Do we need to be preparing for Arctic cruising strategies because of Global Cooling

[Reefmagnet]

Originally Posted by GoingWalkabout

Reefmagnet said "All is not lost, however, as a simple solution to feed our need to consume energy in a fossil fuel devoid world is to create a worldwide grid of linked solar (and perhaps wind and tidal also) farms to solve the current problems with supply using these technologies."

Typical AGW nonsense. You obviously are not a nature preservationist since you don't care how many birds are slaughtered by your fanciful windmills. As for solar replacing fossil fuels the energy figures just don't add up. The land to power ratio is horrible and would end up making so much of our land mass unusable. As for tidal energy, good luck with that energy boondoggle.

I see you left out nuclear. Various forms of existing and yet to be created nuclear reactors can in fact replace most of our fossil fuel energy. Disposal has always been the issue however with creative solutions as inner earth and or space disposal methods I'm convinced the trash can effectively be put out of harms way.

Hey, stop picking on my crackpot theories.

But, alas what you say is true. For example, if the entire land area of the USA was covered in solar panels, only about 1/6th of current energy requirements for the country could be met if no other alternative power sources existed. Of course this would tail off dramatically at night and on rainy days.

I do believe the ultimate problem with nuclear power is that there are insufficient uranium fuel reserves to make this form of energy generation plausible for long term use. I could be wrong, but nuclear fuel would run out well before fossil fuel with any widespread nuclear generation take up.

[jackdale]

The current predictions for Arctic sea extent.

https://www.arcus.org/sipn/sea-ice-outlook/2016/june

[jackdale]

Here is a crewing opportunity for a NWP passage.

http://www.cruisersforum.com/forums/...ml#post2167861

[GordMay]

Originally Posted by Reefmagnet

... I do believe the ultimate problem with nuclear power is that there are insufficient uranium fuel reserves to make this form of energy generation plausible for long term use. I could be wrong, but nuclear fuel would run out well before fossil fuel with any widespread nuclear generation take up.

Uranium is one of the world’s most abundant metals and can provide fuel for the world’s commercial nuclear plants for generations to come.
The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in 2010 jointly produced a report on uranium resources: "Uranium 2009: Resources, Production and Demand." It says that uranium resources are adequate to meet nuclear energy needs for at least the next 100 years at present consumption levels. More efficient fast reactors could extend that period to more than 2,500 years.
➥ How long will the world's uranium supplies last? - Scientific American

A more complete analysis ➥ Uranium Supplies: Supply of Uranium - World Nuclear Association

[Reefmagnet]

Originally Posted by GordMay

Uranium is one of the world’s most abundant metals and can provide fuel for the world’s commercial nuclear plants for generations to come.
The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in 2010 jointly produced a report on uranium resources: "Uranium 2009: Resources, Production and Demand." It says that uranium resources are adequate to meet nuclear energy needs for at least the next 100 years at present consumption levels. More efficient fast reactors could extend that period to more than 2,500 years.
➥ How long will the world's uranium supplies last? - Scientific American

A more complete analysis ➥ Uranium Supplies: Supply of Uranium - World Nuclear Association

Sunlight lasts forever (from Earth's perspective). And doesn't produce waste that will remain hazardous unless safely contained for one quarter of a million years.

Sent from my SGP521 using Cruisers Sailing Forum mobile app

[Exile]

Originally Posted by Reefmagnet

Sunlight lasts forever (from Earth's perspective). And doesn't produce waste that will remain hazardous unless safely contained for one quarter of a million years.

Sent from my SGP521 using Cruisers Sailing Forum mobile app

A potentially significant technological development in solar power:

LANL discovery could launch next generation of solar power - The Santa Fe New Mexican: Features

[fryewe]

Originally Posted by Exile

A potentially significant technological development in solar power:

Thanks for the link...

“To be honest, we do not know the precise reason why they flipped,” he said. “But what it resulted in was three times more efficiency.”

Sometimes great discoveries are serendipity. Penicillin, anyone?

Ultimately, Gupta said, they hope to create a prototype with enough voltage to channel energy from the sun to split water, spinning off a hydrogen and oxygen atom to power a fuel cell.

Would be a truly amazing capability...but you'd still need storage for nighttime and cloudy day ops. And the power density would need to be sufficient for small boat use.

By the end of the year, LANL expects to have a prototype that can convert 4 percent more electricity from sunlight, which at 18 percent efficiency is closer to the common 20 percent to 22 percent of conventional silicon cells.

The pace of development of these crystals has been slow, and the unexpected breakthrough has been a boon, but a similar "what just happened?" moment may be needed to make this capability available and economical.

[jimbunyard]

Originally Posted by adoxograph

How does a laser relate to relativity as you said in your original post? Your quoted Einstein (1917) paper has nothing to do with relativity; and lasers, which did not exist before the 50's is only one outcome from the principles discussed in this paper. Einstein did not even imagine lasers in this paper, although he was an astrophysicist with a vivid imagination. With your logic Einstein predicted GPS as early as 1916.

What about your idea about Dark Matter? Man, I really do not want to go there right now.

But feel free to enlighten us. If you need assistance I could point you to some of my and my colleagues peer reviewed papers in the Astrophysical Journal.

Btw. I really do not care whether you accept my credentials or not, but please try at least to grasp the basic science of whatever you post.

You are either very sloppy or just parroting. Either way it might be a good idea to be more precise in your posts and accept that your memory has failed you in this one.

Do you really want me to take your post apart piece by piece and show you where you were wrong? Really? Are you sure?

Well, I believe I admitted that I was wrong about that in the post to which you are responding...though you missed a good opportunity to support your position that technology is the answer to the 'energy problem' (which I assume you do since it appears you, in a rather round about way, are arguing against my position that it is not, at least not by itself). That is, if I understand what I've read about it, though old Al did “not even imagine lasers in this paper, [Zur Quantentheorie der Strahlung (On the Quantum Theory of Radiation)] although he was an astrophysicist with a vivid imagination”, (though I find it a bit difficult to believe that even an esteemed astrophysicist as you have a direct link to his imagination) there is no possible way to foresee which innovations will have, either alone or in who-knows-what configurations, technologically revolutionary implications. I just don't think they will, and have merely asked for an example of one, or even a theoretical one, that shows some promise, to persuade me to think otherwise. I could just have easily chose 1960 (or more than half a century!), and lasers would have been included.


My 'idea about dark matter' was a two pronged attempt at humor. One, to draw attention to the lack of imagination in the naming of the two ...things...what are they again, unseen matter and unseen energy, or is it the other way around (more lame humor), by I assume the astrophysicists who discovered them, and two, to draw attention to the folly of relying on an unknown technology to address a known problem. Please, pardon me if I upset your delicate A/P feelings with my vulgar insensitivity.


Given the average density of dark matter near our solar system of 6x10-28 kg/cm3 , I would hazard a guess that the energy required to concentrate it, whatever it is, enough to make anything at all from it would far
exceed any advantage it had as a material. As for 'dark energy' maybe you could use your astrophysical skills to explain to us all, in a Faradian way, roughly what it is and/or how it operates.


Glad we agree about the credentials, as I said, “ lest I question your credentials, (as if, of course, that matters).”


Sloppy or parroting (is that somewhat synonymous with trolling?), this is an open forum, I'm generally working off memory. When I get something wrong or mixed up I hope somebody catches it and straightens me out. I'm also not above putting (what I think are obvious) non sequiturs and/or rather dubious claims for a variety of reasons, usually to advance or stimulate the discussion, though none of them are meant to be openly offensive, derogatory or inflammatory. (Though that is obviously a bit subjective.) Most often they're missed or ignored entirely.


So, while you're welcome to “to take your [my] post apart piece by piece and show you where you were wrong” (I've only asked twice), I'd prefer you address the actual point of the post with some science-based facts backing your opinion with what is wrong with said point.


It would be an improvement over the 'Wolf Larsen's 'Ghost' fo'csle crews' method of argument' (The louder and more often something is repeated, the truer it is) so common in todays' world...

Originally Posted by Reefmagnet

Well, I don't know if I'll be run over by a bus tomorrow. But that won't stop me crossing the road.



Ok, here's a crackpot theory for you. All organisms on the planet have evolved to fill a niche. Human societies, almost without exception, have utilised fire. Perhaps our niche is to consume energy. Sound crazy, yes? Well, pause and think about it for a moment. Prior to humans, all excess energy collected in the environment. Vast forests, dead wood, lakes of oil, reservoirs of gases and stratas of coal. This vast store of energy collected over many, many millennia and was reaching the point where it posed a very real risk to endangering all life on earth. It endangered life by locking up carbon. Carbon vital for maintaining a temperate climate and for providing raw building material for all plant life. It also resulted in an extremely volatile, high fire risk environment. In simple terms, humans simply returned the CO2 to the environment in a controlled manner that plants had previously extracted.

So, along comes humans, to solve the problem. They consume this excess energy, releasing the by products back to the natural cycle. In fact we become so good at filling this niche that not only do we loose most of our hair (because we can just light a fire to keep warm) but we are so efficient that no other species, aside from Neanderthal man of course, evolves to compete with us in this niche.

Fast forward to today and we have become efficient beyond belief in returning the by products back to the environment. So to answer your question: When the energy runs out, the niche disappears and human populations will shrink en-masse, just as with any other organism that has it's niche disappear.

All is not lost, however, as a simple solution to feed our need to consume energy in a fossil fuel devoid world is to create a worldwide grid of linked solar (and perhaps wind and tidal also) farms to solve the current problems with supply using these technologies.


Sent from my SGP521 using Cruisers Sailing Forum mobile app

Yeah, but I bet (unlike so many in my area of the US) you look before stepping out, and stop if a 6000 lb vehicle (or bus) is coming down the highway....


Did you steal and paraphrase your theory from George Carlin? Shame on you, or conversely, hey, good one.




There is a vast literature on the many points you are bringing up with your 'crackpot theory' (hypotheses actually). And, enormously broadly, you are correct, and by the way, as far as you go, are to a certain extent agreeing with me.


But...you're 'putting the horse before the cart' in some ways. I'll try and keep things in the order of your hypotheses, but it may be necessary to skip around a bit for clarity's sake.


As far as anyone I've read knows, and in my experience too, all human societies and several pre-human (depending on one's definition) societies, used and manipulated fire. (An interesting aside, the Tasmanians, before they were, rather brutally, exterminated/assimilated by the 'enlightened' English, had, apparently due to their isolation, lost the ability to make fire, along with bows and arrows, and several other technologies that they had when they walked to Tasmania during lowered sea levels in the last ice age.) There is some relatively new data and research that seems to indicate that the use of fire may have had a lot to do with the evolution of small brained hominins into modern humans, not because we used fire to keep warm, but, because the physical energy used to collect, eat and digest raw food is so great, and the act of cooking food increases the available calories so much that, by the cooking of food, in the end our ancestors had a little spare caloric supply (or if you prefer, evolutionary advantage), which could be used to gradually develop larger brains. See 'Catching Fire: How Cooking Made Us Human' by Richard Wrangham 2009.


There is also some evidence that prior to the acquisition of fire, consumption of meat may have led to the beginning of the expansion of the hominin brain.


While we're on the 'human subject', the loss of (most) body hair is believed to be due to several factors, only one of which is the introduction of fire. Perhaps higher on the list is protection from parasites and parasite carried disease, increased cooling function via sweating, and sexual selection.


I'm not so sure what you mean by 'excess energy collected'. Maybe Adoxograph can chime in here to help me out, but it seems that reduced hydrocarbon formations you speak of are not excess energy stores, but a (by) product of earth systems reaching near-equilibrium. For example, prior to 2-2.5 billion years ago, atmospheric CO2 level was roughly 30 percent, while atmospheric oxygen was practically non-existent. With the evolution of photosynthesis, CO2 levels very gradually decreased, O2 level increased, first in the sea (resulting in almost all the iron we use today), and then in the atmosphere. The eventual sequestering of almost all the CO2 resulted in (probably several) global ice ages on a scale almost unimaginable , making the tiny (globally speaking) 10,000 year ice ages of the last few million years look like frost on your windshield on a late spring cold snap in comparison. This is a rather important point in the discussion; it is not a coincidence, in my opinion, that the huge, protracted climatic fluctuations of the distant past have become less extreme and protracted, in a loose correlation with the increasing biodiversity of Earth's life. It appears that Lovelock's much-maligned, misunderstood and misappropriated Gaia hypotheses has a bit more than a grain of truth to it...


As for stored carbon 'creating a very real risk of endangering all life on earth...by locking up carbon ', well... the rocks don't tell that story. There is increasing evidence that CO2 induced warming is at least partly responsible for both the Permian (95 % of sea life, 60% of terrestrial life) and the K-T (dinosaurs and 75% of everything else) mass extinctions. Of course both of those events had diverse implications, the first wiped out most mammal-like reptiles, setting our ancestors back who-knows-how much, the second put the ball back in our court by eliminating the giants...




Not so sure I agree with your definition of 'efficient', but I get the point, and am glad it seems you're starting to see mine.


Not so sure if you're being tongue-in-cheek here or not, but we've come full circle. The 'problem' is fossil fuels unparelleled excellence as a source of stored power, or energy density. Nothing else even comes close on all counts (try running your car with a mini-nuclear reactor for instance). I'm not of the persuasion that there is a vast conspiracy by the fossil fuel industries to suppress development of 'alternative' energy technologies, I just don't see the technologies at the level that is needed. Like I said, we've got maybe 4-500 years, maybe that'll be enough time to figure it out.


Otherwise, it's back to the ox-cart...hopefully we'll remember, continue and expand on the good stuff though; medicine, the arts, education, true husbandry etc., the real value-heavy contributions of the human mind...


Thats looks like about 500-600 words, so I hope you're feeling a little vegan...

[Exile]

Originally Posted by fryewe

Thanks for the link...



Sometimes great discoveries are serendipity. Penicillin, anyone?



Would be a truly amazing capability...but you'd still need storage for nighttime and cloudy day ops. And the power density would need to be sufficient for small boat use.



The pace of development of these crystals has been slow, and the unexpected breakthrough has been a boon, but a similar "what just happened?" moment may be needed to make this capability available and economical.

For those with a less -- shall we say -- "realistic" approach to these issues, some reality & history from the U.S. Energy Info Admin. about the different types of energy that have become available and commonly used over time.

Fossil fuels have made up at least 80% of U.S. fuel mix since 1900 - Today in Energy - U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA)

We can all hope for alternatives such as renewables, nuclear, etc., but in the meantime we should be grateful for technological developments in fracking technology that have provided an abundance of cleaner natural gas as we attempt to transition away from fossil fuels.

[jackdale]

Originally Posted by Exile

We can all hope for alternatives such as renewables, nuclear, etc., but in the meantime we should be grateful for technological developments in fracking technology that have provided an abundance of cleaner natural gas as we attempt to transition away from fossil fuels.

We are somewhat in agreement on this.

BTW - natural gas is a fossil fuel.

[fryewe]

Originally Posted by Exile

For those with a less -- shall we say -- "realistic" approach to these issues, some reality & history from the U.S. Energy Info Admin. about the different types of energy that have become available and commonly used over time.

The percentage chart is interesting, but the chart of energy consumption in BTUx10 to the 15th indicates the scope of the problem in transitioning to solar/wind/geo/unicorn technology.

- US energy consumption in 1950 was about 35 quadrillion BTUs per year, and much of the US lived in poverty, without electricity and indoor plumbing.
- By 2014 consumption was about 115 quadrillion BTUs per year, and everyone has a smart phone.

The US population is about 5 percent of the world population.
US energy use is about 20 percent of that used world wide (about 570 quadrillion BTUs per year).

If you assume the US can hold it's population nearly level, and reduce its energy consumption by 25 percent (to about 80 quadrillion BTUs per year), and the rest of the world somehow brings itself to the US energy consumption rate (stamping out poverty (yay!!!) through energy use...the only way!!!), 19 times that reduced US energy use rate would be required.

That's about 1500 quadrillion BTUs per year...almost 3 times the current world wide energy consumption rate.

That's not going to happen with renewables.

An open NWP will allow more efficient transfer of coal, oil, and gas to regions in need of it. I say it can't happen fast enough. Go-o-o-o, global warming!!!!

[Lake-Effect]

Originally Posted by fryewe

If you assume the US can hold it's population nearly level, and reduce its energy consumption by 25 percent (to about 80 quadrillion BTUs per year), and the rest of the world somehow brings itself to the US energy consumption rate (stamping out poverty (yay!!!) through energy use...the only way!!!), 19 times that reduced US energy use rate would be required.

That's about 1500 quadrillion BTUs per year...almost 3 times the current world wide energy consumption rate.

Some quibbles with your assumptions and numbers:

• having a cellphone is not equivalent to "not being poor"; the US and other developed nations still have poverty.
• other nations have comparable quality of life at a half or less of the per-capita energy use of the US or Canada

So it's not a given that the whole world needs to consume energy at 0.75 x the current US per-capita rate to achieve development and end poverty.

That's not going to happen with renewables.

Regardless of the assumed amount of energy required, no one is realistically advocating that this could be met in the near term with 100% renewables. So I'm not sure what your point is, other than stating that fossil fuel is still essential, which no-one really disagrees with.

[fryewe]

Originally Posted by Lake-Effect

Some quibbles...

Okay. Not unexpected. Leopards, spots, and all that...

...no one is realistically advocating that this could be met in the near term with 100% renewables. So I'm not sure what your point is, other than stating that fossil fuel is still essential, which no-one really disagrees with.

Perhaps you need to read more broadly. Numerous, repeated calls by leaders and spokespersons for various groups for the elimination of fossil fuels are in the public domain.

Or, maybe I should put more emphasis on "realistically" when I read your post. Their claims are unrealistic. Glad you agree.

[Lake-Effect]

Originally Posted by fryewe

Perhaps you need to read more broadly. Numerous, repeated calls by leaders and spokespersons for various groups for the elimination of fossil fuels are in the public domain.

Fossil fuels are essential right now, and their use should be phased out. These aren't incompatible thoughts.

[Exile]

Originally Posted by jackdale

We are somewhat in agreement on this.

BTW - natural gas is a fossil fuel.

Yes, and the cleanest burning of the three main sources of energy according to the recently posted charts, the others being coal and petroleum of course. It's not a question of what we may prefer, but the fact that natural gas is the least harmful to the environment as compared to the only other realistic alternatives.

Should pessimism about MMGW and optimism about alternative fuels both be borne out, then natural gas could become a godsend for whatever time it takes to make the transition.

Originally Posted by Lake-Effect

Fossil fuels are essential right now, and their use should be phased out. These aren't incompatible thoughts.

No, but what often is incompatible is the lack of awareness or maybe recognition of the dominance and indispensability of fossil fuel energy for the past century or so, the obvious technological problems with alternative sources at this time, and then of course the mindless targeting of fossil fuel cos. for derision, scorn, and now attempted govt. intimidation. At the very least oil cos. could be viewed as 'necessary evils,' but given the indisputable benefits that fossil fuel energy has brought to the world along with the negatives, and given our absolute dependence on these energy sources, I really don't understand why even this attitude persists. If and/or when we transition to alternatives, I wouldn't be surprised if these same cos. -- in the business of supplying energy after all -- are the ones supplying much of that alternative energy.