I live in a country where that used to be the case. We had something like the third biggest air force in the world in the 50s. Swedish infrastructure was intact, and industrial production made us quite well off. Since then, we have balanced the budget by cutting down on defense capability every year. It hasn't been a question of whether but how many regiments get taken down. Particularly, the social democrats, the big, leftist state-bearing party from 1938 to the 90s, increased spending and paid for it through the military budget. When, one day, the commander-in-chief told the politicians that we no longer had even a minimal military capacity, they ignored him. Since then, we have participated in american military exercises, called things like Loyal Arrow, and pushed through the laws the american diplomats told us to implement, convicted the people the american film industry wanted, given the total surveillance data of electronic communications and financial transfers the american surveillance industry wanted, and so on.
The issue was that if a push had been made in the 70s and 80s for Solar power, at least the US would have been energy independent. When I question this, I get references to other types of renewables, including "new cleaner fission reactor types" and such. You missed the part about how 1) A push WAS made for solar. The effects were not energy independence, 2) The "new cleaner fission reactor types" WERE built, and are the fission plants the greens now complain about.
Another relevant issue is how you plan to institute "reducing demand, via greater energy efficiency in design". It would be a good thing to see an actual historical example of a society decreasing their energy demand, that is, without going through massive bombings of the infrastructure or similar disasters. Otherwise, I call bull. Or perhaps codswallop.
I agree on all points of the first paragraph. Solar is nice, but is very very far (taken alone) from granting us energy independance, and never would as it don't work so well during night. <wink, wink>
For the second paragraph, depends on what you are talking about. Energy needs can and had been decreased for locomotion through better and less fuel hungry motors, for house heating through better insulation, for industry through better technology and processes. Happens all the time!
Overall decrease is harder to attain (because of economical and population growth), but it doesn't mean that we shouldn't try to lessen our energy needs (personal anecdote : I did cut my heating energy bill to a fifth of what it was through better insulation and a better boiler).
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Solar is nice, but is very very far (taken alone) from granting us energy independance, and never would as it don't work so well during night.
Don't say "never". There are at least three 'solar only' solutions to that problem;
1: Store solar energy during the day to provide power at night.
2: Build a bigger/better electrical grid. It is always sunny SOMEWHERE.
3: Put your solar panels in orbit so they get continuous unobstructed sunlight 24x7.
Getting away from 'solar only' you could also add in wind and other renewable power solutions to cover night time electricity demands (which are much lower than daytime demands). Other solutions include nuclear power or natural gas. Yes, natural gas releases CO2, but if we were using it only for backup night-time electricity generation total emissions would be low enough for atmospheric CO2 levels to begin (slowly) declining back towards natural levels.
The reality is that more and more of the planet is passing the point where solar power becomes less expensive than the current cost of fossil fuel power. By 2020 this will be true for areas covering nearly the entire human population (Antarctica won't get there for a long time, but not really a major concern). The massive boom in solar power development we have seen over the past decade is thus just the beginning of a sea change which will only continue to accelerate... and as more solar power generation is installed more infrastructure will be built to support it. Fossil fuels had a good run... over a century as our primary means of energy production. They will lose that status long before 2100.
What you did was that you had an unoptimized energy situation, and by fixing it up, optimizing it, you cut your bill. That's certainly no impossibility in a small enough system. Once you go bigger, however, things grow problematic fast.
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Well, before I pick through the pieces of the solar energy debate...
So, I picked up a copy of The Boston Occupier when I went down for my socialist meeting on Saturday and they had an article about "An International Battle for Resources in the Arctic." Which I can't find online, but here's a piece from al-Jazeera about it. I haven't read it yet.
But the Occupier claims that a 2009 4-yr study commissioned by the US Geological Survey "revealed the extent of the treasures beneath the Arctic ice. The region is said to contain 30% of the world's unexploited gas and 13% of unexploited oil, in addition to a trove of valuable mineral deposits like uranium, iron, zinc and lead."
And at least Canada, Russia and Norway are already building Arctic military installations.
Dear god!
Yeah. You know, to really manage to have a military presence there, they will need to get large enough quantities of uranium, iron, zinc and lead, plus large amounts of gas and oil to power patrols etc. It sounds basically like a chicken race civil lawsuit to poverty that only serves to enrich various lawyers.
1: Store solar energy during the day to provide power at night.
2: Build a bigger/better electrical grid. It is always sunny SOMEWHERE.
3: Put your solar panels in orbit so they get continuous unobstructed sunlight 24x7.
1: Fine. I just don't see this replacing all other energy. I doubt anyone considers solar-only to be a viable alternative.
2: Sure. Discuss your idea with Palin and her crowd of "road to nowhere" people.3: Also has the added incentive of providing the militaries of the involved nations with directable large-scale energy transfer, or, if you prefer, orbital lasers able to burn the surface pretty easily. Should work well against, say, such problems as people having uncomfortable political views.
1: Fine. I just don't see this replacing all other energy. I doubt anyone considers solar-only to be a viable alternative.1: Store solar energy during the day to provide power at night.
2: Build a bigger/better electrical grid. It is always sunny SOMEWHERE.
3: Put your solar panels in orbit so they get continuous unobstructed sunlight 24x7.
Can you hear that? No, seriously, You hear that? Its the sound of earth's biomass laughing its arse off at that comment.
2: Sure. Discuss your idea with Palin and her crowd of "road to nowhere" people.1: Store solar energy during the day to provide power at night.
2: Build a bigger/better electrical grid. It is always sunny SOMEWHERE.
3: Put your solar panels in orbit so they get continuous unobstructed sunlight 24x7.
Your nation already has a wide spread national grid, with connection to other national grids.... Yeah. tots a road to nowhere...
3: Also has the added incentive of providing the militaries of the involved nations with directable large-scale energy transfer, or, if you prefer, orbital lasers able to burn the surface pretty easily. Should work well against, say, such problems as people having uncomfortable political views.Seriously?
Your argument against solar power is orbital death lasers?
For the love of...
Things don't work like that. You sound like the guy on the corner ranting that the Hubble telescope is really a weapon.
In fairness, Obital Death Lasers are my primary argument for solar...
;)I mean, what self respecting gamer doesn't look at orbital weapons and just think...cool, wonder what will happen when a scriptkiddy gets a hold of that bad boy
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There is enough to deep-fry the lot of us.
I also find it VERY interesting that you showed me an oil price curve that ended in 2008... Surely you are aware that that's impressively dishonest.
That article demonstrates a very shallow understanding of oil supplies IMO. The Bakken formation has a lot of oil in it, but as little as 1% could be recoverable. More recent estimates put it around 4 billion barrels are recoverable, that will increase as technology improves. The problem is that the US uses 7 billion barrels of oil every year. The oil field pumps out 500,000 barrels a day, but we're consuming 19,180,000 per day.
Yes, we have enough to deep fry everyone today. We probably have enough to do it again tomorrow as well. But easily recoverable oil discoveries are a thing of the past. That's the thing, the oil in Saudi Arabia is extremely easy and cheap to produce compared to shale oil, which is cheaper than oil shale, which is cheaper than tar sands. These more expensive oils also require more energy to produce, so the gain is less. Plus they pollute more. I'm not just talking about climate change, but things like this.
Peak oil is still an issue. Better technology, both discovery and recovery continue to push the problem out further, but it is not an endless supply.
So, I was reading a little about Lord Keynes (hate him already!) and the articles I was reading indicated that he hoped, after working out the kinks of his system, to either win the unions back to the Liberals or to have a Liberal-Labour alliance.
So maybe unions and the welfare state aren't technically part of what we call "Keynesianism," but I think it's safe to say that he assumed they were going to be around.
Basically what Krensky said a while back. OPEC happened. See the "Yom Kippur War" and the 1973 Oil Crisis. The funny thing is that if we'd listened to Jimmy Carter and converted to solar 35 years ago, the rest of the economy would have straightened out. Without the dependence on foreign oil, Keynes' theories and practices would have made us right as rain. But the Iran hostage crisis happened, the Reagan Revolution happened, and we've been back to boom and bust ever since. Each boom gets boomier, and each bust gets bustier.
Yeah, maybe. None of the things I'm reading have mentioned the Oil Crisis yet.
They're talking more about the scrapping of Bretton Woods and the reemergence of the Japanese and German economies as competitors with the US.
On top of not really being followed all that faithfully.
Yes, I've been coming to that conclusion myself, what with all that talk of "Bastardized Keynsianism" in the Monthly Review article that I don't quite grok yet.
Anyway, I may have exaggerated the role of the highway system in that argument above:
Lengthy quotation:
--The Great Financial Crisis: Causes and Consequences by John Bellamy Foster and Fred Magdoff
OK it's not country, but I really love this song.
I did some reading, Krensky. I am not impressed. If you say that you "can" attach a power cord via a space elevator, that's seriously stretching the definition of "can". Like viable fusion power, it seems to be chronically fifty years away. Even if we could, I seriously doubt such a project would be politically possible due to risks involved.
Worse with the beamed solar power. You correctly claim that the microwave radiation from such a satellite would be negligible. To be more specific, the radiation from ONE satellite would be negligible. They are even planned to have an aiming mechanism usable to direct the beam... Meaning ten, a hundred or more such satellites could put the flambe down on any specific point if only they were coordinated. I do not strain the word "can" much by saying that this problem can be solved, given that each and every one of them needs to be able to hit the rectenna. There are dozens of suggestions for how this would be safe technology, but each and every one relies on keeping the military out - which is not going to happen. This is the guys with a third of the american budget, above, who got caught trying to put in backdoors in CPUs in the nineties. As a space project, they can obstruct it indefinitely unless certain... Minor modifications were put in place.
Also remember that regarding airplanes, using mobile phones is illegal because something could maybe happen and we don't know. Unless you'd go with your family on a test plane through a series of such beams, don't claim it is safe.
Arrrgh.
Yes, you can just run a power cord. It's called a orbital tower.
Everything else is equally as wrong. Even at the center of the rectenna array the microwave intensity is so low as to be safe for indefinite exposure. You can't focus it tighter because physics gets in the way. By the very nature of microwave power transmission, solar power stations and their rectenna plants have to be big. Like a 1 km trnsmiting antenna and a 10km receiving rectenna. The long microwaves employed aren't meaningfully effected by water vapor (which is part of the point).
Everything you said is wrong.
Fair enough. Looks like I was. Though I'll miss the space lasers. Back to work on the orbital Mind Control Lasers instead.
Though we're a long way from orbital towers.
Kinetic bombardment is way cheaper and simpler.
The main issue with a space elevator at the moment is just a materials issue, and not a insurmountable one. Its comparable to not being able to make planes out of metal until aluminium was easily available. We already have the materials (namely Kevlar) that we could build one on the Moon or Mars. There are also several different concepts that are similar to the classic space elevator but don't require significant improvements in material science or manufacturing.
Successful Kickstarter from a few months ago for building the tech necessary to build an elevator on the moon. As they explain, we are still waiting on materials advances for the tech to be feasible on earth (as you said).
Arrrgh.
Yes, you can just run a power cord. It's called a orbital tower.
Everything else is equally as wrong. Even at the center of the rectenna array the microwave intensity is so low as to be safe for indefinite exposure. You can't focus it tighter because physics gets in the way. By the very nature of microwave power transmission, solar power stations and their rectenna plants have to be big. Like a 1 km trnsmiting antenna and a 10km receiving rectenna. The long microwaves employed aren't meaningfully effected by water vapor (which is part of the point).
Everything you said is wrong.
Fair enough. Looks like I was. Though I'll miss the space lasers. Back to work on the orbital Mind Control Lasers instead.
Though we're a long way from orbital towers.
Kinetic bombardment is way cheaper and simpler.
The main issue with a space elevator at the moment is just a materials issue, and not a insurmountable one. Its comparable to not being able to make planes out of metal until aluminium was easily available. We already have the materials (namely Kevlar) that we could build one on the Moon or Mars. There are also several different concepts that are similar to the classic space elevator but don't require significant improvements in material science or manufacturing.
I am in favour of the kinetic harpoonkinetic harpoon approach to obital weaponry.
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Yes, space based solar power was listed as one of the reasons it was incorrect to say that solar could "never" overcome the lack of sunlight at night.
There are economic and/or technical obstacles to space based solar which prevent its deployment right now... but don't say "never".
The other two options I listed, storing solar energy to provide power at night or building a grid capable of transferring energy from areas with sunlight to areas without, are both entirely possible with current technology... but will only be economically viable once large infrastructure changes are made or with further technological innovations.
For example, if every car on the road were replaced with a 'Chevy Volt' style rechargeable hybrid AND the power grid updated to allow power to be drawn out of connected car batteries when needed... viola, intermittent nature of solar power solved using affordable existing technologies.
An extremely light cable several thousand miles long, yes. I haven't done the maths, no, but I doubt the media of the future won't either.
As for a guide beam being necessary... Remember what I said about military meddling? Say... Putting in a special mode that allows you to fire without a guide beam, if, and only if, say, the military considered the situation an emergency. To the military, this would be necessary. They would not allow reports about it due to the sensitive nature of the project yadda yadda. Main problem is you can't keep themut. If the system goes from geostationary orbit, you could have quite a good number of satellites around, and different areas of tageting would mean slightly further to travel, nothing more. Diffraction would not be a serious problem.
By the way, microwaves have a serious advantage over kinetic missiles: they are invisible and leave no other trail. Fry, dead, nothing.
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An extremely light cable several thousand miles long, yes. I haven't done the maths, no, but I doubt the media of the future won't either.
Yes... because everyone knows that while a feather falls slowly and gently to the ground, if you had a feather thousands of miles long it would plummet like a rock.
Make believe physics sez so!
Except for the giant collection of satellites you'd need to focus that energy. The atmosphere is really good at diffusing heat and light. You would need a pretty large array to actually be able to focus the energy on a point miles away. Then you'd need to be able to maneuver that array into position.
The technology already exists to create such a device.
The problem is that over long distances, you'd need extremely immense arrays.
We know how to make lasers too. The problem is both the power requirements and their short range of effectiveness. Hence, no satellite laser beam strikes from orbit.
16000 KW/h produced in a year.
4000/5000 KW/h used in a year.
What ever shall we do with that 11000KW/h surplus?
What gets missed, oh so often by people like Sissyl, is that we have the technology, we can start rebuilding our society without collapse. There just isn't the will.
I disagree Zombie, but only inasmuch as I think it's a matter of the entrenched plutocrats (thank you Doodlebug) actively undermining the legitimacy of required infrastructure in the US, rather than individual will.
But yes, We have the technology!
The satellites already need to pinpoint a single spot miles away. The descriptions I read, their power could be directed. You use microwave to decrease energy diffusion in the atmosphere. Either you can get energy down to the surface, and it is a weapon, or you can't and it isn't. And yes, you could make it so it needs a guide beam... but you could build it different ways too.
The problem is it's an incredibly inconvenient weapon. It's like building a Rube Goldberg gun. It would be difficult to position and re-position, would be extremely expensive to build and have very limited uses. It would break easy, everyone could watch it in the sky and would not be a secret.
"Oh, I wonder who used the only existing satellite mounted microwave gun?"
It's much more likely that they'll be used in geosynchronous orbit with specially build receptors to improve transmission of energy. So, don't stand on the receptor, it might get hot.
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Seriously?
Your argument against solar power is orbital death lasers?
(Snip)
Even at the center of the rectenna array the microwave intensity is so low as to be safe for indefinite exposure. You can't focus it tighter because physics gets in the way.
D>%¥it, Science! No flying cars, no jet packs, and now no orbital death rays? Seriously, what's the point?!
Do we at least get the mind-control lasers? I was looking forward to those.
This video does not exist.
We have the technology!
:D
I am glad someone spotted that. ;)
Krensky... you are aware that when you use a non coordinated wave like that, there is no canceling out beyond a slightly lower additive effect? Take a look at a gamma knife, for example. Using that, you get a sharp radiation dose in the overlap area but very little beyond the radiation one beam gives. I see absolutely no possibility of the surplus energy ending up in the non overlapped areas. Please explain why a ray would impart energy to a volume it doesn't hit.
Certainly, you would use long wave. And yes. One would be a crappy weapon. However... how many geostationary satellites are visible from a certain Earth surface position at any given time? Quite a few. The receiver arrays would be for receiving satellite power beams, they would look no different from that. Nor would building the satellites look different from a power array. Crappy weapon... when you use only one. With dozens aimed at one point, you kill whoever you target, you go through walls pretty well due to long waves, it is invisible, and the only indication something happened would be that a certain number of them did some retargeting for a few seconds.
Your tungsten rod scenario has a little problem called the atmosphere to deal with. A satellite would have to carry extremely large tungsten rods to avoid the rod vaporizing due to reentry. They would not be the only object to hit the Earth that day, so to speak. You claim an orbital maser is inconvenient due to atmosphere. Don't pretend a tungsten rod would not have that problem.
Plus, apparently... people hit by low intensity microwaves experience some pretty intense emotions, such as dread, impending doom... Evil geniuses for a better tomorrow would have a field day. Orbital mind control masers are REAL!!!
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Yes, natural gas releases CO2, but if we were using it only for backup night-time electricity generation total emissions would be low enough for atmospheric CO2 levels to begin (slowly) declining back towards natural levels.
Global warming is a natural process, even if humans have the largest effect on it right now (not saying I believe that), it is still a natural process and the planet is naturally going to get warmer, we are still in a very cold stage of the planet's cycle, it will get a lot hotter regardless of how much we help it along.
So no, there isn't going to be any decline in CO2 for a very, very long time, unless humans artificially reduce it somehow.
Natural levels are not some constant level that is somehow less then what it is now, as stated previously by others, the only debate about global warming is how much is humans vs how much is natural, so what makes you think that CO2 would decline, if CO2 would be increasing even without our help?
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Space elevators, you could do better by making a "chain" up to geosync orbit with a counterweight (by chain I mean several large round rings stacked in a chain, with the elevator space in the middle), and have mag lev elevators do the lifting rather then cable. Though I would much prefer to not put people in such a thing until it's proven safe for cargo for a while.
Of course even just cargo would make space colonizing feasable.
Damnit. I can't corroborate that last section about emotional effects of microwaves. Consider it retracted. Sorry for getting your hopes up, folks.
Solar is nice, but is very very far (taken alone) from granting us energy independance, and never would as it don't work so well during night.Don't say "never". There are at least three 'solar only' solutions to that problem;
1: Store solar energy during the day to provide power at night.
2: Build a bigger/better electrical grid. It is always sunny SOMEWHERE.
3: Put your solar panels in orbit so they get continuous unobstructed sunlight 24x7.
Put that on my imperfect mastery of the english language.
In fact, we do agree. What I meant is that solar power can only be a part of the solution with our current tech and infrastructure (thus, excluding space based solutions).
The biggest integrated power grid is the european one, and it doesn't cover all longitudes.
[EDIT : for the record, work has begun to extend it southward and connect it to the North African countries, with an eye on building mega solar plants in the Sahara in 10 to 20 years].
An extremely light cable several thousand miles long, yes. I haven't done the maths, no, but I doubt the media of the future won't either.
As for a guide beam being necessary... Remember what I said about military meddling? Say... Putting in a special mode that allows you to fire without a guide beam, if, and only if, say, the military considered the situation an emergency. To the military, this would be necessary. They would not allow reports about it due to the sensitive nature of the project yadda yadda. Main problem is you can't keep themut. If the system goes from geostationary orbit, you could have quite a good number of satellites around, and different areas of tageting would mean slightly further to travel, nothing more. Diffraction would not be a serious problem.
With reasoning like that, back in the cave, you would have argued against smelting copper ore ("urgh, could be made into pointy implements!").
It's a bit weird, as some pages back, you were the one to rant against the damn ecologists who supposedly wanted to send us all to a preindustrial leval of developpement...
What you did was that you had an unoptimized energy situation, and by fixing it up, optimizing it, you cut your bill. That's certainly no impossibility in a small enough system. Once you go bigger, however, things grow problematic fast.
Sure. And if enough people do it, with a government incentive like I did (less taxes), what you get is a energy saving at the "big system" level.
Worked fine with the UE, for years : just compare the average energy consumption of any european citizen (submitted to energy saving regulation and incentives for decades now) and of, say, an american one (no regulation to speak of, gas guzzling cars).
EDIT: okay, I did it for you. It's 3,97 TEP per franch citizen in 2009(Ton of Petroleum Equivalent? Not sure about the english translation), 4,88 per citizen in Sweden (colder climate) and 7,05 in the USA, all included.
Interestingly, in the three countries above, the per capita energy consumption was higher in 2002 : 4,47 in France (- 12%), 5,72 in Sweden (- 15%, congratulations) and 7,94 in the USA (- 11%).
Overall, Sweden used 51 kTEP back in 1998, and 49 kTEP in 2012 (could be tied to economical slouch and/or a warmer inter though).
Source : the World Bank.
Certainly, you would use long wave. And yes. One would be a crappy weapon. However... how many geostationary satellites are visible from a certain Earth surface position at any given time? Quite a few. The receiver arrays would be for receiving satellite power beams, they would look no different from that. Nor would building the satellites look different from a power array. Crappy weapon... when you use only one. With dozens aimed at one point, you kill whoever you target, you go through walls pretty well due to long waves, it is invisible, and the only indication something happened would be that a certain number of them did some retargeting for a few seconds.
I guess that it is the HUGE solar array used to collect solar power in the first place that would give them away. Usual geosynchronous satellites have a much smaller array to power onboard electronics.
That was already answered, but you seem to have missed it : with your microwave weapon (maser), you are thinking of small wave microwaves (like the ones in your oven) which interact with water molecules and make food, people and kittens boil.
The power satellites would be made to send long wave microwaves, which don't interact with water at all. You can't make people, kittens and people boil with them, it's no fun.
Even if some wicked general did insist to build a multipurpose satellite, the energy of a small wave maser would be dissipated by the atmosphere well before it strikes the ground (lost in the clouds, litterally). It would work fine on a lunar target though, if you can somehow send the guy you want to boil alive there beforehand.
And yes, something built to survive re-entry in the atmosphere will do so (and do damage to what they land on), be it a tungstene rod, a space shuttle or a Apollo capsule. Iron meteorites do it all the time. Accuracy is another matter...