interesting thing about renewable energy

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John Larkin         Highland Technology, Inc 
picosecond timing   precision measurement  
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John Larkin
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Desperately seeking a podium ?>:-} ...Jim Thompson

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| James E.Thompson                                 |    mens     | 
| Analog Innovations                               |     et      | 
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Reply to
Jim Thompson

I can't put my finger on it, but I read a projection somewhere that has us using all the available output from the sun in a few centuries, if we stay on the trend we're on.

Here's the one planet-saving alternative that no one wants to admit to:

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Tim Wescott 
Wescott Design Services 
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Tim Wescott

Actually it seems solid, and matches things I've read elsewhere. There's more people on the planet every year, a higher proportion of them are moving toward an industrialized lifestyle, and there's only so many photons falling on the earth.

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Tim Wescott 
Wescott Design Services 
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Reply to
Tim Wescott

Photons are not renewable. Once you use one, it's gone.

I'd like to save the planet, but I am not sure what to put it in.

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Les Cargill
Reply to
Les Cargill

Screw the whales, save the photons!

Cheers, James Arthur

Reply to
dagmargoodboat

Don't you have some rusty lawn furniture to fix, or something?

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John Larkin         Highland Technology, Inc 
picosecond timing   laser drivers and controllers 
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Reply to
John Larkin

Diverting the output of the sun through a solar panel doesn't do much to add energy to the planet. Releasing that same amount of additional energy, no matter what the source, doubles the energy released to/on to the planet. Reducing greenhouse gasses helps, but not nearly enough.

The solution is lower population, NOW, not later. We need to rank everyone by cost/benefit ratio and "decommission" the top half. But that won't ever happen. The doogooders won't let us kill off the disadvantaged. The capitalists won't let us kill off the USA. We're on the do-nothing train to extinction. We're all gonna die, but by chance rather than decisive action to prevent the suffering.

Best chance any of us has is to be old and live in the USA ;-)

Not much any one...or million of us...can do about it.

Reply to
mike

My 18 watt solar panel is still working that I use to charge various batteries. And your LED flashlight still works good, but I have to kick start it.

-Bill .

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Reply to
Bill Bowden

The denialist propaganda machine does seem to be propagating this particula r style of lying rubbish at the moment.

I came across an example of the same kind of twaddle in the Royal Australai n Chemical Institute journal - Chemistry in Australia - earlier this year, though not early enough this year to let me post a link to it.

Other authorities beg to differ

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When Jenny Riesz presented her talk in Sydney she not only came across as k nowing what she was talking about, but she also answered the questions from the audience afterwards is if she knew the subject in depth.

All the fuss about paying more for your energy rather ignores the fact that energy represents only about 8% of the US GDP at the moment, and the histo rical fact that when - in 1973 - OPEC quadrupled the price of oil within a year (which is a lot faster than any transfer to renewables would occur), t he international economy didn't come off the rails. There was a certain amo unt of readjustment, quite a bit of it painful, but no disasters.

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Bill Sloman, Sydney
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Bill Sloman

I'm more concerned that, in about six centuries, we'll be pushing climate change due to sheer production/consumption of hydrogen fusion.

Tim

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Seven Transistor Labs 
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Tim Williams

Given a free energy source, is it possible to refrigerate the planet? That would use energy, like from an ideal fusion reactor, to scoop up atmospheric or ocean heat, and radiate it into space.

Is that thermodynamically possible? Compress air maybe, and radiate the resulting heat?

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John Larkin         Highland Technology, Inc 
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Reply to
John Larkin

Duh! Even if you *do* kill off the top half we are doomed! We are on a spacecraft called Earth. Supplies of all sorts are finite. It's not a question of "if", it is just a question of "when". Those who think like Larkin - want what they want and want it now - are just helping to speed the inevitable.

The irony is that supplies of energy are actually the longest term resource we have available. We just can't use the low hanging fruit without poisoning ourselves slowly... oh so slowly...

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Rick
Reply to
rickman

Of course it is possible. Just remove a little CO2 from the atmosphere and the entire planet radiates more heat. Oh, wait, we seem to be doing the opposite...

But there are actually some with ideas of doing just this, capturing and sequestering CO2 in order to minimize the impact of burning fossil fuels. It's not completely unrealistic as energy costs rise.

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Rick
Reply to
rickman

A back of the envelope calculation gives an incident radiation from the sun of about 128 * 10^15 watts

Another such calculation gives an average power consumption (energy from all sources per second) of less than 1 * 10^15 watts.

So, human contribution is less than 1%, and that translates (treating the Earth as a black body radiator) into a temperature increase of less than one degree Celsius.

Sylvia.

Reply to
Sylvia Else

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US is 34th on the list. Japan is first, Australia is 9th, Canada is 11th

Emigrating to Japan would mean learning a new language, which would be hard work - but good for your brain. Since the Japanese diet may play a part, you might not see the all the extra 4.8 years the list suggests.

Australians speak English (of a sort) so it might be easier to make the move, and the Australian diet is similar to the US one, so you might see more of the 3.2 extra years you might expect. Canada is even more similar to the USA so you could expect to get even more of the 2.7 year advantage nominally on offer.

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Bill Sloman, Sydney
Reply to
Bill Sloman

Do not let then run away! Catch them before landing!

Reply to
Robert Baer

  • Same thing goes for moving air (windmills not only slow down air, but once the air has passed, one has to find new moving air = = NOT "re-newable". Same thing for every so-called "renewable resource".
Reply to
Robert Baer

:

rce,

OTOH the progress of technology allows us to use more of the available reso urces, in ever more efficient & effective ways, sometimes more times than o nce.

There's going to be an awful lot of tech progress by the time the populatio n reaches the earth's current population support limits, which we're a very long way from. And with the rising ability of computers, before then techn ological progress will accelerate massively. In short we're a very long way from population limits.

Nuclear's fairly low hanging. And we can hugely improve how we use our ener gy, when eventually motivated to do so.

NT

Reply to
meow2222

How does it make any sense to run our energy producing equation backwards with any percentage of energy produced?

NT

Reply to
meow2222

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