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Alternate energy sources

  • Thread starter Casper
  • Start date
A thread in the conservation forum has sparked the interest in my mind again. I am very interested in Alternate energy sources and have researched them in the past.

It is plainly obvious that we need a new source of energy. The oil crisis (which I predict to get better in the summer, just in time for the election) will ultimatly, and very quickly get worse, not better. Oil production, as in the refinement of crude into gas and other by-products, is currently at 98% globaly. It is not economacly feasable to open new refinerys in the US because of EPA laws, as well as treatys and legislation this holds true accross much of the world.

So, with that said, we will soon have to turn to a new source of energy. Solar energy isn't very feasible at its current state. Hydrogen production and transportation is extremly wastfull and ineficiant. Wind power doesn't produce enough power per acre of land taken up, and hydro-electricity is driven by the climate.

I do like the idea harnessing power from tidal movement. It is fairly constant, has un-told ammounts of energy, and is clean. The problem we have now is harnessing it. If anyone is familiar at all with the topic, in very simple terms hydro-electricity is formed by river water moving through a tunnel and turning a turbine. Why is it so difficult to do the exact same thing on a coastal scale?


P.S. Sorry about the spelling, done in a hurry.
 
Hydro electricity is not as efficiant in the long run(first of all). Second of all if you make a MUCH better energy machine, the government will kill you (I'm not joking either). Free energy is so VASTLY available you wouldn't believe.

First off, there's cold fussion (which has been done and can be done again), then there's aether, then you have anti gravity (which again, has been done and can be freely replicated).

But not to worry, we are at the peek of oil production and have no where to get more (haven't you noticed the prices of gas keep going up...hmmm...I wounder why...). Also, come December 21, 2012 we wont...ya know what, I leave that to the people to search for the answer to that on their own...
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The following are some links to articles posted on slashdot, instead of posting the direct link.  This is so you can read some of the comments made on the article(s) and get any secondary or tirtiary links form it.

Propane Vapour

Well... Sorta (batteries)

Algae as a source

Fusion Plasma Plant

Improved Solar Cells

POOP!

I find these all interesting because they are new developments, or changes in old ones.  Hope that keeps you busy for a while.  Lately, there've been a lot of alternative energy source articles, so it might pay of to check /. every now and then.

Edit-------------------
Just read this  
[b said:
Quote[/b] ]...First off, there's cold fussion (which has been done and can be done again)...
Actually, one group claims that it's been done, it's been attempted MANY of more times to  
smile_k_ani_32.gif
 no avail!
 
there is another HUGE sourse of fuel but im not sure how you would tap into it as its quite unstable in its "natural enviroment" and it is...........drum roll please.......methane hydrate. i know its another one along the lines of fossil fuels but but there are billions of metric tons of this stuff in the earths ocean floors. in fact a current theroy is that an underwater earthquake somewheres in the north atlantic kicked enough of this stuff up into our atmosphere to kick us out of the last ice age(its a greenhouse gas). i do believe it was first "discovered" down in the gulf of mexico, it looks like ice, and is basically methane molecules locked in a "cell" of frozen water molecules that let go when pressures drop or temps increase. its formed either under great pressure or very low temps underwater(theres lots of it fairly shallow around antartica). it has tipped over oil platforms and its seemed to have been linked to some of the disappearences in the bermuda triangle.

Rattler
 
Jon, I surely hope that you jest. Lets put to rest the Conspiracy theory stuff, I mean come on, the gov't has anti-gravity? The same conspiracy buffs say the us gov't is trying to take over the world with its millitary might, but they arn't going to use this marvalous anti-grav? Puh-lease.

Now, onto 2012. Are you seriously going to tell me that you are basing your thoughts on when the world will end (What is it this week? Shifts in the poles? No wait, the Mayans where astronamers, so its a giant comet right?) on the Mayan calender. Is it an astronomicaly important date? Sure, there is a neat alignment with the Milky Way and sun that will occur. Nothing more.

Why where we all supposed to die at 1/1/00 12.00.01 again? Wasn't the Y2K bug, although that was supposed to launch all the nukes in the world, it was something else, help me out.
 
"there is another HUGE sourse of fuel but im not sure how you would tap into it as its quite unstable in its "natural enviroment" and it is...........drum roll please.......methane hydrate. ..."  

Oh yeah, I remember watching something about that on the telly a long time ago...  But didn't it combust when it reached a low enough pressure or something?  Or am I thinking about something else.  Furthermore, I dunno how easy it'd be to get that stuff off of the bottom of the ocean floor without making the Earth more of an oven than it already is (it's a greenhouse gas)...  Hm, just a thought.
 
*Hands Jon his official "Tinfoil Hat Brigade" membership card* Good thing I had one of those around... *shrug*, just goes to show that I've sent too much time of slashdot.
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----Edited due to clarity striking----
 
like i said, im not sure how to take advantage of it. it does not cumbust at low pressure, its basically just an unusual form of normal methane produced in "extream" circumstances. its extreamly flamable but requires a spark to cumbust. the way global warming is going lots of the stuff is going to erupt out of the sea floor around antartica as the ice melts. its the cold not pressure from the deep sea that has allowed it to form there. also im not entierly sure we are totally to blaim for global warming. we may have speeded this round of it up BUT its part of the normal eb and flow of the planet. volcanoes spew hundreds of tons of greenhouse gases into the air every year(CO2 is a greenhouse gas in large quantities and is a large byproduct of volcanic eruptions).

as to the mention of the use of tidal energy, given what i understand of the current technology for it, you need a place with a great change between high and low tide. and the best areas for this arent neccesarily conducive to building, either do to extreams in climate or the remoteness of good sites.

Rattler
 
[b said:
Quote[/b] (Casper @ June 03 2004,7:08)]Jon, I surely hope that you jest. Lets put to rest the Conspiracy theory stuff, I mean come on, the gov't has anti-gravity? The same conspiracy buffs say the us gov't is trying to take over the world with its millitary might, but they arn't going to use this marvalous anti-grav? Puh-lease.

Now, onto 2012. Are you seriously going to tell me that you are basing your thoughts on when the world will end (What is it this week? Shifts in the poles? No wait, the Mayans where astronamers, so its a giant comet right?) on the Mayan calender. Is it an astronomicaly important date? Sure, there is a neat alignment with the Milky Way and sun that will occur. Nothing more.

Why where we all supposed to die at 1/1/00 12.00.01 again? Wasn't the Y2K bug, although that was supposed to launch all the nukes in the world, it was something else, help me out.
Take the time and read the ascenssion 2000 site and when you are done with their 21 chapter book, contact me. And then we'll argue points.
Here, I'll even give you the link Read it!
smile.gif


The proof's in the facts my friends.

As for the government having anti-grav, I never said that. I said it's been done before and can be done again. No where did I say the government has it.

But I will give you props for at least knowing or googling the date I gave.
 
  • #10
[b said:
Quote[/b] ]But I will give you props for at least knowing or googling the date I gave.

I read a ton of stuff involving all the conscpiracy theorys. Not that I buy any of it, just makes for fun fictional reading.

I will check into your site in the morning, I hope it turns out to be interesting. I did actually spend a few minutes just before typing this on the Mayan "predictions" and it seems no one is sure if its going to be a comet, "cosmic shift that changes our DNA [Jesus, how can anyone buy into that, from 2 helix DNA strands to 12 in the course of a few years???], or will it be the massive earthquakes and volcanic eruptions?)

Grin, at any rate, thanks for the link, I will read up and respond in the morning.
 
  • #11
Ah yes, methane hydrate.  The current poster child for doomsday scenarios.  

There are sufficient quantities of it 'buried' at the continental shelves that if suddenly cuts loose, the greenhouse effect will kill us all...  or so the theory goes.

Incidentally, it won't burn underwater, but it's the high pressures that enable it to be semi-solid at the relatively high temperatures.  The rising temperature of the oceans is the motivation for the doomsday scenario above- at some point, the pressure is not going to counteract the temperature, and huge blobs of methane are going to boil to the surface.  The release of pressure will cause even more methane hydrate to vaporize, and entire deposits will 'blow up'.  Further conjectures have the sudden shift in pressures causing earthquakes and tsunamis.

I am very interested in alternative energy sources as well.  And claiming as my alma mater the school that set off the whole 'cold fusion' fiasco, i made a certain amount of curious inquiry into the phenomenon.  The main problem was that the two 'scientists' called what they observed 'cold fusion'.  It's an interesting, if rather esoteric phenomenon, and may actually produce excess energy (many other have tried to repeat the experiment, with rather low degrees of success).  However, there's no justification for calling it fusion of any kind.

When they believed they were getting energy production, they should have reported it as such, and not called their supposed discovery 'cold fusion'.

Anyway, i think you are writing off wind power too quickly.  It will never provide for all of our energy needs, but if judiciously (and without legal entanglement) engineered, a non-trivial percentage of the population could get their power locally.  That's the big pro of wind power: local production, which forgoes the need for lossy transportation of the power over long distances.

I attended a seminar on campus a few months ago about the success of a 'community' wind turbine out on the cape, and wind turbines have come a long way in the last few years.  

As with any source of energy, there's a tradeoff.  In this case, it's really, really hard to convince people to put up a tall windmill in 'their backyard'.  One of the observations in the presentation was that in certain european countries, where people are a little less obsessed about their view and a little more community-minded, community-owned wind turbines are common and provide a remarkable fraction of the power.  In contrast, in the USA there aren't many civic turbines, and putting one up becomes a legal nightmare.

I believe the problem with tidal generators is that the power is very 'dilute', if you'll excuse the expression.  Not only is the tide a phenomenon with a cycle measured in hours, but the amount of power to be garnered from any random square meter section of ocean is very small with each cycle.  How do you capture the energy when it is so spread out?  Add to this the tremenduous strength and corrosion-resistance required for any mechanism in turbulent ocean water, and i think the engineering challenges are quite significant.

Of course the tradeoff for tidal power is loss of coastline and loss of habitat.

One idea that has always appealed to me, but is not likely to happen any time soon, is using solar energy- but collecting it from orbit, where it's not subject to clouds or night.  The tradeoffs here are relatively minor, except for the initial cost and.... and this is the real problem... the issue of transportation.  Beaming it to earth as microwaves or any other waves has all sorts of worst-case scenario nightmares.

If we ever refine the manufacture of carbon nanotubes sufficiently to build the space elevator (another cool campus presentation from the founder of http://www.liftport.com/), we can pipe it down the elevator.

So, it's either wait for super-nanotubes, or i think we're going to have to wait for useable fusion generators before we have a completely suitable alternative energy.  If that doesn't happen soon, we may all have to tighten our belts a bit.
 
  • #12
[b said:
Quote[/b] ]...Beaming it to earth as microwaves or any other waves has all sorts of worst-case scenario nightmares. ...
Can anyone say SimCity 2000?
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  • #13
I heard that the gas is a lot cheaper in US then here, up tp 4 times the total cost we pay here in Norway... how much is gas in US?
 
  • #14
[b said:
Quote[/b] (BjørnNorman @ June 03 2004,10:44)]I heard that the gas is a lot cheaper in US then here, up tp 4 times the total cost we pay here in Norway... how much is gas in US?
Bjørn,
Gas here in the US just hit the $2.00 mark, its hovering around $2.10 now, which everyone here considers insanely expensive! but yes, I know we STILL pay much less than many other parts of the world..

If I did the conversion correctly, $2.00 American is equal to
13.40 Kroner.
what are you paying over there?
Scot

http://www.xe.net/cgi-bin/ucc/convert

Oh..and thats $2.00 per US Gallon..
I assume you use liters?
and 1 US gallon = 3.7854118 liters.
so our gas costs 53 cents (.53 dollar) per Liter.
So the US cost of Gas is equal to 3.22 Kroner per Liter.
 
  • #15
i dont veiw methane hydrate as a "dooms day" thing. eruptions of it could cause tsunamis, but that only affects coasts and while it would be horrible if alot of the east or west coast was wiped out by some major waves BUT lets face it it wouldnt be the end of the world. man kind would survive. i also think man kind will survive the "greenhouse effect" caused by such an event. the population might crash but mankind would adapt. lets face it we are like roaches. our population is so large and so spread out that its going to take one heck of a blow to wipe us out. also a point that hasnt been brought up, which i find wierd being this is a forum about some highly evolved plants, homo sapiens are an animal that is constantly evolving like any other organism. adapting to or changing the enviroment to suit our needs is why we have succeeded, we should be able to adapt to a lousy raise in global temps. just because things have only been documented over the last 2000 or so years means NOTHING. thats a blink of the eye for organisms in most all ecosystems. nature can go through some rapid changes when its pushed to extreams. i think nothing short of a large metior or astroid splitting the earth in half will be truly effective in knocking us out for quite some time.

Rattler
 
  • #16
I disagree about humans evolving- at least in a good way.  It's pretty obvious if you look around that humans are de-volving.  We have successfully removed almost every selective pressure on our population, and each generation more individuals that previously wouldn't have lived to reproduce are doing so.  I for one wouldn't have survived two hundred years ago, or at least not very productively.  If the current miracles of medicine and technology are removed, there are few humans that could survive, let alone prosper.  

I have to agree that to kill all Homo sapiens would be extremely difficult (something that only us or something like a large meteor could do), but i don't think most of us see the survival of small hunter-gatherer communities as a viable option. When we talk of doomsday, it's usually in terms of the end of the world as we know it.
 
  • #17
I noticed no one mentioned solar power. If truly efficient solar cells are ever produced each of us could have a limitless supply of electricity on our roofs or in our back yards.
 
  • #18
Lauderdale i agree, we have mentioned solar BUT its not efficient enought yet and its extreamly expencive. if it ever actually becomes cost effective, which it should at some point unless something better comes along, it will be an excellent sourse of energy.

D muscipula i understand your point, but should some dooms day senario become true, which it will eventually, maybe 10,000 years from now but it WILL happen, wouldnt that be the selective pressure to kick homo sapiens into evolving again?

i think humans own worse enemy is our selves. our problem is, as a species, we are arrogant and above all else GREEDY. in theory communisum should be ideal, but because of our tendencies it will never work. someone will always be looking for more stuff or want to be the one with the power. another huge problem with humans, well stated best from the movie Men In Black, "A person is smart, people on the other hand, are stupid" or something to that effect i dont think ive watched the movie anytime in the last 6 months. the herd mentallity of ppl in large groups is something else.

Rattler
 
  • #19
[b said:
Quote[/b] (Casper @ June 03 2004,9:29)]I will check into your site in the morning, I hope it turns out to be interesting. I did actually spend a few minutes just before typing this on the Mayan "predictions" and it seems no one is sure if its going to be a comet, "cosmic shift that changes our DNA [Jesus, how can anyone buy into that, from 2 helix DNA strands to 12 in the course of a few years???], or will it be the massive earthquakes and volcanic eruptions?)

Grin, at any rate, thanks for the link, I will read up and respond in the morning.
Ya, definitly check out chapet 2 about the Eqyptions, some good reading there!

As for the DNA helix, there are already people out there with 3 helix DNA. And don't worry, it's not going to 12, 3 is the maximum homosapians will ever see.

AND FOR D muscipula! going with the methane hydrate killing us all, see my "spoof" on that at: http://www.angelfire.com/darkside/wolverine/deathtothecows.html

This is right up your alley/
 
  • #20
tri-helix DNA....Really....Somebody has been watching too much sci-fi channel.

There are a couple of major problems with solar energy that people don't generaly adress. Firstly the materials those cells are made out of are not exactly environmentaly friendly. Same goes for any sort of large scale hydrogen fuel cell. Secondly, there are storage issues. Not just over night but seasonaly; it is very difficult to produce solar energy, even in the tropics, during the rainy season.

The big problem here is the requied infrastructure changes to implement any sort of alternate energy solution.
 
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