h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Fair enough, but given the lessons learnt about the importance of energy security, I would hope that "practical" encompassed that.

"but given the lessons learnt about the importance of energy security" - how about learning the lesson that we are all citizens of planet earth and that we should start acting like grown up's when it comes to the common good?

I'm not against nuclear energy, with proper regulation it can be safe ...but a proper and equitable agreement between Europe and the MENA nations could give Europe clean power for decades to come and the helium 3 on the moon could do the same for the whole planet for centuries to come (nb: the helium 3 is a renewable resource).

fairy nuff HD. I don't want to reread the thread as it's very complex and long. I don't generally retain everyone's arguments in my head

Is that the general consensus then, about the Chernobyl wasn't so bad argument - that radiation poisoning is better for the environment than human population?


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Care to give an example?
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Easter Island?

In general ecosystems work by natural limits. If a predator species expands it eats too many of it's prey and then it starves and/or lowers reproduction as a result of less food. Pretty simply really. Everything has a limit. I'm not talking about limits within human society (which is what you seem to be talking about). I'm talking about the way that nature works. What in nature has perpetual growth and doesn't die back? Cancer I suppose, but eventually it destroys itself by killing the thing it exists within.



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Regarding limits - you're advocating a steady state approach. Go tell that to Africans, Asians and South Americans. I've used the term before but it's apt - environmental racism.
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No, I'm not advocating that.

>>Unless of course you're advocating that everyone lower their standard of living.<<

But I am advocating that. There is no reason we can't lower the west's standard of living and increase the standard of living of those in poverty. I'm not talking about impoverishing the west. I'm talking about stopping being so greedy. Really, why does the West need disposable cell phones and two cars per family? More importantly, why does it think it does?

I've be happy with my grandparent's standard of living. I'd definitely choose that over the continuation of environmental damage on the scale we have now.

Can't disagree with that in principle HappyDude, but

Helium 3 from the moon is decades away - maybe 50 years?

The MENA nations include two countries in a state of civil war, one country a heartbeat away from civil war and two that are openly hostile to the West. Nineteen are Islamic and bitterly opposed to the one that is Jewish. One is run by a recognised terrorist organisation, three are accused of sponsoring terrorism. Eight have economies built upon oil. Just how long do you think negotiations with this disparate group are going to take?

The West needs to be addressing the issue *now* and working with the technologies available *now*. By all means, pursue the above two. If & when they come onstream we can decommission nuclear facilities.

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And no, most people here do not think we have access to infinite resources. I think most people here recognise that there are alternate resources - fission, solar, tidal and possibly fusion.
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Yes, but how can you not understand that there are limits to those things in terms of manufacture, running, maintenance, disposal?

"I've be happy with my grandparent's standard of living. I'd definitely choose that over the continuation of environmental damage on the scale we have now." but we can have our current (and possibly better) standard of living without the "environmental damage on the scale we have now" if we can all learn to act like grown up's.

I think Kea has a good point that we don't need half the consumer stuff we presently think we need. But the big problem is getting people to realise that. When I went round Oz a few years ago, I happily survived with a tent, a sleeping bag, a few clothes and enough money for basic food and beer. I had the company of others which was essential naturally. I was never happier.

Coming home it was hard to get back into thinking I needed TV, computer, stereo system etc etc. It took a while. But now I'm addicted again, as i ever was. Thogh my lifestyle would be considered quite third world in many ways as I've never really caught the disease as I call it, of being a shopoholic by nature. Lots and lots of stuff and things just don't cut it for me. I'd rather sit in the garden and listen to the blackbird or listen to music. Oh and the ocassional bit of socialising is quite nice too.

Yes I know the cold rainy climate is a problem here. So basic heating is essential and good shelter. Modern medicine is also essential. But I do think we substitute a lot of unneccessary material things for human relationships.

We could change, but will we? That's the crux of things. And global warming is a very real and immediate threat. The pragmatist in me says we should go nuclear to be realistic.

Can't we stick the waste somewhere in space? It can't be that difficult to sort out,surely?

"Can't we stick the waste somewhere in space? It can't be that difficult to sort out,surely?"
Did you never watch Space 1999

Firing rockets into space is a very risky excersize . They have a habit of leaving the launch pad and then blowing to pieces .
Any thoughts of getting people to behave reasonably and living within certain limits goes against human nature . People would rather starve to death than give up there cars . What is required is clean cars not no cars .

best fishes........tod

Just a thought - Geothermal

best fishes....tod

>They have a habit of leaving the launch pad and then blowing to pieces . <

Yes and ships have a habit of sinking, trains de-railing etc. Presumably there are risks whatever method is used. I don't really know what volume of material we are talking about in terms of waste. That would affect the method, ie how practicable it would be to seal the material in virtually bomb proof containers. I'm not an engineer. Yes maybe my idea is a bit risky. But I'm sure if the world's best nuclear engineers all put their minds to it as a priority, which they'd have to, if much of the world went over to nuclear energy on a a large scale, they could come up with something realistic. Human ingenuity when faced with a problem is what we do best, hence the present problem of too many people, in a world getting more and more technologically advanced, producing more and more pollution.

Yes I think on the whole, rather than trying to get millions of people to suddenly return to some much lower standard of living, we should face head on the present realities, and use out technological expertise to deal with the problem. I would suggest that risk/benefit analysis would indicate that nuclear is a better bet than continuing with fossil fuels.

We have to be realistic and pragmatic if we are to deal with this problem. We can try to *slowly* get people to change their lifestyles over time, but in the meantime we have a real emergency situation to solve, and solve quickly.

Another problem with trying to get millions of people to *suddenly* change their way of living is that all kinds of unforeseen social upheavals may occur, that might be fairly unpleasant; human beings, as well as being hugely ingenious at solving practical problems, are also known to be hugely irrational when it comes to the more subjective side of life.

I saw a documentary the other day about carbon nanotubes being a technology currently available buta at a microscopic not yet commerically viable scale., the idea beign posited was wires the size of a human hair with tensile strength superior to steel.

An example of a practical application of this was the space elevator. Cables suspended from the equator and held aloft by the centrifugal force of the planet's rotation (steel we were told would be torn apart, but carbon nanotubes won't be) The principle of a elevator and counter wight system could then be used to drag objects up and down the wire.

If this is a genuine technology that lies in the future. Then nuclear waste could eb safely shipped off into space, certainly maybe rockets could be laucnhed from the mmon where the escae velocites would rquire less fuel and more efficient measn of launching.

Maybe even one day all heavy industry could be sent up to the moon?


but away from all such future talk I agree with this sentiment of Effers:

>> we should face head on the present realities, and use out technological expertise to deal with the problem. I would suggest that risk/benefit analysis would indicate that nuclear is a better bet than continuing with fossil fuels.
We have to be realistic and pragmatic if we are to deal with this problem.<<

I find myself wondering if we could ever see the kind of technological commitment that occurred during followed in the daces beween th two world wars in terms of deveoping the science of nuclear into World War 2 and the following decades leading into space. Granted that was driven by ideologies and military necessities, but that kind of commitment to a goal. We are at the most technolgically advanced point we've ever been, the solutions may come if there is enough dedication to finding them.

Nanotubes can now be made in significant quantities. There is a company which announced production of mats of the stuff about the size of a person back in February.

But shooting stuff into space is probably not going to be cheaper or safer than burying it in a big concrete block for some time yet.

My daughter will be flying off to Russia again this summer. She'll be spending two weeks looking after children in a home in Belarus.

The children in that home will be visiting from the Chernobyl area. The ammount who are allowed to come are strictly controlled, and the financing has to be done by charities.

There is an awful lot about Chernobyl that isn't in the newspapers. "It's not that the rest of nature is not effected by radiation more that the overall effect of radiation on nature at Chernobyl and its surrounding area is apparently less than the overall effect of the presence of human civilisation." ~ Food is still poisoned now, not so it kills you instantly, but so it deforms you and your children, it has a similar effect on wildlife.

Been away. This solar project sounds great, but the cost would be massive, even ignoring the political issues. This is continental-scale engineering and isn't going to happen anytime soon.

>> "We have not worked out how to store electricity yet " <<
> we have - that is not an issue. <

I'm not aware of this one. The only practical approach at present is to convert electrical energy to chemical for storage, but its quite inefficient and you need a lot of bulky chemicals. Electric charge can be stored in capacitors, though only in small amounts. The only way of 'storing' electric current I'm aware of is in superconducting loops, but again the amounts are tiny and no use for the the power grid.

>> I agree with the argument against uranium mining. How long 'til peak uranium? Has anyone even worked that out? (and I haven't seen any discussion of the environmental and social justice impacts of uranium mining here yet). <<

I seem to remember a figure of about 500 years, though it's obviously completely dependent on usage and the amount of reprocessing done. Plenty of time for the solar infrastructure to be put in place, if fusion still hasn't been tamed.

>> I think the issue of waste is being too lightly dismissed here. What is being proposed is that for the forseeable future of all life on the planet we are willing to create highly toxic and dangerous waste that for all intents and purposes is going to be here permanently. Do we have the right to do that? <<

We have already done that in huge quantities - mercury in the oceans, heavy metals in landfill, toxic hydrocarbons in water courses. That's not justification of course, but radioactive waste needs to be taken in perspective. At least it's in small quantities, highly localised and (hopefully) well contained.

">> "We have not worked out how to store electricity yet " <<
> we have - that is not an issue. <

I'm not aware of this one."

Converting electrical energy to chemical for storage is one method but I was thinking more about things like pumped storage hydroelectricity (there is nothing theoretical about this - the UK got its first pumped storage plant at Ffestiniog, Wales in 1963.

"This solar project sounds great"
Although I've emphasised the solar aspect of the project it is probably worth noting that the proposed super-grid included coastal wind farms in Northern Europe and Icelandic geothermal power-plants.

NB: All the current pumped storage plants in the UK all relatively small and are used to deal with sudden unpredicted peaks in power supply, they can be brought on line very fast (e.g. the plant at Ffestiniog can be brought on line and generating electricity in under 60 seconds).

I hate linking to wikipedia from this site but http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grid_energy_storage lists a number of methods currently used Power Grids to store electricity.

Apologies, I thought you were talking about actually storing electric current rather than converting it to something else - just me being an engineering pedant there.

I know of no way of directly "storing electric current" - all storage methods involve some sort of conversion (e.g. with batteries it is to chemical energy), but I do know what you mean in that most of the effective solutions for grid scale storage would be ever so impractical on the personal scale that most of operate on and thus naturally think too