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Caius -> RE: So, when will industrial civilization collapse? (5/19/2010 4:31:23 PM)
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quote:
ORIGINAL: Dubbelganger
For Caius: "People tend to think of "alternatives to oil" as somehow independent from oil. In reality, the alternatives to oil are more accurately described as "derivatives of oil." It takes massive amounts of oil and other scarce resources to locate and mine the raw materials (silver, copper, platinum, uranium, etc.) necessary to build solar panels, windmills, and nuclear power plants. It takes more oil to construct these alternatives and even more oil to distribute them, maintain them, and adapt current infrastructure to run on them.
Each of the alternatives is besieged by numerous fundamental physical shortcomings that have, thus far, received little attention. These are discussed one-by-one in the questions that follow." http://www.lifeaftertheoilcrash.net/SecondPage.html Savinar addresses the alternative techs in fair detail.
I urge everyone who is interested in thus thread to read Savinar's treatise. IMO, some of his sources have ideological axes to grind, but, by and large, it's a fair and reasonably neutral discussion of the world's energy crisis.
Absolutely true with regard to certain of the alternative energy options, which is why I didn't treat them in any detail, or even mention any of the green options aside from solar. Solar is, however, the considerable exception to the rule. It was arguably a feasible option dating back to the seventies when the first explosion of photoreceptive cell research occurred. After the oil shortage of this period subsided, speculation on the industry fell away -- it simply was not a viable investment on the scale it needed to be researched and implement, though hundreds of arrays had already been built. Now we are finally returning to and finalizing that research. We have more efficient cells that are produced increasingly more cheaply, we have new designs for focusing the energy collected into practical, mechanical and electrical power and we have advancements like new forms of molten salt applications for storage needs.
Most importantly, solar is the option most free of the "derivative" link you speak of; for a relatively low investment in the collection and processing of the constituent elements, you get potentially dozens of years (moving up to century's worth in future generations) of useful life (and most of the materials can be recycled after the fact) and, depending on where the array is situated, you get consistent and boundless energy, limited only by the storage capacity (still one of the greater hurtles). Sure it will be a long time before oil can be largely removed from the equation, but that's more a limitation of our current infrastructure than any inherent shortcoming of the relevant replacement technologies. And remember, to a certain degree it doesn't matter if oil is consumed in the process, so long as there is a significant net production of energy. Oil and other fossil fuels simply have to be conserved in sufficient quantities to continue to serve in whatever catalyst initial functions they are needed. It's not really a question of which energy technologies will be employed in the future -- all the players, major and minor, that we see today will still be around, plus a few newcomers -- it's simply a question of their relative proportions in the theoretical framework of a truly self-sustaining system. Still, good points, on your part that is. I feel rather neglectful for not having addressed them myself from the start.
Also, since the topic is not simply about energy types but more broadly energy requirements and since the motive for my posting was more about questioning just how dire and inevitable the "collapse" will be, there is another factor that bears mentioning here: conservation. Regardless of what physical medium ultimately drives our energy needs, advances in the energy efficiencies of our technologies can play a major factor in mitigating those needs, as can energy rationing of many sorts, which may some day be seen as a necessity. There's also good news on another front -- one of the major factors that has driven sustainability concerns is our ever-increasing numbers, but there has been in recent time a mounting body of evidence to suggest that our population growth is slowing to a halt and that at long last our numbers may be stabilizing. There is great hope that our global may level out somewhere between 7 and 8 billion and only grow marginally form there. If this is true -- and it really is far too soon to tell with any certainty -- it casts all projected energy models in a new light. My point is that, serious as our problems are, and poor as the planning has often been up until this time, collectively from a variety of disciplines we are starting to signs that warrant some cautious optimism concerning our ability to support our increasingly complex society and its technological underpinnings into the coming centuries.
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