Not for the faint of heart...

[Mkopec1]

Originally posted by Jinkies
Hydrogen isnt very viable atm, but honestly its probably our best hope for the future.

Not so far fetched folks......

It seems like Iceland is the first country to commit to going full Hydrogen driven economy.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programme...ve/2208013.stm

Over the next 30 years, it aims to do away with polluting fossil fuels like petrol and diesel altogether and replace them with what could be the cleanest fuel on earth. These plans could reduce Iceland's greenhouse gas emissions by 50%.

To make hydrogen you need water and electricity. Iceland has plenty of water. It can also produce electricity cheaply and cleanly, hydropower from its glacial rivers and waterfalls. From its craters and crevices, huge stores of underground heat. Only 5% of geothermal power has been tapped so far.One day, Iceland thinks it could use it to provide enough green electricity to make hydrogen for itself and to export to other parts of the world.

When water is zapped with electricity and electrolysed, it splits into oxygen and hydrogen. In Iceland they'll use geothermal and hydropower to make that clean electricity. Other countries could use power from wind or the sun. The hydrogen fuel can then be used to power an electric motor via fuel cells in a vehicle acting like a generator. The only emission is pure water.

Plus Ive also seen on the Discovery science channel how they are making new solar cells out of new materials. The standard solar cells core is made out of sillicon right now, a pricey material. and this yields an efficiency rate of about converting 15% of the suns rays into energy.

But new materials have been found which are totally translucent, only a slight tint.But with an efficiency rate of about 3%-5%. But also about 100 times cheaper than the old ones based on using sillicon. So they could be applied to every window in the world. The story showed a high rise building with windows top to bottomn plated with this material, producing enough energy to be self sufficient.

[Jinkies]

Plus Ive also seen on the Discovery science channel how they are making new solar cells out of new materials. The standard solar cells core is made out of sillicon right now, a pricey material. and this yields an efficiency rate of about converting 15% of the suns rays into energy.

Etc..

Nice link, thats sorta the direction I imagined some societies would be taking

The original article mentions that solar power is unfeasible,and to an extent it is, the number of panels space needed would turn the entire midwest into a huge solar farm.

But theres nothing stopping us from using *already existing* structures for those panels.
If you put discreet solar panels on the roofs/windows of every home, thats a really large chunk of whats needed.

If we go this route, I imagine future legislation that requires new buildings to be able to be self sufficent off the grid(or close), and then the major business of power plants will be to use electricity to produce fuel-cells, or to sell to large industrial customers.

Sure, as it stands, it takes oil to build all those panels, plants, etc. But we have to do it at some point, and once the infrastructure is inplace, we'll be able to stop relying so much on oil.
(again, operating under the assumption society doesn't blow up beforehand).

As for iceland, thats cool, thats sorta what I was getting at with my "ocean" theory, people using hydro energy to produce fuel cells (no its not anymore efficent, but hydro energy is most definetly a renewable, nearly infinate resource, and thus can be used to ineffciently meet societies other needs).

Iceland has a small population good for such an experiment, hopefully large countries find other ways too.

[Element]

I'm going with James on this one. John never mentioned anythang about a oil shortage to me. Besides we're all going to die around 2028 might as we'll get our use of it!

[Angry Amadeus]

Originally posted by Rune
Did you fuckers even read the whole article?

Pearls before swine. I hope you can eat your faith when the world crashes around your fucking existence.

Read Robert Greene by chance?

Ta,

[GrobbeeTrull]

The next big energy fad!!

The fabled Zero Point Energy !!

I hear it has a lot of potential though, as an almost unlimited (Well, 10^43 Hz) source of power.

Also;

http://www.halexandria.org/dward154.htm

[Eomer]

Let me first start by saying I have not read the article, haven't had a chance.

Hydrogen is the most abundant element on our world. a small charge is applied to H20, and hydrogen gas escapes. And once the Hydrogen is combusted, you get H20. Its the cleanest energy source known to man

They already have workable fuel cell technology which converts hydrogen to energy. the only problem left to solve on the fuel cell is the sheer expense, since they utilize platinum in their design. But once this is solved, bye bye oil.

I don't think you understand the chemistry behind this process. To produce hydrogen requires more energy than it will supply when combusted or used in a fuel cell. There are no natural sources of hydrogen, it's so light it escapes the Earth's gravity and flys off into space. We have to make every last bit of it, and that itself takes energy. Where does that energy come from? The Iceland thing above demonstrates this, Iceland is very lucky to have abundant sources of energy, but other countries are not so blessed. Yes, combusting it is very very non-polluting, as any highschool chemistry student could tell you. But making hydrogen in the first place requires an energy source, and right now most of our energy comes from fossil fuels.

So basically, hydrogen is a dead end IMO. We should just plain skip it and go to electric powered cars. They're more energy efficient and wouldn't require a complete rewrite of the world's infrastructure. Only problem is having sufficient energy density to make them feasible (this is also a problem with natural gas powered vehicles, and hydrogen. Most have a very limited range).

As far as Peak Oil goes, I'm somewhere in the middle. I don't think it will be a sudden calamity, but I do think that it's likely that in the next 30-50 years we will begin to run out of "cheap" oil that's easily extracted, and it's most likely going to change the way we live. There will continue to be oil, for example the tar sands in Northern Alberta and Saskatchewan. There's significantly more oil there than all of Saudi Arabia. Problem is, only a few percent of that is economically feasible to recover. Either because it's so dilluted (like, they have to process tons and tons and tons of dirt to get a single barrel of oil), or because it's way the hell deep below the ground. Right now about a million and a half BPD are produced there, about half what Iraq is doing right now with a barely functioning oil infrastructure. There's tens of billions of new projects going ahead to increase that production, but it's expensive to produce that oil and very energy inefficient.

Thing is, they've been predicting a peak oil calamity for 40 years now, and the date keeps getting pushed back. As others have said, it's virtually impossible to take into account all the factors that affect oil demand and supply. However, there's two very large reasons why we should be very, very, VERY concerned aout it now. China and India. Stop and think about this for a second, even though maybe 10-15% of the world's population was living high on the hog in Europe, NA, and parts of Asia, we have managed to in 100 years nearly exhaust the world's supply of most natural resources, not just oil. And we have polluted the world like crazy. What happens when 2.5 billion people in those two countries want to start living like us? It's already happening, oil demand is surging and prices have skyrocketed. Something's gotta give.

[Jinkies]

I don't think you understand the chemistry behind this process. To produce hydrogen requires more energy than it will supply when combusted or used in a fuel cell. There are no natural sources of hydrogen, it's so light it escapes the Earth's gravity and flys off into space. We have to make every last bit of it, and that itself takes energy.

Well, the main goal of a "Hydrogen Economy" is that if we're using renewable sources of energy (Hydro, Wind, Solar, Tide), that it doesn't matter if we're converting them to something less efficent, as long as we can keep up with the demand(the *real* challenge).

Icelands got it good, other countries need to find solutions to make it feasible, if they don't, then I fully agree, it won't be good.

[Ronne]

The fabled Zero Point Energy !!

Zero Point Energy, like that guy in The Incredibles used? I so want finger beams of doom like he had.

[Bralkan]

neat story on how pumping just-above-freezing water from the bottom of the ocean can be used to grow all kinds of crops and provide electricity - all while providing pure freshwater.

Its kind of long, but a good read. Really, its better for islands and such but I'm sure it could be used in other places as well. (Chilli has a huge underwater ridge; maybe provide SA with cheaper energy?)

http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/1...ven&topic_set=

Here are some quotes:

Craven's system exploits the dramatic temperature difference between ocean water below 3,000 feet - perpetually just above freezing - and the much warmer water and air above it. That temperature gap can be harnessed to create a nearly unlimited supply of energy. Although the scientific concepts behind cold-water energy have been around for decades, Craven made them real when he founded the state-funded Natural Energy Laboratory of Hawaii in 1974 on Keahole Point, near Kona. Under Craven, the lab developed the process of using cold deep-ocean water and hot surface water to produce electricity. By the 1980s the Natural Energy Lab's demonstration plant was generating net power, the world's first through so-called ocean thermal energy conversion.

He favors building systems in ideal locations, such as islands adjacent to deep water with no continental shelf. Sink a big pipe, crank a pump, and - voilà! - you've entered a world powered by ocean water. Once primed, the pipe acts like a giant siphon, requiring relatively little energy to keep an inexhaustible supply of cold at hand. Already, 39-degree-Fahrenheit water courses through the Natural Energy Lab's newest pipe - a 55-inch-diameter, 9,000-foot-long polyethylene behemoth - at the rate of 27,000 gallons a minute, 24 hours a day.

Running the frigid pipes through heat exchangers produces unlimited air-conditioning that costs almost nothing. Draining their sweat yields an endless supply of freshwater for drinking and irrigation. The cold water also creates a temperature difference between root and fruit that Craven believes speeds growth. And by turning the flow on and off, Craven has found he can further accelerate the plants' growth cycle by forcing them in and out of dormancy - he can get three crops of grapes a year and pineapples in eight months instead of the usual 18. Feeding some of the water through a contraption Craven calls a hurricane tower generates clean electricity. "What the world doesn't understand," says Craven, still zigzagging through the parking lot, "is that what we don't have enough of is cold, not heat."

[Angerz]

Thats really cool

[Eomer]

Well, the main goal of a "Hydrogen Economy" is that if we're using renewable sources of energy (Hydro, Wind, Solar, Tide), that it doesn't matter if we're converting them to something less efficent, as long as we can keep up with the demand(the *real* challenge).

Icelands got it good, other countries need to find solutions to make it feasible, if they don't, then I fully agree, it won't be good.

While that may the goal, the general public (as usual) is completely ignorant of that. Most people just think that hydrogen on it's own will save us, when in reality it's nothing but a medium to transfer energy produced by other means, and that without those other means being renewable clean sources of energy, we'd simply be shifting the problem and not solving it.

[Jinkies]

While that may the goal, the general public (as usual) is completely ignorant of that. Most people just think that hydrogen on it's own will save us, when in reality it's nothing but a medium to transfer energy produced by other means, and that without those other means being renewable clean sources of energy, we'd simply be shifting the problem and not solving it.

Yep, can't disagree with that.

Those ocean tempature converters are good idea, first I've heard of them. (I guess my theory of tapping the ocean wasn't so crackpot afterall, or, at very least, I have some company).

[GrobbeeTrull]

Originally posted by BobTheMoron
Zero Point Energy, like that guy in The Incredibles used? I so want finger beams of doom like he had.

Sort of. The premise behind ZPE is that it is the driving force (and cause) of inertia and gravity, amongst other things. It is theorized that if we can get a handle on ZPE, we can start to control gravity, and inertia. Which would explain those lasers in The Incredibles, that would imobilize (increase inertia of an object in it's current state) and levitate (removing gravity within a bounded area).

If you read the first link, it gives a pretty scientific explanation of some of ZPE's properties and uses. Without a scientific miracle, it's probably a long way off, but it's good that we can start to understand this "all-energy" that sits beneath our world.

[Eomer]

Personally I'm all about building a massive solar farm on the moon, and beaming the energy back to the Earth. And I'm actually half serious here. Solar power outside the Earth's atmosphere is way the hell more efficient, and such a system would be completely without environmental consequenses.

Now if someone would get around to building a space elevator: http://www.spaceelevator.com/

And believe it or not, such a thing is actually very feasible within the next couple decades, and would bring the cost of putting material into orbit by several orders of magnitude.

[NoStem]

Originally posted by Zarcath
I'm starting to get pretty nervous about living in the middle of no where on an island. When the local shipping union went on strike for a few weeks people started hoarding items and toilet paper was like wiping your ass with gold. If it came down to the US picking/cutting off states or civil unrest, I'm not sure how Hawaii would fare.

Hawaii would fare very well. Yeah, we'd be the last to get any "emergency fix," but it isn't like we need it. It would just be like living in hana - fishing, agriculture and bikes lol.

Besides, our population is crazy low - once all the tourists left, we'd just have community support for everyone who needed it.

My house is solar powered too, so worse comes to worse and war erupts... at least I can still take hot showers and read under a lamp while the world pisses on itself in race to covet crude oil.