CBS report: Earth's resources are running out.

[NWB]

solar, wind, geothermal, tidal, and source to generate enough energy for electrolysis.

but, that's not the only way:

"Generating hydrogen does not necessarily require a great deal of energy. Prof. Jerry Woodall, of Prudue University, has worked with a hydrogen separation model for years at ambient pressure and without electrolysis.

Aluminum alloys with gallium at very low temperatures (you can speed it up by heating the gallium to 100 degrees C.). When water is introduced to the Al & Ga alloy, the oxygen atoms rapidly bond to the aluminum (resulting in a sludge of aluminum oxide, aka alumina). The remaining H2 molecules are freed.

The alumina separates itself from the alloy, making the gallium available for reuse. Further, the alumina itself can be recycled back to it's pure form."

To address the issues, people just need to start thinking outside of the hydrocarbon box.

Very good. Now you have to scale that technology to the present level of hydrocarbon consumption.

The real point I was making is that hydrogen isn't a source of energy, but is a carrier of energy. Much like electricity. Either way, you have to generate it.

 

[nortonrider]

Very good. Now you have to scale that technology to the present level of hydrocarbon consumption.

overnight? no

one step at a time.

I would think that hydrogen powered electrical plants would be a pretty good place to start.
Lots of small community sized generating stations instead of huge plants pumping juice into the nationwide grid doesn't seem impossible to me.

one step at a time.

 

[BassyBill]

But NWB is right in what he's saying - you have to put more energy into liberating hydrogen from water than you're going to get from burning it. There's no way round that, it's just the first law of thermodynamics in action.

Hydrogen from water is undoubtedly a very clean fuel, but it's not a primary energy resource. It has to be manufactured, and that needs energy. Saying we can use hydrogen to solve our energy shortage is like telling a bankrupt to solve their money problems by using the interest on their investments.

Some people think hydrogen is a direct alternative to fossil fuels, when it clearly isn't. You can't replace a primary energy resource with a secondary one.

 

[nortonrider]

I wonder how much energy it takes to get coal out of the ground?

 

[MatticusMania]

We've got the greatest source of renewable energy available to us - manpower.
Just that no one wants to do the work themselves, because we're too busy being distracted by shiny things. And boobs.

 

[BassyBill]

I wonder how much energy it takes to get coal out of the ground?

A hell of a lot less than you get from burning it, of course!

 

[nortonrider]

But NWB is right in what he's saying - you have to put more energy into liberating hydrogen from water than you're going to get from burning it. There's no way round that, it's just the first law of thermodynamics in action.

Hydrogen from water is undoubtedly a very clean fuel, but it's not a primary energy resource.

But the Sun is..........
there's an energy source right there!

What you are saying is also said about electric cars
and people are buying them every day.

 

[totallyfrozen]

CBS report: Earth's resources are running out.

Nonsense.

 

[nortonrider]

A hell of a lot less than you get from burning it, of course!

.mining the ore to make into steel to make into mining machines

.Drilling for the oil to be converted to fuel needed to operate the machines

.Transportation of the coal to the powerstation

.Conversion of the coal into heat

.Converting that heat into electricity

.Distributing that electricity to the end users


Those are just a few steps in the process from off the top of my head, there are probably more.

I have no idea how to begin calculating the net power gain in the coal industry, but I bet someone out there has figured it out.

Now, I gotta go look, I'm curious.

 

[MatticusMania]

But the Sun is..........
there's an energy source right there!

But its not renewable! Its running out!

 

[BassyBill]

But the Sun is..........
there's an energy source right there!

What you are saying is also said about electric cars
and people are buying them every day.

Fine. So let's use the Sun for generating electricity. I'm all for that, and the tech to do so economically is developing all the time. But there's no point a all point using the Sun to generate electricity, using that electricity to liberate hydrogen, and then burning the hydrogen to generate electricity again. That would be like a bit like using geothermal energy to power a turbine to generate electricity to power a motor to turn a generator to power an electric kettle. Why not just boil your water using the geothermal heat and avoid wasting energy with the steps in-between?

And what I am saying is absolutely NOT said about electric cars by people who understand anything about energy. The fact that people are buying electric cars is nothing at all to do with solutions to the energy shortage, but is related to other environmental factors. You are mistaking my statements here for opinion, which they categorically are not. I'm just stating how key scientific concepts still have to apply to our usage of energy. If people think driving electric cars will somehow make our energy resources last longer, they're confusing energy depletion with other issues. The electricity for the car has to come from somewhere. If we want to use less energy by adopting electric cars, we have to change the primary energy source we use to generate the electricity.

 

[BassyBill]

.mining the ore to make into steel to make into mining machines

.Drilling for the oil to be converted to fuel needed to operate the machines

.Transportation of the coal to the powerstation

.Conversion of the coal into heat

.Converting that heat into electricity

.Distributing that electricity to the end users


Those are just a few steps in the process from off the top of my head, there are probably more.

I have no idea how to begin calculating the net power gain in the coal industry, but I bet someone out there has figured it out.

Now, I gotta go look, I'm curious.

nortonrider - think this one through. If extracting fossil fuels did somehow use more energy overall than we got out of the fuel, where have we got the energy from to extract them for the last couple of hundred years?

You seem to have a bit of a misconception about how energy transfers and energy resources work. Fossil fuels' commercial value is entirely based on their very high energy content in comparison to the energy needed to bring them to market.

You can't just switch from using coal and oil to using hydrogen and batteries. Where're you going to get the energy for making the hydrogen and the batteries?

 

[bass12]

Nonsense.

Really? Oh good, thanks for clearing that up - I was getting worried for a second there.

 

[michael_atw]

Or just a good 'ol pandemic. We should be about due for the next super-bug.

Not if our expensive medical technology can stop it!

 

[nortonrider]

“Energy cannot be created or destroyed, it can only be changed from one form to another.”
― Albert Einstein

Imagine when that first Locomotive designer said:
"we ought to put a diesel motor on here and use it to power an electric generator then we can use that electricity to run a electric motor that we can use to propel the train"

I bet they all thought he was nuts!




today.......... every train runs like that.

 

[michael_atw]

You realize it's that same open space that's far from cities that forces guys like Matt to drive 50 miles to work each day, right? That's the inherent flaw in our infrastructure. We built our nation with the idea of the automobile being a daily part of a workers commute from the suburbs into the cities. Oops. Didn't account for that finite resource that actually gets the car moving.

Damn. You won my heart.

Suburbanization was a massive destructive force in our culture and our economy. The wave that is still eroding things away.

 

[michael_atw]

Changing your vehicle for a more fuel efficient one is just one way you can start making a change. There's plenty of other things you can do to help.

This will be my next vehicle purchase.

 

[michael_atw]

Munji brought this up already. That curve is supposed to level out like that, and, oddly enough, the one I saw back in high school also capped off around 10-12 billion. The thing is, I don't see what will cause us to cap off there giving our current rate of growth.

Well, we're already reaching an apex of life expectancy. They say the present generation will be the first one in a looonnng time to not live as long as their parents. This might contribute to a leveling. Also, as the world develops (and it all will eventually) their birthrates will follow the developed world I presume.

 

[nortonrider]

Fossil fuels' commercial value is entirely based on their very high energy content.

At the beginning of the Automobile Era, there were both electric and petrol powered cars.
the choice to use gasoline was what you said, it's high energy content.
but not for the amount effort it takes to produce, it was for the the portability of the fuel in the car.

Lighter, smaller, etc....

 

[Rockin Mike]

I'm still waiting for someone to step up to the plate and prove that oil is an infinite resource.

So many people believe that, based on?????

Oil comes from dead dinosaurs. They aren't making any more dinosaurs.

On the other hand, Earth's "limited run" of dinosaur production lasted several hundred million years and produced some {unspecified large} of biomass. Not all of it happened into just the right circumstance to create oil so divide by {unspecified small} chance that any given dino turned to oil, then another {unspecified small} chance that it wound up in a place that's easily accessible to drilling...

Too much is {unspecified} to really estimate how much oil there is and how much we have to tear up the Earth to get at it.

On the (yet) other hand, we've only been after it for a mere hundred years or so, so it's possible the supply is (in practical terms) infinite. Who really knows?

Who would doubt the oil companies and OPEC are greedy enough to gouge prices with fictional shortages?

and where's the money that's supposed to be going to developing alternatives? As a species I wouldn't bet that we will actually shrink our energy habits. Scientists tell us that there is a humongous amount of energy out there that we don't have good ways to access. Development of these sources is limited by big oil's monopolistic practices (boo!)