Sailing to Byzantium

beev · Post by **beev** » 07 Sep 2005, 10:02

These nano solar pholtaics are strting to apper already, I believe. Price still quite high, but expect rapid drop reasonably soon

Having said this, I am stuggling to find any that have actually hit the market already. It would be better if I say that solar panels are already on the market, though quite expensive and not massively efficient. The nano variety are not likely to be much more efficient at first, but they will be cheaper and easier to install. In time, they are expected to make major advances in efficiency.

isenhand · Post by **isenhand** » 07 Sep 2005, 10:03

beev wrote:This is a real world full of real people who are really doing these things. Who is the "we" you keep referring to?

The human race, or at least the part of it that reads the posts.

The way I use it is meant to be a bit general. Sorry if you are confused.

macsporan · Post by **macsporan** » 08 Sep 2005, 00:59

Solar might not be as useful in England as in Australia.

There's no shortage of sunlight here, but I believe the English/European climate is rainy and unpredicatable compared to ours.

Surely wind generation is much more appropriate. I believe that wind is making massive strides in Europe.

Could one of you good people fill me in on the situation?

grinu · Post by **grinu** » 08 Sep 2005, 08:31

A work mates dad works in wind energy and apparently they did a study which showed that wind energy alone could provide more than enough energy for the UK. I presume that would need to be backed up with ways of storing it etc. and not sure where all the raw materials would come from, but there you go.

rhubarb · Post by **rhubarb** » 16 Sep 2005, 16:42

there is no way this ship (aka "civilisation") can be turned around. Its too big and clumsy and the bath is getting smaller. Maybe if we had outside help eg aliens and access to more free energy it might be possible but they do not exist.

What we can do to mitigate the catastrophe is to start a policy of world population reduction. Dont have to kill people but it will be uncomfortable. I guess shrinking the population by a couple of percent per year down to say a twentieth of todays would be about right.

A few hundred million people could probably live sustainably with a Western standard of living for everyone.

This is the only reasonable option in my opinion however I doubt it will happen. But nature will do it for us - painfully

isenhand · Post by **isenhand** » 19 Sep 2005, 07:40

rhubarb wrote:there is no way this ship (aka "civilisation") can be turned around.

Nope, but we can rebuild it from the ground up.

rhubarb wrote: Maybe if we had outside help eg aliens and access to more free energy it might be possible but they do not exist.

Doesn?t stop people looking for some sort of dues ex machina but I think such attempts are not helpful. We made this mess and its only us here so its only us that can get ourselves out of it. The quicker we start to realise that we are responsible for our actions the quicker we start acting responsibly. There is no one else to blame and no one else to help us.

rhubarb wrote: What we can do to mitigate the catastrophe is to start a policy of world population reduction. Dont have to kill people but it will be uncomfortable. I guess shrinking the population by a couple of percent per year down to say a twentieth of todays would be about right.

A few hundred million people could probably live sustainably with a Western standard of living for everyone.

This is the only reasonable option in my opinion however I doubt it will happen. But nature will do it for us - painfully

I would disagree. I think there is an upper limit but I don not think we have reached it yet. Every day we waste large amount of food (How much food is frown away by supermarkets because it is not up to standard? How much is wasted in people?s homes?). Fames are caused more by political reason than ecological ones. It not get rid of people that we need it doing things in a better way. One that does not destroy the world we live in. One that is in balance with the world (what others might say in a more ?spiritually enlightened? way).

snow hope · Post by **snow hope** » 19 Sep 2005, 09:15

I firmly believe we need to reduce the population. There are simply too many of us humans and we use up far too many resources. I broadly agree with what rhubarb said, except the bit about aliens.....

GD · Post by GD » 19 Sep 2005, 10:14

isenhand wrote: I would disagree. I think there is an upper limit but I don not think we have reached it yet. Every day we waste large amount of food (How much food is frown away by supermarkets because it is not up to standard? How much is wasted in people?s homes?).

There was a recent report that stated 33% (for the UK, and I think that was the sum of all of the waste you mention). As prices increase people will tend to waste less.
I think some hope can be taken from this (shocking) statistic.

isenhand · Post by **isenhand** » 19 Sep 2005, 10:57

Thanks, and it can be argued that we don?t need to eat as much as we do now. PO may well forces us to change the method that we use to farm but with growing food more locally I think we still have the capacity to feed more people. However, we should still look at stopping the growth; we just don?t need to kill people off.

peaky · Post by **peaky** » 19 Sep 2005, 13:53

macsporan wrote: I am uneasy with nuclear, very uneasy. But if there is no other way...

Of course there is another way - the way we had before nuclear energy

The real question is, how greedy for energy are we determined to be? 'Cos if we want more than can be supplied by renewables then we'll end up grabbing anything that holds out a chance of more power, so I reckon that we need to change our expectations. Personally, the idea of saying "Well, it's OK to fill the planet with even more nuclear waste that we still don't know how to dispose of just so that we can carry on living the way we want" is to hand a very poisoned chalice to future generations.

Bootstrapper · Post by **Bootstrapper** » 20 Sep 2005, 12:31

I found this interesting piece at Harper's Magazine

http://www.harpers.org/TheCubaDiet.html

Could this be a preview of how we'll be living in ten years?

Paul