Collapse film and Mike Ruppert

[awepittance]

I was lol because I don't believe you.

neither do the oligarchs who have the most invested in what's going on, thats part of why it's so scary. The denial is part of why the system continues to allow itself to be on such fragile ground

[Tricone RC]

 

its not just oil though it's resources in general. Where do you think they get materials to make cellphones and computers from? Mostly from slowly dwindling of 'rare earth' deposits in Africa. The only 'way out' i see right now is something like more nuclear power plants, but of course thats a horrible idea.

 

 

A lot of commodities will sort themselves out though. Known reserves of a huge swath of metals will only last us a few decades, but the moment the price spikes there's inevitably another round of exploration and a fuckload more deposits will be found. And once they do become prohibitively expensive, we can either close the cycle (i.e. recycle) or technology can offer a way out. We can use other shit to do the same stuff. Look at lithium - huge projected spike in use thanks to battery tech, but now there's even newer tech in the pipeline that would enable us to sidestep future shortages. The metals are unlikely to pose us any real difficulties. Even if we go all-out on nuclear, I don't think we'd ever literally run out of uranium, we'd just make the jump to closed-cycle techs. And there's a lot more uranium out there than what's encapsulated in reserve figures

 

 

We should be worried about our overdependence on fossil fuels, water, soil, fish... but not metals.

[caze]

They may be eminently solvable, but we are in imminent danger from overuse of resources. Plastics, manufacturing, shipping, transportation etc etc.

 

 

I don't agree.

 

Theoretical limit from wind is around 50-60% efficiency. Production capacity is then obviously based on wind farm distribution, storage tech, and distribution. Germany's 10% is output, not capacity (sorry it's 9%).

 

 

 

Sorry, you're right about capacity/output (I've seen figures ranging from 9% to 11% myself now - depending on what window you take, with output running at around 15% of capacity - well, I've seen figures of 11% to 18% depending...) , usually when I argue with wind proponents they throw out the capacity stats first.

 

When you say theoretical limit of up to 60%, I assume you're talking about the limit for a single generator operating in ideal conditions (i.e. the Betz limit)? That's not the limit I was referring to, Germany is already heading into diminishing returns territory, there's only so much power you can generate on land, and there's no point creating huge offshore capacity if you can't use it all. With current transmission availability they could probably push up to 15-20% of output, in becomes increasingly expensive to go up above this though as it will require massive investment in transmission and storage technologies (which just drives up the cost of wind, which is already heavily subsidised).

 

Anyway, these details are beside the point, the fact of the matter is that in shutting off around half their nuclear output they are now polluting more, and will continue to pollute more (and not just CO2, coal, especially lignite which they mostly burn, will put out more radiation in a year than a nuclear plant will over it's lifetime). Even as they bring on more wind, eventually the other half of the nuclear will be shut down, and their energy demand will increase (at best they'll be able to slow the acceleration with improved efficiency, offset the loss of nuclear baseload to some small degree). Germany will end up a net importer of power, and ironically most of it will probably come from nuclear in France, Poland and the Czech Republic.

[caze]

 

 

well the theory that Mike Ruppert puts forward is that mass genocide if we continue on the track we're on now is inevitable, so im not really sure what you mean, i'm just saying an individual learning how to sustainably live is a really good idea not only to learn now but to pass on the skills to children/ future generations. Do you have a rational disagreement just on the very last point I made? Or is just more a knee jerkish anti-hippy kind of approach?

 

Well obviously I don't agree that mass genocide will result from issues relating to peak oil (or other resource usage that you've talked about). What I mean is that it would be inevitable if we were to solely implement so called sustainable solutions to try and solve the problems we actually do have. World population is steadily increasing, it's already too high to successfully handle our energy and food requirements solely from non-reality based solutions like renewables, organic, permaculture, etc. The only way to successfully implement those kinds of strategies would be by wiping out a sizeable chunk of the world's population. Thankfully no-one that matters is buying the notions of green utopianism, so we're cool on that front for the time being.

 

I don't have any rational disagreement with improving energy efficiency, or improving crop usage and better protecting soil, forestry, waterways, etc. That's all shit we should be doing as a matter of course, it's pissing in the wind though. Usage of fossil fuels makes up over 80% of world energy consumption, and it's continued use is the largest existential threat to our species since we first colonized the planet. Peak oil is a laughable distraction.

[caze]

 

Reprocessing comes with its own issues - and as you note, storage facilities still need to be constructed - and security needs to be taken into consideration, due to proliferation concerns. I'm assuming you're talking about thorium as an alternative, the only other alternative is plutonium, which of course is derived from uranium. Thorium still needs to be mined, so the environmental damage still exists.We need better regulation on nuclear in all phases, because if you do any research into it, you'll find that the vast majority of plants in the US are built to minimum safety standards and there is very little foresight into what might happen should there be an experience like Fukushima. Crisis mitigation plans are lax or nonexistent, corruption in the nuclear industry is widespread, and while yes it's true that deaths from nuclear accidents are very low, it's more a question of what happens after a melt down - how to do you regain power generation, what do you do with all the people that are displaced (living in irradiated zones is no fun), how do you contain the spread of radiation etc. The Fukushima plant by the way, cut costs during construction, and as a result of lack of foresight, well, we all know what happened.

I'm talking about infrastructure upgrades to the grid. Transmission, storage, and redundancy infrastructure is all woefully outdated.

 

 

Yes Thorium needs to be mined, but it's also got a much higher energy density, and can be used to produce fissile Uranium itself, produces less waste, so there will be far less environmental impact per W than with Uranium, it will also be safer to operate, will not lead to proliferation fears, and is more abundant than Uranium. Admittedly it's still early days and a lot of work needs to be done to get to that stage, we're in no rush though, Uranium is still abundant and cheap. Wind turbines and solar panels are also built out of shit that needs to be mined as well.

 

Regulations have proved to be pretty good when you examine the safety record, small regulatory fudges get blown out of proportion due to people's irrational fear of radiation. Even Fukushima is a good example of this (all the worst fear mongering at the time has been shown to be unwarranted, it's unlikely there were even any cases of thyroid cancers caused by it, anti-nuclear fearmongering is actually a much worse health issue than radiation exposure - this was a big problem post Chenobyl - stress, alcoholism, etc). Danger from living near there is also massively exaggerated, bar a handful of spots it'll be perfectly safe to live there relatively soon (in fact radiation levels at most of the areas are already perfectly safe, it's mostly a combination of ignorance, bureaucracy and economic factors that are preventing people returning home). At the end of the day the Fukushima disaster happened as a result of the biggest natural disaster in Japanese history, not because of safety regulations, and the impact of it was negligible compared to everything else that happened that day (far more damage was done by destroyed oil and gas processing facilities for example). Even if we had to put up with a similar event every 50 years (and we tend to learn a lot from these kind of incidents, new reactor designs have far more passive safety features for example) it would be worth it compared to the alternatives.

[chenGOD]

I didn't know I was a wind proponent. Thanks for clarifying that.

You have to provide some data showing that germany is approaching diminishing returns with wind power, you can't just assert it. If you read through the pdf I provided (not even through - just to page 5) you'll see that Germany's installed capacity is at 30%. Your discussion of subsidies is moot, all energy producers are subsidized, and in the US at least energy subsidies are a drop in the bucket of the economy.

I don't disagree with you that taking nuclear offline was a stupid reactionary move on the German's part - especially to have it replaced with coal and other forms of high-polluting energy production.

 

The issue with Fukushima is entirely that no one involved in the construction of the Daiichi plant bothered to think that such a possibility might occur. The Onagawa plant (located virtually right next door) suffered little comparative damage because the project manager during construction actually went beyond recommended safety minimums at the time. Try and imagine if he hadn't? You'd have two plants in close proximity going though melt-down, more energy going off line, and a larger number of displaced people.

If you read through the "Lessons Learned from Fukushima" reports, you'll find that while the Nuclear Regulatory Commission mentioned a few changes, they were in general satisfied with current safety protocols, which were put in place long before Fukushima. So they actually haven't learnt much at all. There's no incentive for plant operators to upgrade. And this is not like saying the Cubs will win the World Series every year and eventually being proven right - there are serious economic consequences to nuclear plants melting down.

 

Look, I agree that nuclear is a good option for energy production and in conjunction with renewable sources, we can make energy production much less dirty and much more stable. But I do think we need better regulation and oversight of nuclear. And I'm not alone - don't take my word for it, look at what the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists says.

Fukushima - myth of safety, reality of geoscience.pdf

Fukushima and the Inevitability of Accidents.pdf

Fukushima in Review - complex disaster, diastrous response.pdf

[caze]

 

 

You have to provide some data showing that germany is approaching diminishing returns with wind power, you can't just assert it. If you read through the pdf I provided (not even through - just to page 5) you'll see that Germany's installed capacity is at 30%.

 

I'm not sure why you're mentioning 30%, my previous post mentioned a capacity factor of 15%, that's not installed capacity, it's output relative to capacity. According to your linked report Germany generated 42.6 TWh from 35.678 GW capacity (which is 312.5 TWh at 100% availability, which gives a 13.6% capacity factor).

 

You can increase capacity all you like, but you won't necessarily get a linear increase in output from it, and it's hard to predict due to the unpredictable nature of wind power. Germany's onshore capacity is so limited it might as well not be there, offshore is where it's at, but the problem with offshore is that it's in the sea, far to the north of where it's most needed. As I said, increases in offshore capacity might allow output to rise above the 9% listed in your report, maybe as high as 15-20%. I've not looked at the figures in detail in the case of Germany, it varies from country to country, but it's the same in principle everywhere - unless you have a fantasy grid with superconducting transfer and interconnects with the rest of the world). You've got to deal with problems of distributing the power to where it's needed most, and storing the energy when it's not needed, otherwise it will overload the grid and/or fail to provide enough current. Germany has already had to reduce the output of it's base power (nuclear and coal) to handle the extra output to prevent overload, but when doing this with wind power it can (and has) led to brownouts and increased power frequency noise (which can lead to equipment failure, both in terms of power distribution and industrial/residential use). You cannot guarantee baseload with wind, no matter how much capacity you have (to perfectly avoid those problems you need fast spin-up backup capacity for every watt, which is hugely uneconomical. There's simply a limit to how far you can push in this direction without substantial increases in infrastructure.

 

 

Your discussion of subsidies is moot, all energy producers are subsidized, and in the US at least energy subsidies are a drop in the bucket of the economy.

 

Subsidies are not moot, relative level of required subsidies are an important factor in allocating resources.

 

The issue with Fukushima is entirely that no one involved in the construction of the Daiichi plant bothered to think that such a possibility might occur. The Onagawa plant (located virtually right next door) suffered little comparative damage because the project manager during construction actually went beyond recommended safety minimums at the time. Try and imagine if he hadn't? You'd have two plants in close proximity going though melt-down, more energy going off line, and a larger number of displaced people.

 

Look, I agree that nuclear is a good option for energy production and in conjunction with renewable sources, we can make energy production much less dirty and much more stable. But I do think we need better regulation and oversight of nuclear. And I'm not alone - don't take my word for it, look at what the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists says.

 

 

So wait, we haven't learned anything from it or we have? I'm all in favour of better regulations, but even without them we'd be a hell of a lot better off than we are now.