The Coming Zombie Robot Driving Apocalypse of You

cells

How do we know that we are not the self replicating exponentially increasing zombie robots put on earth to terraform it to the way our overlords desire?

antrobus

cells wrote: »

How do we know that we are not the self replicating exponentially increasing zombie robots put on earth to terraform it to the way our overlords desire?

Because we are all merely part of a computer simulation currently being run by the Zombie Robot Overlords of Earth and none of this is real anyway.

Generali

cells wrote: »

If automation made everything close to free surely we would use nuclear power instead of PV power for the fact that it is far more energy dense

do we opt to cover 1 km2 with reactors or or 100,000 km2 with PV cells

In Australia the roof of a house can easily provide the energy needs for the inhabitants. As I say, I'll start a new thread because I've been reading some amazing stuff. Hence also the new signature.

ging84

cells wrote: »

How do we know that we are not the self replicating exponentially increasing zombie robots put on earth to terraform it to the way our overlords desire?

You are saying we were the result of intelligent design by a creator?
sounds far fetched to me

cells

ging84 wrote: »

You are saying we were the result of intelligent design by a creator?
sounds far fetched to me

Humans now create new animals and plants via genetic engineering so its not far fetched at all but is reality.

cells

Generali wrote: »

In Australia the roof of a house can easily provide the energy needs for the inhabitants. As I say, I'll start a new thread because I've been reading some amazing stuff. Hence also the new signature.

Some problems with that idea

most the world is tending towards apartments. Eg in Turkey or china some 97% of new builds are apartment and 3% homes

Famine and feast. If I give you 2000 calories a day for a month you are fine if I give you 60,000 calories to eat in one day and then nothing for the other 29 days you are screwed. Thats how PV works. The tech to store the energy isn't feasible nor can it ever be for simple physical restrictions

Fossil fuels will be with us for all our lifetimes and their useage will grow for at least 30 years.


Also finally. The actual amount of land you need to dedicate to PV is too high to be acceptable. In the UK to go PV for all our needs would require around 200 billon watts average. Output is 6 watts per sqm average so in the UK we would need 33 billion sqm of land or about 30% of all of England covered in PV farms.
Thats before you consider the infrastructure to manage all that feast and famine output.

cells

Generalii67770325 wrote:

In Australia the mf a house can easily provide the energy needs for the inhabitants. As I say, I'll start a new thread because I've been reading some amazing stuff. Hence also the new signature.

Energy density is a critical factor often missed completely.

The world would need at least 15TW of electricity to replace fossils and have a good quality of life for all.

Wind power at 2 watt per sqm would thus need 7.5 trillion sqm and the world has 150 trillion sqm of land. That sounds fine 7.5 out of 150 but the reality is we cant chop down the rainforest to put wind mills there nor are we going to put wind mills in antarctic nor are we able to use places no one lives eg siberia or Greenland or much of Canada or much of Australia as they are too remote. So we quickly find that of the 150 trillion sqm of land on earth the majority is out of the question and to be wind powered would need to cover almost all of the avaliable land which isn't going to happen

the same applies for solar

in a place like england we would need to cover 20-30% of all England's land woth OV cells not at all likely. Its the primary reason the uk has moved to offshore rapidly as the government scientific advisor david mckay made them aware how much land would be meeded for wind mills and it was too much to be acceptable

Martyn1981

cells wrote: »

Some problems with that idea

Famine and feast. If I give you 2000 calories a day for a month you are fine if I give you 60,000 calories to eat in one day and then nothing for the other 29 days you are screwed. Thats how PV works. The tech to store the energy isn't feasible nor can it ever be for simple physical restrictions

I probably shouldn't bother, as this is a little old now, but thought it best to correct some of this nonsense.

You state, "Thats how PV works", but of course that's simply not true. It doesn't generate for 1 day out of 30. That's entirely false.

Whilst generation will vary from good days to poor, and can of course be as low against daily target as 0% one day, and as high as 200 to 300% the next, you won't see 29 zero%'s following one 3,000%.

Over a month, generation against target will probably be within 10%+/-, rarely exceeding 20%+/-.

Over a year generation against target will be even tighter since PV tends to average itself out. Good day v's bad day. Good week v's bad week, and so on.

cells wrote: »

Some problems with that idea

Also finally. The actual amount of land you need to dedicate to PV is too high to be acceptable. In the UK to go PV for all our needs would require around 200 billon watts average. Output is 6 watts per sqm average so in the UK we would need 33 billion sqm of land or about 30% of all of England covered in PV farms.
Thats before you consider the infrastructure to manage all that feast and famine output.

This is both inaccurate and highly misleading.

PV output from normal (not high efficiency) panels is approx 18W m2, a massive difference from what you have claimed. [250Wp to 285Wp panels at 1.6m2, producing ~ 250kWhs pa.] There are of course low efficiency panels, which are a little cheaper, but with the tumbling price of PV there is no need to use them if land is in short supply/valuable. So 1/3 the land area you suggest.

Next, you haven't made it clear that the 200GW average you have referred to is for all energy (leccy, heating, transport etc). You may have said 'all our needs' but many will think you are referring to leccy.

With average leccy demand at around 40GW, you would therefore need 1/5 of the land area, you suggest. [And of course, PV can be installed on domestic and commercial roofing, and is becoming popular as carpark canopies too, so even if we went down the extreme (and obviously ridiculous route) of putting all our eggs in one basket, then we could still make extra use of already 'occupied' land.]

But, let's still consider your PV farms on 30% of land. So divide that by 3 for the true generation potential, gives us 10%. Then divide that by 5 as we look towards all leccy demand (not all energy), which gives us 2% of England.

Is 2% a scary figure, it certainly sounds a little scary, till you realise that 2% of England is covered in golf courses!

Mart.

Generali

Martyn1981 wrote: »

I probably shouldn't bother, as this is a little old now, but thought it best to correct some of this nonsense.

I'm not sure that it's ever too late to resurrect a Zombie Robot Apocalypse thread, by definition really.

padington

Imagine what this technology will be like in five years time ...

http://youtu.be/LLEBrZHNP3w

http://youtu.be/CqSDWoAhvLU