Comments on: Sustainable energy

By: Carrie Jayes

Carrie Jayes — Mon, 11 Oct 2010 08:01:54 +0000

It seems that we are facing a disaster that we likely will be able to get through if proper actions are planned and implemented. While it is true that oil just don’t run out easily, the prices just rise, we must look for alternative sources for this fuel. And also, we must turn to renewable energy sources in order for us to have sustainable energy.

By: Michael

Michael — Mon, 11 Oct 2010 05:57:58 +0000

Energy equations looks complicated however if we can change a bit of lifestyle, a bit of architecture of house and buildings,reducing energy by more efficient devices, reducing travel by proper job placement and urban planning, by more efficient collection of solar wind, geothermal, hydroelectric and other alternative sources. Cooling the earth a bit by reforestation and reducing unwanted gas emissions should somehow make things in better shape.

By: Alexander Van de Putte

Alexander Van de Putte — Fri, 09 Jul 2010 15:30:08 +0000

Oil is not about to get much more scarce. Peak Oilist have always been wrong because they don’t model at the project level and each project (i.e., field) has its own specific aspects (porosity, oil density, etc.). This starts to sound like Nostradamus who predicted the end of the world. We have consumed about 1.3 trillion barrels and there are at least 6 trillion barrels left. Technology has brough the cost of developing oil resources down and will continue to so. BRINK (Brazil, Russia, Iraq, Nigeria and Kazakhstan) could (and it the case of Iraq “will”) bring large amounts of incremental oil production to markets. Some of these are really cheap (in te $3/barrel range). Foresight experts should focus less on opinion, but instead look at the facts. We just finished a 1 year project with the US National Intelligence Council on Global Recession, Recovery and the Future World Energy Architecture: Scenarios to 2030. Some factors will accelerate energy demand growth like population growth, economic growth in emerging markets, etc. On the other hand energy efficiency and new conventional energy technologies will drive cost down of production down. While this will put stresses on the environment we are not running out of oil nor will we experience a time that oil supply won’t be able to meet demand anymore. Remember: Energy transitions didn’t happen because of fuel scarcity. Instead, they were driven by technology.

By: Nanodot: Nanotechnology News and Discussion » Blog Archive » Acolytes of neo-Malthusian Apocalypticism

Fri, 08 May 2009 17:42:38 +0000

[...] Here are non-renewable resources, particularly fossil fuels, shown with upper and lower bounds: The key to understanding this graph, and indeed the entire LtG mindset, is that they assume there is a fixed amount of something we can’t do without, and then predict that if we continue to consume it, we must necessarily run out. Note, by the way, that even the “sustainable” prediction runs out too, as it must. It just takes longer. Perhaps one of the reasons that LtG got such play in the 1970s was that they were actually experiencing what was effectively “peak oil”, as I argue here. But the history since then actually bolsters the substitutability argument more than it does a finite-resources point of view. [...]

By:

Wed, 01 Apr 2009 15:33:02 +0000

I’ve invented the perfect microwave power transmission satellite. Solar is important to my
satellite to power the internal mechanisms but there are others higher energies also free 24 x 7.

T. Bone Pickens and other greed mongers want to line their pockets while I am concerned with
saving mankind and could careless if I make a penny !

By: Commodities Broker | Drumbeat: March 31, 2009 | Commodities Options | Commodities Futures | Commodities Prices

Wed, 01 Apr 2009 10:34:57 +0000

[...] Sustainable energy Everybody knows that the world is running out of oil. The predicted year of the peak varies from 2000 to 2100, but it is generally conceded that it won’t last forever. Of course, economists know that when you have a scarce resource, it doesn’t just suddenly run out: the price rises, more expensive sources or substitutes come into play, and so forth. So it’s unlikely to run out, but rather get more expensive. I would argue, however, that for most practical purposes peak oil occured in the 1970s. [...]

By:

Wed, 01 Apr 2009 02:25:40 +0000

I think the assumption that overpopulation is due to poverty is getting cause and effect mixed up. Cultures that overbreed are poor because of their overbreeding. This is encouraged by religions that want to keep their followers poor and ignorant, as wealth leads to education which leads to people abandoning religion.

By:

Tue, 31 Mar 2009 22:57:11 +0000

Certainly the ‘conventional-wishdom’ of sustainability of mainataining the static society is itself unsustainable. The exponential growth is indispensable but needs to be the nano-way, i.e., nano-baseed growth where production needs less energy, less stuff, generates less and /or no waste.That is the only sensible way out.

Apoint about population-rich people breed like pandas but probably consume like rabbits. If calculated in terms of consumption, it is not the population of the third world that is alarming.
Michael

By: J. Storrs Hall

J. Storrs Hall — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 21:52:36 +0000

A note about population: poor people breed like rabbits; rich people breed like pandas. If the third world is kept in poverty, population will be a major problem in the 21st century; if allowed to develop economically at even U.N. projected rates, the projections are for world population to flatten out by 2050. But bringing the third world up to U.S. standards of living (and thus down to U.S. population growth rates) means 2-3 doublings of world energy use.

By: J. Storrs Hall

J. Storrs Hall — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 21:45:00 +0000

Sorry, but the conventional-wisdom definition of “sustainable” is short-sighted and wrong. It’s a recipe for poverty and despair. A static society is one where doom-and-gloom takes over the zeitgeist, and with some justification. In a static society, the value of stealing increases (for the individual) relative to creating; moral values decline.

The historical pattern is clear: a society with exponential energy is creative and optimistic: it could go to the moon (and wanted to).

A society with flatline energy, just a generation later, is a slough of despond, awash in funk and fearmongering. Such a society won’t last; it isn’t sustainable.