Re: Are nukes the answer to global warming?
From: owl (owl_at_moonlite.com)
Date: 03/04/05
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Date: Thu, 03 Mar 2005 19:44:34 -0500
On 3 Mar 2005 14:15:03 -0800, "Clouseau2" <eric@webmethods.com> wrote:
>
>Scott A Crosby wrote:
>> On Wed, 02 Mar 2005 01:46:55 GMT, Dan Bloomquist
><public21@lakeweb.com> writes:
>>
>> > owl wrote:
>> >>>
>> >>>What 'new' technology do you have in mind that will cheat physical
>laws?
>> >> Who said anything about cheating physical laws?
>> >> Fibre optics replaces copper - low energy optics replaces
>hi-energy
>> >> hard-wire.
>> >
>> > Fiber optics was a revolution in bandwidth, not energy. Sorry.
Sorry should go to anyone who doesn't catch on - this is only one of
an endless string of examples of high energy cost manufacturing being
replaced with low energy cost manufacturing.
Any disagreement with that statement better have some backup on the
world reversing the trend and going copper to save money. The
statement that it is was only a bandwidth issue is laughable. The
extraction of the issue from being an example to being something
standalone is lame. The metallic world of 40 years ago is now a
plastics-dominated world for a very good reason - lower energy costs
led to lower unit costs.
>> Although this is a minor point --- it is not as if energy for refining
>> copper is signifigant in our global energy picture, bandwidth is
>> energy. A fiberoptic weighing X kg can send more data than a copper
>> wire with? 100X kg the same distance. Thats a lot less metal to be
>> refined, transported, and built.
>This is pure nonsense, since, as you say, the amount of energy we
>expend in making wiring, whether copper or fiberoptic, is surely a
>small fraction of the total. So why bring it up?
A small fraction of total what? Try and get involved with global
scales. Trunk lines, optical devices, MAN's, WAN's - no one is
stringing massive copper line installations anywhere but inside the
CAT world - and even that is close to a break-even. They're pulling
the big copper out.
The cost of digging, refining, processing, and creating industrial use
copper is re-directing its use to its highest leverages, primarily
building power wiring.
>We are using MORE energy every year, not LESS. True, we are often
>getting more useful stuff out of the same amount of energy, but that is
>not what we are talking about.
Actually, that is part of what we're talking about here - how far the
energy goes, and how much we need (both per capita and in aggregates).
>> High strength materials that have the same strengh but mass less.
>This
>> reduces the energy of manufacture, and for vehicals and increases
>fuel
>> efficiency.
>> These don't cheat physical laws and can only postpone the deadline
>> from, eg, 50 years to 100 years.
>Exactly. Efficiency improvements can only cancel out gains in
>consumption for so long. As long as we are dependent on eternal growth
>& consumption (our entire financial system depends on it), eventually
>something is going to have to give.
That's nothing but a cyclical issue. If invention and innovation
extends the deadline faster than growth rate consumes it, we're not
running out of basics, resources, or energy.
>This is easy to show mathematically. If you halve the amount of energy
>something takes but the growth of that use is 2% per year, it doesn't
>take long
>for the total amount consumed to exceed the original, less efficient
>mode of consumption.
By the rule of 72, you've just added 36 years of consumption lifespan.
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