Jump to content
Join the Unexplained Mysteries community today! It's free and setting up an account only takes a moment.
- Sign In or Create Account -

Human civilizaton will end around 2050


Eldorado

Recommended Posts

7 minutes ago, Doug1o29 said:

It does not take 150 tons of coal to build a WT.  Even in Australia, wind is generating enough energy to cover the costs of new construction.  Your meme is hopelessly obsolete.

Probably true.

What disturbs me more is that a first-world country like Australia has to schedule blackouts due to power shortages.

Harte

 

  • Like 2
Link to comment
Share on other sites

11 minutes ago, Harte said:

Probably true.

What disturbs me more is that a first-world country like Australia has to schedule blackouts due to power shortages.

Harte

That's simply a shortage of generating capacity.  All they have to do is build a greater capacity.  Wind power is one way.  Coal and gas plants are another.  It's a self-inflicted wound.

Doug

Link to comment
Share on other sites

2 minutes ago, Doug1o29 said:

That's simply a shortage of generating capacity.  All they have to do is build a greater capacity.  Wind power is one way.  Coal and gas plants are another.  It's a self-inflicted wound.

Doug

Solar farms as well.  There is plenty of sun in Australia.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Just now, Desertrat56 said:

Solar farms as well.  There is plenty of sun in Australia.

Forgot that.

Up to this time, solar farms have suffered from low efficiency problems, but two inventions within the last year may change that.  The first is a coating for receptors that allows infrared light to be converted to electricty, increasing efficiency about 15%.  The second is the advent of perovskites, a material that can be painted on a surface, then connected to the grid.  How about that - power shortages solved with a paint brush!

 

There is a way that wind and solar can store energy for later use: The grid operator can preferentially use wind and solar, conserving water in hydro-electric systems.  That water can later be used to generate electricity.

Doesn't work with Niagara Falls.

Doug

 

  • Like 2
Link to comment
Share on other sites

51 minutes ago, Doug1o29 said:

That's simply a shortage of generating capacity.  All they have to do is build a greater capacity.  Wind power is one way.  Coal and gas plants are another.  It's a self-inflicted wound.

Doug

No doubt about that.

It's also a stupid wound.

Harte

  • Like 2
Link to comment
Share on other sites

3 hours ago, Desertrat56 said:

The China one child policy barely caught on in china.  It would never catch on in any religious family that follows the "go forth and multiply" doctrine.  The people who think about it already limit themselves to one child.

Yeah, true.  What also seems to hold true is that affluence has an effect on reducing birth rate, and reducing birth rate has an effect on families struggling to overcome poverty.   Even in some of the "fruitful" persuasions, couples have been practicing the rhythm method for many generation.  It may not be 100% effective, but the desire has been there.

This may seem a bit too liberal and progressive for some, but empowerment of women might help save the world too.  Women in third world countries who have no control over their lives, have multiple children; in rapid succession frequently die young as do many of their progeny.   Perhaps a little more control by women over their own fertility to start with might help improve the situation.

  • Like 3
Link to comment
Share on other sites

The cave man said the world would end soon.  It did for them.  Go ahead and worry if you want but this planet will be here past 2050 that doesn't mean we will but people will be around for a few million more years.  Doomsday is good for business.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

if this was even half true. no one would ever get a 40 year mortgage on a home from a bank from now on. think about that.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 hour ago, morphiouse1 said:

if this was even half true. no one would ever get a 40 year mortgage on a home from a bank from now on. think about that.

Wrong!  A forty-year mortgage is the thing to get if the world is going to end before then.  That way, you don't have to pay it off.

But, as kapow53 said, the world is going to be here no matter what we do.  It's been around 4.5 billion years and has every prospect of being around another 4.5 billion years.  It's whether we'll be on it that is in question.  There have been five mass extinctions before, only one of which was caused by an impact.

The Permian-Triassic Extinction Event resulted in loss of 95% of the planet's biodiversity.  Scientists think it was caused by massive methane releases from the oceans.  This same mechanism could kill us off:  as the oceans warm, methane releases increase, further warming the atmosphere and the oceans, which release more methane.  It has happened once; it could happen again.

We have already had that scare once.  Methane seeps were discovered under the Arctic Ocean.  Initially, people thought they were new, but further studies suggested they had been there all along and that we just now dicovered them.  If they have been there all along and haven't produced a diaster, then they probably aren't going to produce one.  It's the truly new ones we have to worry about.

And that is without the Sixth Mass Extinction which we appear well on the way to creating.

Doug

Edited by Doug1029
  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

2 hours ago, morphiouse1 said:

if this was even half true. no one would ever get a 40 year mortgage on a home from a bank from now on. think about that.

Well, if they needed a low payment and were sure there was no future, of course they would.  Why wouldn't they?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

On 6/4/2019 at 3:49 PM, tmcom said:

by covering the planet with wind turbines that use more coal than they give back in energy

What? I am actually puzzled by this? Not kidding

Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 minute ago, godnodog said:

What? I am actually puzzled by this? Not kidding

So are many of the rest of us.  It seems he is talking about the factory process of making wind turbines, which in Australia, uses very old techniques.  Or he is 30 years behind the times, not sure which.

  • Thanks 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

The world is already changing, the other day when discussing environment changes with my mom I asked her of she noticed the lack of bugs or the lack of birds? She had a  WTF moment and stopped to think  and then she realized that there are far less bugs now, we used to have shitloads of birds, they were quite noisy, this spring and at this very moment I am writing I can say/ask "Where are the birds?".
I used to catch spiders every weekend when cleaning house, now it´s rare. 


Last summer we had for the very first time 53ºc ( 127.4 degrees Fahrenheit) here in Setubal, Portugal, I´m talking Death Valley temps here.

Edited by godnodog
Link to comment
Share on other sites

3 minutes ago, Desertrat56 said:

So are many of the rest of us.  It seems he is talking about the factory process of making wind turbines, which in Australia, uses very old techniques.  Or he is 30 years behind the times, not sure which.

Oh yeah, that is probably what he was trying to say. Yes the industrial process isnt exacly clean but in out current tech it´s the best we can do (???).

Link to comment
Share on other sites

4 minutes ago, godnodog said:

_ignore this

 

Edited by godnodog
Wanted to delete this post
Link to comment
Share on other sites

7 minutes ago, godnodog said:

Oh yeah, that is probably what he was trying to say. Yes the industrial process isnt exacly clean but in out current tech it´s the best we can do (???).

Not by hist description,  it seems counter intuit nowdays to use coal to create wind turbines.  If that is your business, then it is more efficient and ecconomical to use wind turbines to produce the electricity.  This is what frustrates me most is that so many large industries are still in the dark ages when it comes to generating electricity.  The electric company in my area built a coal plant over 35 years ago in a state that at the time was the leader in solar and other alternative energy sources.  Now the company wants the state to bail them out of their existing debt for building that coal plant so they can "invest in alternative" sources of energy.!!!???  And the debt they have should have been paid off by now but isn't because it includes a million dollars that they had to pay in damages to the Navajo nation for destroying an ancient burial site.  Corporate greed at its worst, in my opinion.  It is always about the current bottom line and no concern for the future bottom line.  If all the consumers are dead where will they get more money?  (they got off easy only having to pay a million)

Edited by Desertrat56
Link to comment
Share on other sites

In my area the coal power plant has been offline for around 15 years, but is maintained just in case of a major national power shortage emergency, in other words its more likely to be dismantled in a few years. the air is still polluted due to other industries, but it was a major improvement in air quality.

Ican understand asian countries still using this but european countries? Or american...please

Edited by godnodog
  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

On 6/4/2019 at 11:04 AM, tmcom said:

We have hundreds of years worth of coal, close to the surface, so costs are cheap, but of course we are too dumb to use it,and send it away.

When I was in high school, they said the US had 600 years of coal left.  But then, as geologists started looking at that coal, they found that huge amounts were unminable due to seams being too thin, access to surface mining being blocked by tunnel mining between the seam and the surface, unmined coal being needed to hold up the roof (c. 20%), carbon content being too low, etc., etc.

Each assessment lowered the years of supply until it's now down to a few decades.

Then, too, there's a matter of definitions:  "Proven reserves" are ones somebody has dug into and found coal.  "Unproven reserves" are ones we think are down there, but nobody has dug up a sample yet.  And there are several other categories which all boil down to:  "we think we'll find coal when we finally dig them up, but nobody knows."  There's even an assumed figure for reserves that haven't even been discovered yet.  When you add all these together, you get figures in the hundreds of years, but as time goes on, most do not pan out.  That's the way the coal industry estimates its reserves and it is also a handy way to mislead the naive.

 

"Close to the surface" means somebody is thinking of strip mining.  Do you really want to do that to your country?  I invite you to take a tour of Kentucky and see first-hand what kind of disaster you're tlaking about.  John Denver wasn't lying.  Don't repeat our mistakes.

 

Why don't you look up the coal reserve figures for Australia.  Look up all the assessments and see how the estimated supply has changed over the years.  I'm betting your "hundreds of years" worth of coal will run out in a few decades.

 

You might want to quit putting up emoticons when you disagree with me and produce some evidence that you know what you're talking about.

Doug

  • Thanks 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 hour ago, godnodog said:

Oh yeah, that is probably what he was trying to say. Yes the industrial process isnt exacly clean but in out current tech it´s the best we can do (???).

I am saying including investment capital, and gov, funding as well as raw materials, add's up to one Wind turbine making a profit is dubious, and l am sure wind turbine sites will paint a rosy picture.

:o And Doug, we have 400 years latest estimate. And enough Gas reserves to power out entire country, (mainly under Queensland) for hundreds of years also if fracking was allowed. You can accept that or rejected it, too late here to fuss with searches.

Edited by tmcom
Link to comment
Share on other sites

2 hours ago, Desertrat56 said:

Not by hist description,  it seems counter intuit nowdays to use coal to create wind turbines.  If that is your business, then it is more efficient and ecconomical to use wind turbines to produce the electricity.  This is what frustrates me most is that so many large industries are still in the dark ages when it comes to generating electricity.  The electric company in my area built a coal plant over 35 years ago in a state that at the time was the leader in solar and other alternative energy sources.  Now the company wants the state to bail them out of their existing debt for building that coal plant so they can "invest in alternative" sources of energy.!!!???  And the debt they have should have been paid off by now but isn't because it includes a million dollars that they had to pay in damages to the Navajo nation for destroying an ancient burial site.  Corporate greed at its worst, in my opinion.  It is always about the current bottom line and no concern for the future bottom line.  If all the consumers are dead where will they get more money?  (they got off easy only having to pay a million)

Can't just brush it off as corporate greed.

35 years ago power companies weren't under as much regulatory pressure. Projections made at that time wouldn't have included current added costs, nor the lawsuit you mentioned.

Harte

Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 hour ago, Doug1o29 said:

When I was in high school, they said the US had 600 years of coal left.  But then, as geologists started looking at that coal, they found that huge amounts were unminable due to seams being too thin, access to surface mining being blocked by tunnel mining between the seam and the surface, unmined coal being needed to hold up the roof (c. 20%), carbon content being too low, etc., etc.

Each assessment lowered the years of supply until it's now down to a few decades.

Nah.

Quote

EIA's estimates for the amount of coal reserves as of January 1, 2018, by type of reserve

  • Demonstrated Reserve Base (DRB) is the sum of coal in both measured and indicated resource categories of reliability. The DRB represents 100% of the in-place coal that could be mined commercially at a given time. EIA estimates the DRB at about 475 billion short tons, of which about 69% is underground mineable coal.
  • Estimated recoverable reserves include only the coal that can be mined with today's mining technology after considering accessibility constraints and recovery factors. EIA estimates U.S. recoverable coal reserves at about 253 billion short tons, of which about 58% is underground mineable coal.
  • Recoverable reserves at producing mines are the amount of recoverable reserves that coal mining companies report to EIA for their U.S. coal mines that produced more than 25,000 short tons of coal in a year. EIA estimates these reserves at about 16 billion short tons of recoverable reserves, of which 68% is surface mineable coal.

 

Based on U.S. coal production in 2017 of about 0.78 billion short tons, the recoverable coal reserves would last about 325 years, and recoverable reserves at producing mines would last about 26 years. The actual number of years that those reserves will last depends on changes in production and reserves estimates.

Source

Harte

Link to comment
Share on other sites

35 minutes ago, Harte said:

Can't just brush it off as corporate greed.

35 years ago power companies weren't under as much regulatory pressure. Projections made at that time wouldn't have included current added costs, nor the lawsuit you mentioned.

Harte

Regulation should not be a requirement.  If the CEO of the company had paid attention he would have realized he could take the company into the future and be a path leader making more money in the long run.  Instead he invested in a new coal plant and invested in the nuclear plant in Arizona.  He had access to all kinds of leading edge technology right here in a 100 mile radius of the headquarters of the company.  Short sightedness seems to be a corporate failing.

Edited by Desertrat56
  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.