Depressing

Depressing, but it is reality. If we do nothing today to change our head in the sand policies, what will come in 10-20 years will be much more than depressing.

It is not unmannedspaceflight which will come with a solution, but discussing it everywhere is really important: we all have some bits of means to change things.

Me I think that questionning all our policies to avoid a woldwide lethal threat is not depressing, it is rather challenging. What depresses me is people who do nothing, fatalism, submission, being unconcerned and self-centered, all of them losers even before attempting. Wake up! Our Earth spaceship is on fire!

Doug, could you please add a smilie showing a boot kicking an a... ?

I have planted a mango tree recently and they are marginal here, does that count?

Dutch saying: NO HOPE, NO LIFE:

I think there's hope. The day will come, that there will be an equilibrium between crop production worldwide and the amount of stomachs walking around. Diseases, wars, famines, natural disasters, etc. will (in the end) take care of that. Given that fact (that world population isn't growing well above mother earths carrying capacity), the energy problem is the only one problem left by then. And this can be solved.

Stronger: it can't be anything else. First: We life on a globe that's heated from the outside with a wealth of readily available radiation that can be converted in any other form we like (heat, chemically in the form of hydrogen, etc.). Secondly, this globe has an incredibly thin crust, under which it boils of superhot rock. Imagine: on a lot of places on earth, we burn fossil fuels like crazy, while just a little deeper than the sources of these fuels, the earth is red hot ! In the end, we must use it, simply because there will be no alternative left. Yeah, death of a lot of people probably at first (but probably gradualy due to demographic changes over centuries). But this will come to an equilibrium. And then: using absolute 100 % sustainable energy sources (solar energy in any form: wind and tide energy are solar energy as well) will be the only way to go.

But right now: it is much easier to drill a hole, let the oil come out and burn it (according to what is actually happening). It's easier and cheaper right now than developping new tech for sustainable resources. It's politics, it's fast profit for the big oil companies and national economies, compared to making costs for new hardware/infrastructure in the direction of sustainability. There's one "but": we should not forget to use this natural sources of fossil fuels to go through a transition phase to sustainable sources: we need the oil to stay alive right now and devellop into the right direction.

But i am afraid, that it's going to take an awfull lot of time, damage to the environment and frustration. But in the end.....it will be "fine" i'd say.

Conclusion: i don't think humanity will kill itself completely by using up all resources, before it devellopped a new, sustainable way of converting solar energy for era's....

Statement: In 10000 years, there will still be humans around (but no elephants, whales or any other mamals bigger than a cat).

No need to go steam engines, today we have electricity. I commute every day over 55 miles one way (110 miles there and back again) and I am in electricity-powered vehicles all along the way (trolley-bus in one city, electric train, then streetcar on the other city).

Borek

Electricity is not an energy source. Without energy source, the power grid just gets off. And to produce this electricity today there are huge... steam machines (coal of fuel power plants) which burn fossil fuel. This is the problem.

That depend on our choices. If we do the choice of regulating population, go to renewable resources, etc... this dreadful scenario will not happen, and we shall be able to live happy, without hunger and problems, and achieve many great things. But if we make the choice of lefting things like they are today, certainly some natural selection process will cull mankind out, lefting only a small part of it, perhaps nobody. And lefting no right to complain.

This is started, new diseases are beginning to appear.

Personally I do not know what to do. I planted trees, I was candidates to elections, I put my life at risk, I select my garbage, etc. But how to make others understand?

No matter what else happens to Earth's resources, in a few billion years from now our Sun is going to expand into a red giant star and fry Earth. So we better either move or find a way to keep the Sun burning longer at its current yellow dwarf stage.

Yes, but this is a completelly different issue. It is said that, in one billion years, the Earth will be unable to regulate its natural greenhouse effect to avoid the rise of temperature (Sun will be still on its main sequence, but its temp raises slowly).
But one billion years is a lot of time... we have plenty of time to find a solution for this kind of problem, including shifting Earth's orbit farther from the Sun, to allow three more billions years before the Sun turns to a red giant.

But to achieve the engineering level required to shedule tasks over millions of years, we need a sustainable economy/industry, and a coherent society/politics/morals and the like.

Otherwise, as marcel says above, there will be some kind of natural selection. So far that mankind could disappear, and, in some tens of million years, another specie could become intelligent and do things in our place. They will wonder why we were eliminated, and search for the meteorite impact which eliminated us.

Someday maybe 100-200 years from now human civilisation may rise again. Without any oil , uranium , natural gas or coal they might find that rather dificult but...
If our grandchildren are to succed in building that new civilisation in that circumstances , then maybe somebody will remember our times as naive period when we were so blind and so happy about it...other will hate us because of what we could do but didn't...

About the oil replacemet. The vehicles, train, boats, industry and house have their alternative energy different than oil. Now I see the airplane has no easy replacement. I don't imagine the future planes will be flying with hydrogen and oxigen liquids since they are very expensive.

Will we be traveling in a super fast trains to replace the airplanes....

Rodolfo

Yes, super fast trains using magnetic levitation in vacuum tunnels would be a good alternative. At least for continents and small seas.

Rakhir.

It is not just OIL that runs out...Oil is just the most important to our society now...
Will we be traveling AT ALL and where?Tourism is one of the first things that will die out without cheap oil (...energy...)...

I'm hoping there will be enough electricity to turn-on my computer...That's my way of traveling around the world instantly...

You should be able to travel by train when oil reserves will be worked out.
See "World's First Biogas Train Makes Maiden Voyage In Sweden".
http://www.terradaily.com/news/energy-tech-05zzzzzzzq.html

Maybe with some technological improvements (engine performance, lightweight structure, ...) you should even be able to travel by plane using biogas.

Rakhir

Is this internally produced or must the train stop for refueling?

From the article "The train is equipped with 11 canisters containing enough gas to run for 600 kilometers (375 miles) before needing a refill."

Biogas production is a slow process which requires large quantities of plants and/or animal waste.
Internal production should not be possible.

Rakhir

I was not quite sure about the Swedish diet.

Another good news, the Peruvian train company has replaced the diesel locomotive for natural gas. This train carry one canister with many cylinders of gas. This canister gas cargo permit the train to travel from Lima to mining sities and be back (400 km total distance) after climbing from the sea level to above than 4,800 m.s.n.m. These train bring minerals from Andean mountain to coast where is the harbor.

The other program is that two bus company has already been testing gas as fuel as a replacmenent to diesel gas. Up to now, there are good results, lots of saving of money due to cheaper and cleaner fuel. The company is happy with the results and will replace the gas to all fleet of diesel bus.

Rodolfo

Replacing diesel engines by natural gas engines can perhaps reduce the emission of carbon dioxid but natural gas is not a renewable energy. Indeed, it is extracted from underground reserves like oil.

Only biogas, produced from dead plants and animals is a renewable source of gas.

Biogas is already used on a wide range in transports in some countries like in Sweden where they have 779 biogas buses and more than 4,500 cars that run on a mixture of petrol and either biogas or natural gas.

Rakhir

Natural gaz (methane) produces less carbon dioxyd than fuel, because of its formula (CH4) which contains two times more hydrogen than gazoline, kerozene, fuel etc CH2n So at a first step it is good, but in the long run it is only eluding the term for some years.

Today huge quantities of methane are burned just when getting out of oil wells (there are alway a small quatity of methane in oil).

In a second step, methane and oil could be cracked to produce hydrogen, the carbon fraction being stockpiled under the form of tar, or reinjected in the wells. Also there are large reserves of sour gas (containing hydrogen sulfide) which can be used for this purpose.

But ultimately only renewable sources of gas can be envisioned, and the best moment to do somehing urgent is alway "today".
-using the cellulosis fraction of plants is much more efficient than using vegetable oil or manure gas. Cellulosis can be easily converted to alcool, and from there to all the fuels and oil industry products, plastics, dyes, medecines, etc.
-hydrogen can be produced in solar furnaces with cracking of water (the process runs at 950°C and uses a chemical cycle based on SO2, the patent is owned by the french CEA). This hydrogen can be then made to reach with CO2 and converted to classical fuels and oil products.

-To give an order of magnitude, if we cover the ballast of a railway with photovoltaic cells we can produce today (even assuming they have a poor yeld) we can make run several large trains a day.

Very interesting articles. Now I see the difference between biogas and natural gas. Another article that I have read recently is that a Colombian company has launched a new product: fuel gasoline of 84 and 90 octanes is mixed with etanol (bio) with the proportion of 90-10% respectively. So its sugar industry will increase the cultivate area to satisfy this demand. Peru is also following to Colombian's experience.

Rodolfo

Biogas is usually methane, and it produces exactly the same quantity of carbon dioxyd than natural gaz (methane). But, as biogas is just part of the general atmospheric carbon cycle, it does not raise issues of increasing carbon dioxid in the air: it just replaces what was removed by plants (or, sait otherwise, it would come back to atmosphere sooner or later).

Natural gaz on the countrary ADDS carbon dioxyd to the overall quantity already present in the cycle. It is a lesser evil compared to fuel, and still worse coal, but it is still an evil. The only clean way to use natural gaz would be to use the hydrogen fraction, but we have still the inconvenience of being a non-renewable resource.

An interesting article about biofuels for transport (sept 2005).

http://www.oecdobserver.org/news/fullstory..._transport.html

Extracts from this article :
"Recent projections suggest that ethanol could represent up to 5% of the world’s transport fuel by 2010.

The production potential, cost and the environmental impacts of producing ethanol, biodiesel and other liquid and gaseous fuels are still uncertain.

Currently leading the way in consumption of ethanol for transport are the United States and Brazil. Nonetheless, in the United States, ethanol represents less than 2% of transport fuel; but in Brazil it now accounts for well over 30% of motor fuel demand.

From a greenhouse gas point of view, cellulosic ethanol is good news, since it is nearly carbon-neutral.

It is in the developing world that the outlook for production of biofuels appears most promising. The cost of producing ethanol from sugar cane in Brazil is now close to the country’s cost of gasoline on a volume basis."

Rakhir

We went from Wood to Coal to Oil ... we'll go on to something else, don't worry ... Lobbyists can't convince governments to use fossil fuels when we'll ran out of those fuels...

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