US cities may have to be bulldozed in order to survive

bubblesmoney

ad9898 wrote: »

Although a little depressing, this is absolutely correct.

Forget wind farms (not enough land).
Forget fusion (we are decades away, and that is assuming it's possible at all ).
Forget nuclear (waste and peak uranium will see to that).
Forget oil ( peak oil is now, we are on the plateau, the only way now, is down ).
Forget biofuels (not enough land, you do still want to eat don't you ?).

We have enough resources to support 2 billion people in the long term, that, unfortunately is fact.

thorium based reactors have already been started in a couple of countries and there is an abundance of that, 'theoretically' there seems to be some articles about feasibility of having small reactors for towns with thorium based rectors as being practical. dont know how realiable that is, just some random thoughts from reading rubbish on the net on wiki! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thorium

a 17y old seems to have almost built a fast breeder reactor all on his own in his backyard :eek: link

nearlynew

Chris Martenson gives a good explaination of the issues surrounding peak oil HERE.

By the way, if you have the time, the whole crash course series is excellent and well worth watching. Just follow the links

amcluesent

It would be foolish to assume an orderly decline. Far more likely is that there will be a series of lurches into chaos, perhaps some or all of -

+ Mutated swine flu kills 100,000 peeps aged 15-45 in Britain.
+ Islamists explode a nuclear dirty bomb in London
+ Shutdown of National Grid at 1st cold snap of winter
+ Systemic failure of gilt markets
+ Tidal surge floods London
+ Police lose control of a major city after rioting

1echidna

Plenty of land and sea for wind turbines and in sun belt plenty opurtunities for solar thermal power. Peak oil may be near but plateau likely. Gas reserves more heallthy and peak gas likely some way off. Nowhere near a problem with uranium given recycling spent fuel and use of plutonium. Clean coal technology will help (at a price). Biofuels will be made from waste agricultural matter and from land unsuitable for food production. Mankind is not going to curl up and die just because a few doom momgers say so.

nearlynew

1echidna wrote: »

Plenty of land and sea for wind turbines and in sun belt plenty opurtunities for solar thermal power. Peak oil may be near but plateau likely. Gas reserves more heallthy and peak gas likely some way off. Nowhere near a problem with uranium given recycling spent fuel and use of plutonium. Clean coal technology will help (at a price). Biofuels will be made from waste agricultural matter and from land unsuitable for food production. Mankind is not going to curl up and die just because a few doom momgers say so.

You are welcome to your opinions of course.
But I suspect that they are driven by a some serious misconceptions about issues surrounding peak oil..

For a start, electricity production will be the least of our problems in the coming decades.

1echidna

nearlynew wrote: »

You are welcome to your opinions of course.
But I suspect that they are driven by a some serious misconceptions about issues surrounding peak oil..

For a start, electricity production will be the least of our problems in the coming decades.

I am enough of a scientist (having had a career as a professional engineer in the oil industry) to know that anyone who produces a graph with the degree of precision about an uncertain future (above) is at best a populist but more likely a junk scientist. As a process engineer I know that everything produced from oil can also be produced (at a cost) from natural gas, tar sands, coal or biomass. My comments were not pertaining to electricity supply only although electricity is important.

Count_Dante

The expression 'post-apocalyptic' seems to crop up when Detroit is mentioned. These photos are spectacular:
http://www.time.com/time/photogallery/0,29307,1882089,00.html

There is a great blog where a guy basically goes into disused Detroit buildings and takes photos - check out the archives particularly for the year 2007. Eye opening stuff.
http://www.detroitblog.org/

epz_2

1echidna wrote: »

I am enough of a scientist (having had a career as a professional engineer in the oil industry) to know that anyone who produces a graph with the degree of precision about an uncertain future (above) is at best a populist but more likely a junk scientist. As a process engineer I know that everything produced from oil can also be produced (at a cost) from natural gas, tar sands, coal or biomass. My comments were not pertaining to electricity supply only although electricity is important.

I know a bit about the electricity supply and would say that the UK electricity infrastucture has its problems (1) however it also has one of the most advanced control systems in the world(2) and the better your control the better you can manage the network so brownouts are a lot less likely.

Smart meters and zigbee devices will allow the distribution company to tap the actual load down at certain times which will smooth demand where there would typically be outages.

The problem with wind/wave is the dynamic nature of their production and time it takes to fire up a power station. If the REC could send out a call to a neighbourhood or even street telling just the freezers and electric cars to quit charging for 30 mins you could also dynamically adjust demand. It gets really complicated when you start accounting for micro generation etc but a lot of smart people are working on it.




All problems are solvable they just require a bit of time and cash, cheap oil has so far removed the incentive for both.



(1) its getting worn out because lots of plant was replaced after ww2 and is currently operating on the factor of safety the manufacturers and supply chain put in.


(2) I was speaking to a yank who couldnt imagine telemetry outside critical breakers, there are uk REC's with pretty much full sub automation and 2/3rd of the secondary network.

Gorgeous_George

I don't think Manchester/Newcastle/Birmingham/London will be demolished any time soon. It is far easier to commute from a job-starved area to a new town or city without the need to move home.

I agree the world needs less people. Instead of making everybody live forever we should encourage people to burn out younger. We need less people so there are two choices - decrease the birth rate or lower life expectancy. I think a bit of both would be the right way to go. I expect a massive war will be the only palatible way forward.

GG

BitterAndTwisted

Palatable?