Wind and Solar vs Coal, Gasoline, Nuclear

New Martenson article.
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https://www.peakprosperity.com/blog/114131/end-growth
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We've lost half the world’s topsoil in the past 150 years
There are 10 or maybe 12 calories of fossil fuels silently embedded in each food calorie we ingest
Fossil fuel supply will peak and slowly decline beginning around 2030
At the current pace, it will take 400 years to transform the energy system upon which we current depend
World population will continue to climb until 2100 reaching 11.2 billion
In the years immediately following the peak in fossil fuel energ,y the world will have to replace nearly 100% of all the concrete structures ever poured or built due to spalling and crumbling induced by the use of steel reinforcing rods
Pensions and entitlements are a simple math disaster that’s already beginning to unfold.
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https://www.worldwildlife.org/threats/soil-erosion-and-degradation
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http://artofeating.com/the-true-cost-of-food/
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http://peakoilbarrel.com/the-energy-transition/
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https://www.technologyreview.com/s/610457/at-this-rate-its-going-to-take-nearly-400-years-to-transform-the-energy-system/
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https://www.statista.com/statistics/262618/forecast-about-the-development-of-the-world-population/
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https://www.peakprosperity.com/blog/99486/our-future-literally-crumbling-our-eyes
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https://www.marketwatch.com/story/the-reason-underfunded-pensions-are-a-disaster-waiting-to-happen-2017-04-03
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sendler2112 said:
In the years immediately following the peak in fossil [2030] fuel energ,y the world will have to replace nearly 100% of all the concrete structures ever poured or built due to spalling and crumbling induced by the use of steel reinforcing rods

:lol:

Where do you get this stuff?!
 
Installing a wind turbine:
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https://youtu.be/84BeVq2Jm88
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Here’s a brief summary for those of you too busy to watch this construction process right now: Diesel, diesel, diesel, reinforced concrete, diesel, petroleum, diesel. That is, installing a wind tower like this requires a huge amount of fossil fuels to accomplish.
 
sendler2112 said:
Martenson's Source:
https://theconversation.com/the-problem-with-reinforced-concrete-56078
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Still laughing?

Yes. Where in that article does it say that "nearly 100%" of concrete structures that have ever existed are made with mild-steel rebar and, more bizarrely, considering they've been built steadily over a period of 100 years or more, that they will all suddenly and simultaneously fail and need replacing in 2030?
 
sendler2112 said:
Here’s a brief summary for those of you too busy to watch this construction process right now: Diesel, diesel, diesel, reinforced concrete, diesel, petroleum, diesel. That is, installing a wind tower like this requires a huge amount of fossil fuels to accomplish.

That's like saying 19th century construction required massive amounts of horses. Yes, it used a lot of horses, but as we've seen since, it didn't require them. Just like we use a huge amount of diesel equipment now, but we don't actually require it to do those jobs.

The biggest self-propelled machinery in the world today is electric. So there are in fact other options available to us.
 
Chalo said:
sendler2112 said:
Here’s a brief summary for those of you too busy to watch this construction process right now: Diesel, diesel, diesel, reinforced concrete, diesel, petroleum, diesel. That is, installing a wind tower like this requires a huge amount of fossil fuels to accomplish.

That's like saying 19th century construction required massive amounts of horses. Yes, it used a lot of horses, but as we've seen since, it didn't require them. Just like we use a huge amount of diesel equipment now, but we don't actually require it to do those jobs.

The biggest self-propelled machinery in the world today is electric. So there are in fact other options available to us.

The 19th century had 1 billion people. And none of them expected to drive to work in a car. Most of whom still grew their own food.
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What big electric machines can work in the field all day harvesting crops, or digging up Copper and Iron, or install or service big wind turbines by the coming Millions?
 
Punx0r said:
Yes. Where in that article does it say that "nearly 100%" of concrete structures that have ever existed are made with mild-steel rebar and, more bizarrely, considering they've been built steadily over a period of 100 years or more, that they will all suddenly and simultaneously fail and need replacing in 2030?

Sad that you can make one nit pic and then totally disregard everything else that has been presented. Along with everything else I have been trying to help people understand about the coming energy, food, population, bottleneck and economic debt bubble. We have learned and implemented way too little and way too late about how to manage a planet and a civilization. Still you laugh and think we have it made. Which we do for today. In the developed world. Generally.
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They won't be laughing in 30 years when none of the ledgers add up any more due to higher and higher priced liquid fuel. Batteries cannot begin to come close to replacing liquid fuel for what we will need for farming, mining, and heavy construction. Currently almost 100,000,000 barrels a DAY!
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Infrastructure is crumbling. Look around you. He doesn't mean to say it will happen "all at once". No more than anyone is saying oil will vanish all at once. What he is trying to get you to realize is that it will be difficult to repair and replace the aging built out structures which will be increasingly necessary at the same time that liquid fuel (and thermal energy for making cement) is becoming more remote and expensive.
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The point is that the free market is completely short sighted in the timeline of how long humans will strive to exist. We are totally blowing our one time fossil energy gift on cruise ships and football stadiums, ect.
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The USA alone is forecast, including the most optimistic efficiency gains from electric conversion, heat pumps, ect, to require 1,000,000 2.5MW wind turbines and 5,000 500MW solar farms, in order to replace all energy (which still leaves a big question as to how to use this electricity to make and use Methane or Hydrogen to replace all liquid fuels). To get this done by 2050 we would need to manufacture and install 90 turbines per DAY. Every day. For 30 years. And manufacture and install a 500MW solar farm every 2 days. And before that is even done, we will have to rebuild all of it again starting with the first ones. Just for the USA. Multply this times 6X at least for the World. Not including another 30% population growth to 10-11 Billion. And more for improvements in standards of living. 3 Billion people still cook by burning sticks.
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The funny (not ha ha) thing is, people have no understanding of the scale of our dilemma.
 
sendler2112 said:
What big electric machines can work in the field all day harvesting crops
John Deere SESAM
or digging up Copper and Iron
Most mining process plant are electric. For trucks, look to the Komatsu HD 605-7.
or install or service big wind turbines by the coming Millions?
Most construction cranes are already electrically powered. Trying to decide how to power it (grid vs generator) is always a big question in the planning for new construction. Generators generally win for wind farms because they are cheap and it's easier to tow a generator than run a wire. Once fuel gets more expensive, of course, the opposite will be true.
 
sendler2112 said:
They won't be laughing in 30 years when none of the ledgers add up any more due to higher and higher priced liquid fuel.
Paul Erlich, 1968: "The battle to feed all of humanity is over. In the 1970s hundreds of millions of people will starve to death in spite of any crash programs embarked upon now. At this late date nothing can prevent a substantial increase in the world death rate." He was a Stanford professor at the time, and said things like "people just don't understand the scale of the problem."

Death rate went down.
 
billvon said:
sendler2112 said:
They won't be laughing in 30 years when none of the ledgers add up any more due to higher and higher priced liquid fuel.
Paul Erlich, 1968: "The battle to feed all of humanity is over. In the 1970s hundreds of millions of people will starve to death in spite of any crash programs embarked upon now. At this late date nothing can prevent a substantial increase in the world death rate." He was a Stanford professor at the time, and said things like "people just don't understand the scale of the problem."

Death rate went down.

As long as there is liquid fuel. And artificial fertilizer. Phosphorous is also reaching depleted levels.
 
The Komatsu gets it's energy from a 775hp ice engine.
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https://www.komatsuamerica.com/equipment/trucks/mechanical/hd605-8
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The John Deer SESAM is an unproven prototype. Have to wait and see what it can really do. 130kWh? 4 hour run time on that? 32.5kW for 4 hours.
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44hp is not much of a farm tractor.
 
billvon said:
sendler2112 said:
They won't be laughing in 30 years when none of the ledgers add up any more due to higher and higher priced liquid fuel.
Paul Erlich, 1968: "The battle to feed all of humanity is over. In the 1970s hundreds of millions of people will starve to death in spite of any crash programs embarked upon now. At this late date nothing can prevent a substantial increase in the world death rate." He was a Stanford professor at the time, and said things like "people just don't understand the scale of the problem."

Death rate went down.

And so we kept walking farther and farther out on that limb, and we still do. It's like we're determined to have no meaningful physical resources left to deal with the crisis once it's bad enough that everybody acknowledges it. All because stupid people gotta keep having kids just because they want to.

I would like to think we're smarter than that, but it turns out that only a few of us are. And we'll have to die off right along with the stupid selfish ones.
 
sendler2112 said:
As long as there is liquid fuel. And artificial fertilizer. Phosphorous is also reaching depleted levels.
There are no reactors in the fields; nothing to transmute the phosphorous to some other element. It's still there; just in a more difficult to reach place (i.e. in the plants, or in the soil, or in the water table.) As phosporous becomes more expensive, more of it will be retained via changes in farming methods.
The Komatsu gets it's energy from a 775hp ice engine.

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This dumper truck is the world’s largest electric vehicle with a massive 700 kWh battery pack

- Sep. 17th 2017 1:29 pm ET
Fred Lambert

A partnership between two Swiss companies converted a Komatsu dumper truck with a giant 700 kWh battery pack. This single conversion alone has an impressive impact in term of fuel savings and emission reduction.

A typical dumper truck consumes between 50,000 and 100,000 liters of diesel per year, depending on its application, and it can emit between ~131 and 262 tonnes of CO2.

Despite the amount of energy required to move this 110-ton beast, it turns out that it can be done with an electric powertrain.

Lithium Storage GmbH and Kuhn Schweiz AG disassembled the Komatsu 605-7 and replaced the diesel engine with a synchronous electric motor capable of 590kW (800hp) of continuous power and up to 9,500 Nm torque.

They originally planned to fit a massive 600 kWh lithium-ion battery pack to power the electric motor, but they actually managed to fit 700 kWh of energy capacity on the chassis of the vehicle by using 1,440 prismatic NMC cells for a total battery pack weight of 4.5 tons.The only other EVs coming close to its energy capacity are some electric buses, like BYD’s 60-ft all-electric bus with a 547 kWh battery pack.

What is interesting about electrifying dumper trucks is that they are often used to carry ore up and down mines. While diesel trucks burn fuel even on their way down a mine, there’s a great opportunity for electric vehicles to actually gain energy on their way down thanks to regenerative braking.
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44hp is not much of a farm tractor.
44hp is 24000 foot-pounds per second (ft-lb/s.) That means if you are going 20 feet per second (13mph) you can pull with a force of 1200 lbs.

Most ICE tractors choose an engine so that it will give acceptable power over its useful torque band. In other words, if you want a tractor that will usually give you 1200 lbs at 13mph, you need an 80-100hp engine, so that even when you are in a poor part of its torque band you can get your work done. Electric motors do not have that limitation.
 
sendler2112 said:
Here is another technique where the tower is made from concrete (and even more diesel fuel) instead of steel.
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https://youtu.be/qXN1UAv1anQ
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Wow, says its a total of 1,200 tons in weight, for 2.5MW max capacity. That is just so much materials and waste for such little power-return.
When I was thinking how silly it will be to have 200 tons of energy generation infrastructure per flying electric car of the future I was off well the mark.

Looking around even more, ones being built in Queensland "use of 1680 tonnes of concrete and more than 67 tonnes of steel reinforcement." per wind-turbine.
https://www.i-q.net.au/main/massive-foundations-for-200m-wind-turbines
Again, for me I merely view each single wind-turbine installation as something creating enough hydrogen for one single flying electric car in the future with 2 hours of flight time.
This is because all this is about building for the future and this below is the future. Of course, they are currently really aiming to build for the past.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AHlrLU7kTys

We really will have a truly massive divide in the future the way its going between what the rich and poor will have, I think will even end up making the movie Elysium look like a comparatively fair world.
Elysium movie was all about it clear and visible the massive "Divide" that could happen between people, but we now living in the grassroots of folks deliberately trying to make it happen. Watching the trailer again really brings it home.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vSAS79fBVxs

[youtube]vSAS79fBVxs[/youtube]

I was thinking, the movie video above is the really entertaining version of this video here but its long-term future result https://youtu.be/ObvdSmPbdLg

Good news is there seems to be more people waking up to the energy problem and future. Just browsing around on social media there seems to be people all over the world now pointing out how stupid South Australia's energy solution is etc.
https://twitter.com/Ocker008/status/1009612348988874752

And yeah I do it too.
South Australia have had a pretty bad entire week, with only a tiny amount of wind-generation and even using diesel generators instead of the full 100MW Tesla battery (as usual) and strictly only using it for 30MW no matter what. It really is just a 30MW battery and not the claimed 100MW, if they used it above 30MW once every 6 months then maybe you could call it something else but all the blackouts and constant emergency use of diesel proves it really is just a 30MW battery. The renewable energy industry is just so used to pulling shifties on people that its just starting to get ridiculous to the point that we can see just how much of a lie it really is.
DgcWmpWVAAAXYtf.jpg


Chalo said:
TheBeastie said:
I think if folks want to use some kind of technology from Elon Musk, then use is BFR rocket to launch nuclear waste

What could possibly go wrong?
Yet most of the space probes they send into space are loaded with plutonium-based nuclear batteries of some sort or the other
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radioisotope_thermoelectric_generator
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atomic_battery

Solar panels, used in the past Mars missions, were passed up in favor of a nuclear battery for powering the Curiosity robot.
Multi-Mission Radioisotope Thermoelectric Generator, or MMRTP, an energy source that relies on the heat generated by decaying plutonium dioxide to run Curiosity.
https://www.technologyreview.com/s/428751/nuclear-generator-powers-curiosity-mars-mission/

The latest space "Nuclear battery" is going to be a full nuclear reactor for space.
Its been in the news lately.. Its the first new/tested and certified nuclear reactor in the USA for 40 years.
http://www.iflscience.com/space/nasa-just-tested-a-new-nuclear-fission-reactor-and-the-results-were-incredible/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kilopower
https://youtu.be/bdMzFQOABcQ
[youtube]bdMzFQOABcQ[/youtube]

https://youtu.be/DcdfMcjUy_U
[youtube]DcdfMcjUy_U[/youtube]

https://inhabitat.com/nasa-debuts-krusty-nuclear-reactor-for-future-mars-residents/
https://www.extremetech.com/extreme/262485-nasa-developing-compact-nuclear-reactor-future-mars-habitats
https://www.businessinsider.com.au/nasa-nuclear-reactor-kilopower-how-it-works-2018-5?r=US&IR=T

Its been in the news lately.. Its the first new/tested and certified nuclear reactor in the USA for 40 years.
zgkdhuzyab25bodanrk8.jpg


Sure there have been solar panel based probes but it seems like the Space agencies are sick of losing them outright due to lack of sun or waiting up to years inbetween them waking up again from some sort of miricle that provided some light just to disappear a day later.

Like the billion dollars wasted on the ESA Philae solar-powered probe, the space agency put all that work into it the probe to land on a comet, just for it to land in a "shady dark spot" on the comet and become completely useless for the whole mission.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-space-rosetta/rosettas-missing-philae-probe-found-in-dark-crack-on-comet-idUSKCN11B1S5
 
TheBeastie said:
Yet most of the space probes they send into space are loaded with plutonium-based nuclear batteries of some sort or the other
An RTG is a bit different than nuclear waste. One you could sit next to on a bus without harm. The other . . . you couldn't.

Space based reactors are coming as well. And before you fire such a reactor up, again, you could sit next to it with no problem. It's only once it has gone critical that you start to see the sort of radiation (and decay products) that you see in nuclear waste.

Which is why no one is proposing NTR's for launch vehicles - only for deep space propulsion.

In addition, there's the problem of scale. Let's say you launch 2 reactors or RTG's a year, which would be a lot. Odds of failure are fairly low. Compare that to nuclear waste launches. We generate 2000 tons of nuclear waste a year. A Falcon Heavy 'standard launch' can launch 6 tons to TLI. That's 333 launches - or about 1 launch a day, every day, forever. The odds of a failure go way up. (Plus of course there's the cost; each FH launch costs $90 million - so that's another $30 billion dollars to add to your power bill every year.)
 
billvon said:
This dumper truck is the world’s largest electric vehicle with a massive 700 kWh battery pack

The ICE version has a 775hp engine. Probably don't use full power all of the time. The EV version could use 470hp for 2 hours. Longer if the load always travels down grade.
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Most big Ag tractors start with 300 or so hp and go up from there. There must be a reason. And they generally have a flat power curve with a torque peak just off idle. In any vehicle with a transmission, power does work. You make the torque what you want with the trans. Of course the EV tractor could easily work at 200 hp if it wanted. But the 130kWh battery would need to be much larger and heavier since it would only give less than an hour of run time and be hard on the battery.
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There is a reason battery drive heavy machines are not in wide spread use. They can't compete with the performance of liquid fuel/ ICE. But one day soon they will be much better than nothing. Up to the point where we begin to exhaust our supplies of battery materials.
 
sendler2112 said:
Most big Ag tractors start with 300 or so hp and go up from there. There must be a reason.
Yes. Because to get 100hp reliably from an ICE you need 300hp.
And they generally have a flat power curve with a torque peak just off idle. In any vehicle with a transmission, power does work. You make the torque what you want with the trans.
Those three statements contradict each other. If you have a flat power curve, you don't need a transmission; transmissions help fix the problems in engines with peaky torque generation.
There is a reason battery drive heavy machines are not in wide spread use. They can't compete with the performance of liquid fuel/ ICE. But one day soon they will be much better than nothing. Up to the point where we begin to exhaust our supplies of battery materials.
There's an inherent difference between fossil fuels and batteries. After using up all the fossil fuels, they are gone; they have been transformed to low energy gases and cannot be used for power any more. After "using up" a battery all the component materials are still there - they have just been oxidized/reduced and don't work well any more. They can then be extracted and reused. This is very common in lead acid batteries, and as time goes on, will become more common for modern batteries as well. (Not done much now because the raw materials are so cheap.)
 
billvon said:
Those three statements contradict each other. If you have a flat power curve, you don't need a transmission; transmissions help fix the problems in engines with peaky torque generation.

Transmission/ gearing is used in any large vehicle. Including EV's.
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Now we are just playing at each other with semantics :)
 
By the way.
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Phosphorous for artificial fertilizer ends up dilute and more remote in landfills and cemeteries and washed out into the oceans after we eat the crops that it was used to grow. Or the rain washes the fields away.
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Animals can't survive without a steady Phosphorous intake the feed the ATP cycle. The soil in the fields of Big Ag are essentially now infertile without fertilizer, it is just used as a medium to hold the roots in the water and supplements.
 
sendler2112 said:
Transmission/ gearing is used in any large vehicle. Including EV's.
There is no transmission OR gearing in any of my ebikes. And there is no transmission in modern EV's - again because of that flat power curve.
Phosphorous for artificial fertilizer ends up dilute and more remote in landfills and cemeteries and washed out into the oceans after we eat the crops that it was used to grow. Or the rain washes the fields away. Animals can't survive without a steady Phosphorous intake the feed the ATP cycle. The soil in the fields of Big Ag are essentially now infertile without fertilizer, it is just used as a medium to hold the roots in the water and supplements.
Agreed. Fortunately:

1) Phosphorous is recoverable from landfills and even the ocean if it's needed badly.
2) More and more farms are switching to organic methods of farming. Fertilizer is still used, of course - but it comes from animal and plant waste, thus recycling the phosphorous. Here in CA organic farming is done on 12% of all fields, on a by-acre count.
 
billvon said:
sendler2112 said:
Transmission/ gearing is used in any large vehicle. Including EV's.
There is no transmission OR gearing in any of my ebikes. And there is no transmission in modern EV's - again because of that flat power curve.
Agreed. Fortunately:

1) Phosphorous is recoverable from landfills and even the ocean if it's needed badly.
2) More and more farms are switching to organic methods of farming. Fertilizer is still used, of course - but it comes from animal and plant waste, thus recycling the phosphorous. Here in CA organic farming is done on 12% of all fields, on a by-acre count.

Larger than ebike sized EV's have gearing
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Cali grows many specialty crops. It is not the Mid-West grain belt of the world.
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We can find just about every type of mineral or element in the ocean. Recovering it is just a matter of needing it bad enough. And immense amounts of embodied energy. Much more expensive than just scooping it out of the side of a mountain the way we do it now. Things will be much smaller and simpler in the future.
 
sendler2112 said:
Cali grows many specialty crops. It is not the Mid-West grain belt of the world.
No, just the fruit and vegetable supplier of America.
We can find just about every type of mineral or element in the ocean. Recovering it is just a matter of needing it bad enough. And immense amounts of embodied energy. Much more expensive than just scooping it out of the side of a mountain the way we do it now.
Harvesting seaweed isn't that energy intensive (which is the primary source for phosphorous in organic fertilizer.)
 
sendler2112 said:
There is a reason battery drive heavy machines are not in wide spread use. They can't compete with the performance of liquid fuel/ ICE.

Hogwash. They're just cheaper-- partly because petroleum is directly subsidized, and partly because they aren't required to account for their negative externalities.

This 738-foot, 31 million pound mining machine is all electric. The fastest trains, and the busiest trains, are electric. There are electric bus systems all over the world. If you don't think farming and mining can be done electrically, it's because you're not paying attention.

We don't even need batteries if that's not the best option. Farm fields don't move around, you know?

Switching to electric power for things that use petroleum now is probably the biggest remaining energy efficiency to be squeezed out. A MWh of electrical power does a lot more real work than a MWh of internal combustion power, because not nearly so much of it must be thrown away.
 
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