'Enjoy life while you can'

[RenewableCandy]

Maybe this would be a more worthwhile focus - getting on the backs of the coal producers/burners AND get ALL countries to focus on NON COAL ELECTRICITY - which is what the majority is burned for?

The Aussies may very well go for that with their shiny new government (who, I think, would be deleriously happy to be bribed to leave the coal in situ and go solar, which might be why they joined Kyoto...) China has a huge Renewables programme (esp Solar HW, but also wind) but it's kind of being overtaken by events. Hmm the USA is just waiting for a new Prezz while the average Georgian waits for a drink, and Russia that's interesting haven't they just acquired one (Prezz that is not drink! Mr "Bear")? They're the only one of the 4 mentioned not to be clobbered with weather-related problems as I speak, unless the melting tundra is harming them directly somehow.

[kenneal - lagger]

Those who survive will be those who have done something to prepare for the future and are willing to fight to survive. If you just sit back and watch the telly like Lovelock's saying you will be amongst the first to keel over from malnutrition. It's called "Survival of the Fittest."

The more who do nothing the worse the situation will be for us, so the fewer who will survive. But, perhaps that's what he's after. Maybe he sees his duty as protecting Gaia from us marauding humans.

[Bandidoz]

I found this pile of crap from Lovelock to be pretty juvenile. He might as well have said, "No-one's listened to me and built nuclear power stations, so you're all f**ked. So there. Ha ha."

Leo Hickman's response to Lovelock...
http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/leo ... elock.html

But what I find more unpalatable about the tone of Lovelock's comments is his barely disguised glee that we are going to get what we deserve for not listening to his warnings about our bespoiling of the atmosphere - an 80% reduction in global population levels by the end of the century. There is more than an air of the Old Testament about what he says, namely, that we are going to be punished without mercy for our sinful ways. He may well be right, but why the "told you so" tone?

Lovelock draws on the popular analogy that we are now poised at a place in history similar to the one we found ourselves in 1938/39. A common foe lies ahead and we must muster a collective spirit not seen since the second world war. But instead of giving us a Churchillian "fight them on the beaches" speech as a call to arms, he just tells us to lie down and surrender.

Pretty much spot-on.

[fifthcolumn]

It's called "Survival of the Fittest."

If we go back to that it's going to be brutal. There isn't enough food to go around without civilisation. We'd all have to compete with each other as hunters.

How many of us can truly say that we could out-compete Ray Mearns in hunter-gathering?

How many of us can outfight the toughest hard-men AND out-compete Ray Mearns in hunter-gathering?

I think that we can count them on one hand.

[eatyourveg]

Ray Mears is nothing without his film crew

[RenewableCandy]

It's called "Survival of the Fittest."

If we go back to that it's going to be brutal. There isn't enough food to go around without civilisation. We'd all have to compete with each other as hunters.

Not quite. There are things that make you 'fit', even in extreme situations, that don't involve simply doing in all possible competition. Co-operation, and the ability to keep this going, can make people 'fit' just as much as simple physical strength. So can knowledge, or even the ability to entertain.

[kenneal - lagger]

When I said "Survival of the Fittest" I meant those most able to survive, those who can provide their own food, water and shelter. Hunter gathering won't work in most of the world now because there are far too many of us for the much depleted natural environment to support.

Cooperation is the way forward as far as I can see, and those who are providing for themselves will have to help those around them or be swamped when TSHTF. Things like Transition Initiatives, to give them the new name, are the way forward as far as I can see.

There will be people who don't prepare and there will be a huge drop in population. Let's hope that it's by "natural wastage", a lowering of the birth rate and higher mortality, rather than by violence. A hotter climate, but with more extremes, together with a reduction in medical services, will shorten many lives but that is better than life of violence.

[Little John]

Regarding renewables:

I agree with Lovelock's general position on this. At least as far as sustaining today's global population is concerned.

A barrel of crude oil is the result of immense heat and pressure operating on the decomposed remains of algae that grew and died over a given area of the surface of the earth for millennia. In this sense, crude oil is reconstituted, concentrated solar energy (as is everything else).

It doesn't take a physicist to work out that if we make a solar panel that is collecting solar energy over real-time, when one compares the amount of energy collected with an energy equivalent volume of crude oil, the amount of area that the crude oil is derived from was created over geological-time. There is really no contest. The same holds for all renewables.

This is not to say that renewables don't work (in the sense that the energy ratio means you get out more than you put in). They just don?t work for in excess of 6 billion people. It's a speed of supply problem.

One possible exception to the above might conceivably be space mounted solar panels where the amount of solar radiation per unit of area exposed is so much higher. However, to set up such a global energy infrastructure would constitute the greatest engineering challenge ever undertaken by mankind. It would require huge amounts of energy in terms of R&D to bring it up to operational status. All this at precisely the time when energy prices are going to go through the roof.

Lovelock is right. It?s too late. It?s too late from a resource depletion point of view alone. Never mind climatic considerations.

The very best outcome we could expect is an 80% reduced population living off renewables in about 100 years from now. However, if Lovelock is correct in his climate predictions, we may not even get that outcome.

Steve

[kenneal - lagger]

The amount of solar energy falling on the earth greatly exceeds the amount of energy we use. The problem is collecting it and distributing it to where it is needed.

The Sahara could provide most of Europe's needs but covering that area with solar panels in the time required would not be possible. Then the electricity would have to be distributed around Europe, not impossible, and some stored for overnight use.

All the USA's current liquid fuel requirements could be supplied by algae growing in salt lakes covering, I think its a seventh of, the Sonora Desert.

The UK could get most of its electricity from wind and tidal energy from our coastline. We wouldn't have to go into space.

The problem is that there isn't the political will to make it happen. There probably isn't the money either or the time. The same goes for nukes. We have the technology but not the will.

[biffvernon]

Covering the Sahara sounds a bit excessive - it's a big place. Perhaps we should be thinking more in terms of the area of a few golf courses rather than the world's biggest dessert.

(Why would Africans want to send their electricity to Europe? Might they not want, and deserve, to keep it for themselves?)

[RenewableCandy]

Covering the Sahara sounds a bit excessive - it's a big place. Perhaps we should be thinking more in terms of the area of a few golf courses rather than the world's biggest dessert.

Yer right. TREC-UK have worked it all out, and taken the case to Parliament!

The Trans-Mediterranean Renewable Energy Cooperation, an initiative of the Club of Rome, is an international network of scientists and engineers developing a collaboration amongst countries in Europe, the Middle East and North Africa (EUMENA) to take advantage of the truly enormous quantities of energy falling as sunlight on the world's hot deserts?and wind energy in those regions too.
TREC-UK is a group of volunteers who are interested in the 'DESERTEC' concept developed by TREC and aim to raise awareness of it in the UK and beyond.

Every year, each square kilometre of hot desert receives solar energy equivalent to 1.5 million barrels of oil. Multiplying by the area of deserts worldwide, this is several hundred times the entire current energy consumption of the world.

There are also significant amounts of wind energy in desert regions (see Sahara Wind).

The key technology for tapping in to this energy is 'concentrating solar power' (CSP), which (normally) means using mirrors to concentrate sunlight to create heat. The heat may be used to raise steam to drive turbines and generators in the conventional way or it may drive Stirling engines with generators. CSP is very different from the better-known photovoltaics (PV, sometimes called 'solar panels') and should not be confused with it. However, slightly confusingly, some CSP plants use mirrors to concentrate sunlight and then use PV panels to convert the concentrated sunlight in to electricity.

It ties in with, for example, AirTricity's idea of the HVDC cable network for offshore wind.

(Why would Africans want to send their electricity to Europe? Might they not want, and deserve, to keep it for themselves?)

They might fancy swapping some of it for a drink of our nice rainwater.

[Little John]

The amount of solar energy falling on the earth greatly exceeds the amount of energy we use. The problem is collecting it and distributing it to where it is needed.

The Sahara could provide most of Europe's needs but covering that area with solar panels in the time required would not be possible. Then the electricity would have to be distributed around Europe, not impossible, and some stored for overnight use.

All the USA's current liquid fuel requirements could be supplied by algae growing in salt lakes covering, I think its a seventh of, the Sonora Desert.

The UK could get most of its electricity from wind and tidal energy from our coastline. We wouldn't have to go into space.

The problem is that there isn't the political will to make it happen. There probably isn't the money either or the time. The same goes for nukes. We have the technology but not the will.

I don't wish to question the numbers implied in your post here uneccessarily. But I do think that the very optimistic claims you are making for renewables do require some substantiation. Please could you supply source references for the above?

Steve

[RenewableCandy]

The amount of solar energy falling on the earth greatly exceeds the amount of energy we use. The problem is collecting it and distributing it to where it is needed.

The Sahara could provide most of Europe's needs but covering that area with solar panels in the time required would not be possible. Then the electricity would have to be distributed around Europe, not impossible, and some stored for overnight use.

All the USA's current liquid fuel requirements could be supplied by algae growing in salt lakes covering, I think its a seventh of, the Sonora Desert.

The UK could get most of its electricity from wind and tidal energy from our coastline. We wouldn't have to go into space.

The problem is that there isn't the political will to make it happen. There probably isn't the money either or the time. The same goes for nukes. We have the technology but not the will.

I don't wish to question the numbers implied in your post here uneccessarily. But I do think that the very optimistic claims you are making for renewables do require some substantiation. Please could you supply source references for the above?
Steve

With pleasure, in fact Kenneal and I (and a few dozen others) wrote one of them!
Zero Carbon Britain (from the Centre for Alternative Technology in Wales)
The TREC people I just talked (wrote, sorry) about
The Renewable Energy Association
BWEA (British Wind Energy Association) Wind and Marine energy reports
DTI (now BERR) wave energy map (sorry can't find right now but the link's in one of my previous posts from a couple of months back) I think they did an Offshore Wind report too.
Happy bed-time reading!

[goslow]

Regarding renewables:

This is not to say that renewables don't work (in the sense that the energy ratio means you get out more than you put in). They just don?t work for in excess of 6 billion people. It's a speed of supply problem.

One possible exception to the above might conceivably be space mounted solar panels where the amount of solar radiation per unit of area exposed is so much higher. However, to set up such a global energy infrastructure would constitute the greatest engineering challenge ever undertaken by mankind. It would require huge amounts of energy in terms of R&D to bring it up to operational status. All this at precisely the time when energy prices are going to go through the roof.

Lovelock is right. It?s too late. It?s too late from a resource depletion point of view alone. Never mind climatic considerations.

The very best outcome we could expect is an 80% reduced population living off renewables in about 100 years from now. However, if Lovelock is correct in his climate predictions, we may not even get that outcome.

Steve

Considering 200 Ethiopians live off the energy of a single US citizen (is that the right statistic?), I think we have some leeway in terms of demand size conservation! Renewables can sustain a low energy but still technologically and socially advanced society, I firmly believe that is possible. Renewables are so underexploited, we can go a long long way with this.

Space solar power is energetically unfeasible. Launching all that stuff from the earth's surface will take perhaps just as much energy as ever might be produced by the PV cells. Unless you could set up PV plants on the moon and transport from their to low earth orbit, avoiding Earth's gravity well, but we'll never get as far as the moon now, and it would take ages! US plans to return to the moon are bound to be abandoned if their economy crashes, the Chinese might have a go at some point but they too will have to scale down their ambitions once peak energy hits.

I was dead keen on all things space when I was a kid, although we have a space station up there I don't expect we'll see the dream realised now of a space civilisation. Which is a bit ironic as that is probably the only way that mankind could continue into the future as an industrial society, by exploiting energy and materials in the solar system! Perhaps some small groups of enthusiastic rich people will manage it, but the rest of us will have to make do with what we can find on our home planet.

[21st_century_caveman]

Yer right. TREC-UK have worked it all out, and taken the case to Parliament!

Hmm, very interesting, thanks for the link.

As technofixes go HVDC seems to be one the better ones, but there could be a potentially even better one.
In a moment of creative imagination i linked the renewable energy and HVDC idea to something i had read many years ago by one my all time hero's Nikola Tesla about the wireless transmission of electrical energy, possibly using the natural resonance of the cavity formed between the earth and the ionosphere.
There doesn't seem to be too many technical details floating around so maybe its not possible, but imagine if it was.