Ask Slashdot: What If We Don't Run Out of Oil? 663
symbolset writes "The Atlantic recently ran an in-depth article about energy resources. The premise is that there remain incalculable and little-understood carbon fuel assets which far outweigh all the fossil fuels ever discovered. The article lists them and discusses their potentials and consequences, both fiscal and environmental. 'The clash occurs when renewables are ready for prime time—and natural gas is still hanging around like an old and dirty but reliable car, still cheap to produce and use, after shale fracking is replaced globally by undersea mining of methane hydrate. Revamping the electrical grid from conventionals like coal and oil to accommodate unconventionals like natural gas and solar power will be enormously difficult, economically and technically.' Along these lines, yesterday the U.S. Geological Survey more than doubled their estimate of Bakken shale oil reserve in North Dakota and Montana to 7.4-11 billion barrels. Part of the push for renewables over the past few decades was the idea that old methods just weren't going to last. What happens to that push if fossil fuels remain plentiful?"
global warming (Score:2, Interesting)
what happens is we continue to convert carbon from lumps of matter stuck safely away under the ground to free floating carbon in the atmosphere and we slowly cook ourselves in a greenhouse of our own making, of the additional energy absorbed in the atmosphere doesn't cause such dramatic weather extremes that we starve/drown/fight each other to death first!
Re:Electric offers many advantages (Score:4, Interesting)
One thing I've always wondered about regarding large desert solar arrays, is what happens when there's a sandstorm? I mean, what fills the generation gap when the sky is blanked out, and how does sand get removed from the array afterwards? Are the panels safe from damage from the scraping of sand being blown about or will this damage them? Will the weight of deposited sand after a sandstorm cause them to break or collapse?
I think people assume solar arrays in deserts are a magical problem-free solution, and I understand not all deserts are prone to particularly bad sandstorms, but the sahara is and it's often cited as a place for such a solar array. Has any effort been made into researching and finding solutions to such problems?
Two possibilities (Score:2, Interesting)
We use all that oil to make ourselves a Blade Runner/Terra Nova/Modern Chinese environment, or we save it, preserve the planet and use the massive fossil fuel reserves responsibly for space exploration.
Re:We Wish (Score:5, Interesting)
The reason why not is obvious. Oil companies have their place in the markets, their sunk costs invested in equipment, technology, business processes, and distribution networks. Their interest is not in getting off oil as soon as it is possible, or practical. It is to stave off that transition as long as possible, to make sure that extracting and refining oil remains profitable right up until the last possible drop that can be produced and consumed is produced and consumed.
Presumably at some point, if they want to remain in the energy business, they will themselves convert to something else so that when there is no more oil that can be practically and profitably produced, they will remain in the market by diversifying.
So there's the time when environmentalists say we should transition (now) and the time when oil companies say we should transition (when oil is no longer profitable, when they say so) and what actually happens will fall somewhere in the middle, very likely much closer to the latter than the former, because when it comes to resolving conflicts of interest between the energy sector and interests of ordinary citizens, most Western governments have a pretty terrible track record.
Donny Deutsch (Score:2, Interesting)
Watched the weirdest conversation on @MorningJoe last week while flipping my way up to CNBC-about Winston Churchill changing the British fleet from coal to oil and causing the carve out of Iraq and the eventual radicalization of islam, was the smartest thing i'd heard all week but my brain couldn't compute that it was on MorningJoe......It was the first time i realized Donny Deutsch is actually a huge brain (was between him and The Atlantic editor) of course Joe just uhmed and ahed and cracked dopey jokes.
- https://www.facebook.com/LivePoliticalChat/posts/481408365263616
Re:Electric offers many advantages (Score:4, Interesting)
The SEGS http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_Energy_Generating_Systems [wikipedia.org] in California near Edwards Air Force Base uses pressure washer systems to wash sand and dust off the heat-concentrating mirrors. They use water from the local desert aquifer which is running out. They also use water from that aquifer to cool the condensers on the output side of their steam turbine setup since there's no convenient river or ocean to dump the heat into.
Re:We Wish (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:We Wish (Score:2, Interesting)
And the basis of your math for your extremely well researched hypothesis: 'and quadrupling the price of electricity and fuel (or something)' is??
I am having solar panels installed AS I TYPE THIS. A 5KW array will meet 90% of my needs and pay for itself in less than 10 years with current federal incentives or about 13 years without incentives. Even without incentives, that represents a 5.5% return on my money (assuming electricity prices remain FLAT for 13 years--good luck with that).
Anyone who lives in a sun-belt state and can afford to buy a house can afford to install solar panels and have the panel cost rolled into their mortgage. The increase in mortgage payment will be more than offset by the decrease in their electric bills.
TODAY the economics are right and the technology are right for a large fraction of Americans to reduce their consumption of electricity from the grid by a very large fraction. No it doesn't completely eliminate 100% of fossil fuel usage, but it makes significant, incremental progress one house at a time without requiring large infrastructure changes or trillions of public tax dollars.
Re:We will (Score:5, Interesting)
I am a physicist with no stake in nuclear energy. I doubt fusion will be better than /effective/ fission, at least for a very long time (we'd have to get to aneutronic fusion for it to be significantly better). But the good thing is that fission is /actually/ pretty darned good. Fast breeders, traveling wave, and LFTR (especially) offer enormous advantages over current designs. Heck, even more conventional modern designs are much safer. But we'll be stuck with the old ones (or nothing) because even the slightest accident (if judged by demonstrated fatalities, i.e. none in the case of Fukushima!) means the developed world runs away from nuclear power as fast as they can, largely because they don't understand it (physics is hard). Natural gas explosions happen, um, every single day and kill several people every year (and those are just the direct deaths, not counting global warming, etc).
And in spite of huge explosions rivaling or exceeding high-profile terrorist attacks, the world is running in a full sprint /towards/ natural gas. Germany, Japan, the US... Abandoning nuclear and building natural gas power plants. Why? Probably because everyone kind of understands it. People cook with it, heat their homes with it. Nuclear still has the stigma of the Cold War nuclear annhilation, but the irony is that most newer nuclear power plants (LFTR specifically) aren't well-suited to the nuclear weapons industry.
And by the way, nuclear is cheap. What makes it expensive is delays. Delays caused by endless lawsuits of people utterly afraid of nuclear power. And so we CAN'T build new nuclear power plants. Instead of taking 3-4 years, they take maybe 3 decades as construction is stopped by the courts until being given approval to proceed. At, say, 10% interest rate, over 25 or so years that increases the cost by /an order of magnitude/ over what it would be with a quick construction. That is 90% of the reason for the supposed high cost of new nuclear power. This is cited by opponents of nuclear power as reason for why we should oppose nuclear power, but that is, of course, a self-fulfilling prophecy because lawsuits and political opposition slow down new construction. Meanwhile, we're doubling and soon tripling the carbon dioxide levels. Old nuclear power is cheap, still, because it has been operated for many decades and like renewables its upkeep and "fuel" cost is very low. Which is partly why utilities don't like them, since they have big upfront costs (like renewables) and the lack of fuel costs isn't a huge deal for them since they can just pass that on to the consumer. Both nuclear and renewables have too long of payback periods to satisfy investors wanting 10,15% annual returns. But for an economy growing at a moderate rate, even 5% return is plenty.
There's enough thorium to last hundreds of millions of years. We most certainly won't be the same species by the time we run out of nuclear fuel, and because of the recycling of the Earth's crust, there'll be more available by the time run out. Of course, the easiest to get stuff is still plentiful, and the tiny contribution of fuel costs to nuclear power generation is why thorium isn't looked at more closely. Also, LFTR reactors can burn up our old nuclear waste, so building new LFTRs would actually /reduce/ the long-term nuclear waste. They can burn up all the long-term waste so that only medium-term waste (which decays fairly rapidly, i.e. half-lifes of decades instead of thousands of years) is produced, which we can deal with until it decays to low levels.
That said, I support renewables. An idea I'd like to see more of is hybrid geothermal and photovoltaic power plants co-located using the same infrastructure. Geothermal can act as storage or backing power for when the sun don't shine, and solar makes geothermal last longer. Solves lots of problems.
Re:We Wish (Score:4, Interesting)
No, you absolutely do not get it. It's not "Republican" or "Democrat" doing it, go back and read what I wrote!
I get it, media brainwashes you in to thinking there is still a difference. There is no difference, and it does not take a whole lot of investigation to see what has been happening. The people pulling the strings want you to think that way. They pit us against each other any way that they can in order to keep us from looking at them! You fell for it hook line and sinker. Will you continue to be duped or look around and see what's happening? I will warn you, the rabbit hole is deep and pretty scary.
Nearly everything you hear on main stream media regarding politics (foreign and domestic) is propaganda. It's rhetoric convincing you that they are right to do what ever they want to do.
Example: Yesterday it was reported that most of the anti Assad regime are the same terrorists we went to war with in Afghanistan. Today, Obama want's to give them arms. The rebel forces have used chemical weapons at least 3 times but you have to go to foreign media sources to find that out. Assad has used none that we can prove, nor will you find any references to this in foreign media. The guys the president now want's to back with weapons (in addition to the billions of US tax dollars he already gave them) broke his proverbial line in the sand.
It's to the point now, where they don't even try to follow their own rhetoric. They are shitting on you and your fellow humans.