount of power per square meter that falls on the earth. Every watt helps though! Especially given the very real possibilities of the decades it might take for FF to be fully commercialized and socially accepted….solar and other renewables can prove valuable in the mean time.
Japan wanted both the resources and its military adventures (the embargoes were not just for fun or out of meanness!), and couldn’t have them. You will note that since it began depending on brains instead of guns, it is able to afford all the resources it wants.

As for the ME, oil was important for the globe, not just the US. Saddam in charge of Kuwait and Saudi Arabia was not something anyone could accept. And the “cold war” with China is not a war, and won’t become one unless China decides to eliminate the local non-Communist competition. Democracies do not go to war with each other. Tyrants go to war with democracies (and each other), however.

As for Venezuela, it’s been controlled by a coup leader since Chavez took over, made especially clear by his permanent negation of any Constitutional restraint on his tenure. Despite its oil wealth, it is speeding into the economic dumpster (22% inflation*, growing fast, with store shelves empty because retailers refuse to lose money on every sale under government controlled pricing), for reasons explained long ago by the first Secretary General of OPEC, a Venezuelan, who noted that every country dependent on the Devil’s Excrement had debased social and economic and intellectual conditions as a result of the ‘rentier’ mentality plentiful oil engenders. Chavez, of course, has the full proceeds of his (mostly expropriated) oil sales to throw around and foment mischief with, regardless of the state of the country. Whatta guy!

*Correction, update: 34.5% in August, 27.3% in September, 26.7% in October.

[texaslabrat]

Brian H wrote:

texas is right to some extent — where war is caused by desperation or actual imposed inequality. This is the minority of cases, of course. Try coming up with examples. There aren’t many.

Coming up with examples where competition for resources was the underlying cause for war? Um, WWII pacific theater (Japan attacking the U.S. largely out of desperation from the embargoes set on it by America). Both Gulf Wars (do you really think we would be involved in the Middle East if we didn’t need the oil?). The current “cold war” brewing with China at the moment. The attempted assisted coup in Venezuela not too long ago. And that’s just in the past 60 or so years that we personally were involved in. Leaders might rally the troops with calls of service to a higher power or whatever…but in the end it’s usually about money or its equivalent in natural resources. Extremely cheap power mitigates that to a very large extent. As I said, exceptions to every rule but history is chock-full of examples of this.

A huge breakthrough in solar power would also be welcomed (I don’t see that one must exist to the total exclusion of the other)..though that obviously has a capped limit in the amount of power per square meter that falls on the earth. Every watt helps though! Especially given the very real possibilities of the decades it might take for FF to be fully commercialized and socially accepted….solar and other renewables can prove valuable in the mean time.
Japan wanted both the resources and its military adventures (the embargoes were not just for fun or out of meanness!), and couldn’t have them. You will note that since it began depending on brains instead of guns, it is able to afford all the resources it wants.

As for the ME, oil was important for the globe, not just the US. Saddam in charge of Kuwait and Saudi Arabia was not something anyone could accept. And the “cold war” with China is not a war, and won’t become one unless China decides to eliminate the local non-Communist competition. Democracies do not go to war with each other. Tyrants go to war with democracies (and each other), however.

As for Venezuela, it’s been controlled by a coup leader since Chavez took over, made especially clear by his permanent negation of any Constitutional restraint on his tenure. Despite its oil wealth, it is speeding into the economic dumpster (22% inflation, growing fast, with store shelves empty because retailers refuse to lose money on every sale under government controlled pricing), for reasons explained long ago by the first Secretary General of OPEC, a Venezuelan, who noted that every country dependent on the Devil’s Excrement had debased social and economic and intellectual conditions as a result of the ‘rentier’ mentality plentiful oil engenders. Chavez, of course, has the full proceeds of his (mostly expropriated) oil sales to throw around and foment mischief with, regardless of the state of the country. Whatta guy!

Yes, all that is true (with the exception of your assessment of China. A democracy? ROFL!)..however, it doesn’t counteract the fact that it was the natural resources that was the pivotal point in the conflicts I mentioned 😉 Hence my point that when the scarcity of said natural resources is taken away, most of the excuses for conflict either go away or become much less important 😀 There will always be the zealots who want to wipe somebody off the map “just because” (*cough* Iran vs Israel *cough*) but when nobody needs the natural resources they provide, nobody will care if someone preemptively turns them into a glass parking lot. Just sayin’.

[Brian H]

texaslabrat wrote:

texas is right to some extent — where war is caused by desperation or actual imposed inequality. This is the minority of cases, of course. Try coming up with examples. There aren’t many.

Coming up with examples where competition for resources was the underlying cause for war? Um, WWII pacific theater (Japan attacking the U.S. largely out of desperation from the embargoes set on it by America). Both Gulf Wars (do you really think we would be involved in the Middle East if we didn’t need the oil?). The current “cold war” brewing with China at the moment. The attempted assisted coup in Venezuela not too long ago. And that’s just in the past 60 or so years that we personally were involved in. Leaders might rally the troops with calls of service to a higher power or whatever…but in the end it’s usually about money or its equivalent in natural resources. Extremely cheap power mitigates that to a very large extent. As I said, exceptions to every rule but history is chock-full of examples of this.

A huge breakthrough in solar power would also be welcomed (I don’t see that one must exist to the total exclusion of the other)..though that obviously has a capped limit in the amount of power per square meter that falls on the earth. Every watt helps though! Especially given the very real possibilities of the decades it might take for FF to be fully commercialized and socially accepted….solar and other renewables can prove valuable in the mean time.
Japan wanted both the resources and its military adventures (the embargoes were not just for fun or out of meanness!), and couldn’t have them. You will note that since it began depending on brains instead of guns, it is able to afford all the resources it wants.

As for the ME, oil was important for the globe, not just the US. Saddam in charge of Kuwait and Saudi Arabia was not something anyone could accept. And the “cold war” with China is not a war, and won’t become one unless China decides to eliminate the local non-Communist competition. Democracies do not go to war with each other. Tyrants go to war with democracies (and each other), however.

As for Venezuela, it’s been controlled by a coup leader since Chavez took over, made especially clear by his permanent negation of any Constitutional restraint on his tenure. Despite its oil wealth, it is speeding into the economic dumpster (22% inflation, growing fast, with store shelves empty because retailers refuse to lose money on every sale under government controlled pricing), for reasons explained long ago by the first Secretary General of OPEC, a Venezuelan, who noted that every country dependent on the Devil’s Excrement had debased social and economic and intellectual conditions as a result of the ‘rentier’ mentality plentiful oil engenders. Chavez, of course, has the full proceeds of his (mostly expropriated) oil sales to throw around and foment mischief with, regardless of the state of the country. Whatta guy!

Yes, all that is true (with the exception of your assessment of China. A democracy? ROFL!)..however, it doesn’t counteract the fact that it was the natural resources that was the pivotal point in the conflicts I mentioned 😉 Hence my point that when the scarcity of said natural resources is taken away, most of the excuses for conflict either go away or become much less important 😀 There will always be the zealots who want to wipe somebody off the map “just because” (*cough* Iran vs Israel *cough*) but when nobody needs the natural resources they provide, nobody will care if someone preemptively turns them into a glass parking lot. Just sayin’.

I wasn’t suggesting China was a democracy, only that it would be at war only when and if it decided to suppress the local democratic opposition (Taiwan, S. Korea, Australia). It is an ideological tyranny morphing into a kind of oligarchy. Check out de Mesquita’s lectures on the core contrast between the two models: essentially, how small a percentage of the country gets to appropriate Public Goods (defined as the gross output of all individuals living there). In tyrannies, a small fairly well off ‘Selectorate’ keeps an Inner Circle very well fed, which supports an individual tyrant who dispenses favors. Recently, China managed to change tyrants without actually killing the old one, for the first time. A very rare occurrence.

As for Israel taking out Iran, it wouldn’t glassify the country (though it could; Iran should be VERY careful about tweaking that wee tiger’s tail!) The dispute is not resource-based, though the restraint on a democracy defending itself against a tyranny may be. Which does not support the thesis that resource shortage causes wars, quite the contrary! Israel, like Japan, uses brains to easily earn and thus afford all the resources it can use.

[texaslabrat]

Brian H wrote:

I wasn’t suggesting China was a democracy, only that it would be at war only when and if it decided to suppress the local democratic opposition (Taiwan, S. Korea, Australia). It is an ideological tyranny morphing into a kind of oligarchy. Check out de Mesquita’s lectures on the core contrast between the two models: essentially, how small a percentage of the country gets to appropriate Public Goods (defined as the gross output of all individuals living there). In tyrannies, a small fairly well off ‘Selectorate’ keeps an Inner Circle very well fed, which supports an individual tyrant who dispenses favors. Recently, China managed to change tyrants without actually killing the old one, for the first time. A very rare occurrence.

As for Israel taking out Iran, it wouldn’t glassify the country (though it could; Iran should be VERY careful about tweaking that wee tiger’s tail!) The dispute is not resource-based, though the restraint on a democracy defending itself against a tyranny may be. Which does not support the thesis that resource shortage causes wars, quite the contrary! Israel, like Japan, uses brains to easily earn and thus afford all the resources it can use.

OK, thanks for the clarification re: China. I was worried about you for a second. And I didn’t mean to insinuate that Israel taking out Iran would be resource based (I thought I made that clear in my “zealot” preface, but I guess not)…but rather the fact that they HAVEN’T yet is a testament to the fact that we need Iran’s oil more than we need for Israel to be safe from a country that has repeatedly called for Israel’s complete destruction and that seems to be working on the means to accomplish that. Without oil in the equation, most of the world would turn a blind eye to whatever Israel felt it needed to do in the name of self-defense. Because the world DOES need oil, we in turn have turned a blind eye to much of the mayhem that Iran sows throughout the world in the form of funding terrorism and attempting to destabilize Iraq and Afghanistan (funded with oil money, btw). Because the world DOES need oil, we have a permanently stationed garrison in the Middle East which perpetually inflames zealotry against the West. On and on it goes. Extremely cheap power means all that goes away as excuses for conflict. If Iran gets nuked post “cheap power” era…doubt many of the West will lose much sleep over it. Hell, not many in the Middle East will either (Saudia Arabia, for one, will probably mark the day as a national holiday).

[Aeronaut]

texaslabrat wrote:

If Iran gets nuked post “cheap power” era…doubt many of the West will lose much sleep over it. Hell, not many in the Middle East will either (Saudia Arabia, for one, will probably mark the day as a national holiday).

Have you ever read a novel called “On the Beach”? We’re all downwind.

[Brian H]

Aeronaut wrote:

If Iran gets nuked post “cheap power” era…doubt many of the West will lose much sleep over it. Hell, not many in the Middle East will either (Saudia Arabia, for one, will probably mark the day as a national holiday).

Have you ever read a novel called “On the Beach”? We’re all downwind.
Nah; Russia and then China and then the Pacific get most of it. :cheese:

[Breakable]

I clearly have a difference of opinion with Brian about renewable energy, that it cannot provide for full humanity needs.
I believe its just a matter of cost versus reliability. Of course there are transmission issues, but every problem has a solution:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Supertanker_AbQaiq.jpg

For example some renewable technologies can complement each other:
http://www.altenergystocks.com/archives/2009/04/why_csp_should_not_try_to_be_coal.html

What I like about renewable’s is that after initial investment (which is quite big) they can provide for a long (nearly unlimited) time, with only maintenance costs which should be pretty low. And the initial investment is shrinking as new technologies emerge, existing technologies are refined and economies of scale are put in motion. For example http://www.nanosolar.com is selling panels to utilities witch cost below 1$ per watt. This is with their old 11% efficiency panels, new technology is already in the works with 16% efficiency. Residential panels are in the works.

The problem with most of USA funding going abroad for renewable’s is that there was more than a few decades for you to develop this technology, but it seems skeptics have prevailed, so now you need to play catch-up. Hopefully FF will solve this problem, what if not? Oil had the same problem for a long time.

[Henning]

From Nanosolar’s blog: 1kg CIGS = 5kg Uranium

CIGS is a copper based semiconductor apparently used in their product.

This should read actually 1kg CIGS >= 5kg Uranium because that’s calculated with their minimum warranty. Ok, now just say they’re using it only in Sahara, then we’ll shall divide that by five for other locations maybe? Then it’s still 1kg CIGS >= 1kg Uranium.

[Author]

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