Blog Action Day: The Environment
October 15, 2007 - 9:40am — bexToday is Blog Action Day, a day where all bloggers are supposed to talk about one issue, to see what would happen. Say something innovative, and donate your blog's income that day to the cause. Hmmm... zero dollars up for grabs! First come, first served!
Anyway, I care deeply about green technology and the environment... I've also gotten into trouble with a few greens with my rather unothrodox views... so now it's time for another:
Energy conservationists have the problem completely backward. The goal is not to conserve; the goal is to waste.
Science, innovation, progress, everything in the world will require ever increasing amounts of energy. This isn't the viewpoint of an oil industry shill... this is basic physics:
- New ideas, innovations, or social structures create order.
- Order is the opposite of disorder, also known as entropy.
- According to physics, we can never destroy entropy, but we can move it around.
- Thus, to create order, we need energy to shift around the entropy. Example: you expend energy to keep you home clean, right?
- Arguably, every better idea, innovation, or thought requires higher and higher levels of order.
- Therefore, the path of innovation will always require greater and greater amounts of energy.
Now, nobody's done the hard math on this one to see exactly how much energy is required to invent a new muffin recipe... but is waste the true enemy? The glut of printing presses in the 15th century led to the reformation and the enlightenment. The glut of cheap fossil fuels enabled the rise the Industrial Revolution. The glut of cheap computer power has helped us create technological, medical, and social innovations the likes of which the world has never seen. Just like in nature: there's no such thing as waste. Eventually, something will adapt to consume a surplus, and create something new and (hopefully) wonderful.
Waste is not the enemy... unsustainability is!
As such, greens should visualize a future where the entire world consumes as much energy as the US. We should also assume that we live on a healthy planet. Then, we need to innovate to get ourselves to that vision. Ask yourself this: can we produce one thousand times the amount of energy we do today, and have a healthy planet? With current technology, hell no! Hydropower, geothermal, wind, biofuels, clean petroleum, all of these are stop-gap approaches that at best can keep us limping along for 50 years... With space mirrors we might get some life out of solar, but the real future is in fusion power.
As much as I love hackers, their kind of innovation won't bring us to the future. We need massive, multi-billion dollar initiatives over decades to bring nuclear fusion power to a reality.
Even then, fusion is not a sustainable resource. Much like oil and gas, there's a fixed amount on this planet: although deuterium is present in large quantities in the ocean, it is regenerated from cosmic sources at a fairly low rate. If everybody in the world consumed as much energy per capita as The State of Quatar -- that is, four times the per capita consumption of the US -- we may only have enough energy for several few thousand years... then we'll need space-based deuterium mining expeditions, antimatter, or Dyson Spheres to keep going.
I'll buy solar cells if properly priced... I'll drive a fuel efficient car... most of my electricity comes from windmills... but I never get smug that I'm saving the planet. I'm far too aware that without fusion power, our grandkids won't have a future.
Never forget that.
Sustainability
How about a fusion reactor that has a Billion years or more of fuel here on earth? Is that sustainable enough for you?
Listen to this:
Dr. Bussard's Final Interview
If it interests you leave me a comment with your url or an e-mail and I will have more for you.
Any way. A power source doesn't have to last forever. It only needs to last long enough to get us into space.
Sustainability
Search:
Tim Ventura Bussard
Listen to the audio. Leave a message with your url or e-mail on my blog. I'll have more.
An e-mail woukd be best as I can send you urls.
got it...
Thanks! I'll listen to the podcast later.
Have you heard of the Kardashev scale? Type 1, Type 2, and Type 3 civilizations? The current goal is for us to make it to a Type 1 civilization (consume a whole planet for energy). We can't get there with fossil fuels, geothermal, or solar. I'd bet only fusion can get us there.
Of course, discussing the concept of consuming an entire planet for fuel -- a la Galactus -- is probably not kosher on Earth eDay...
Aneutronic Fusion & DOABLE entropy Management
I thought your readers would be interested in looking at these energy technologies and EPS's theoretic base for ball lighting.
Aneutronic Fusion: Here I am not talking about the big science ITER project taking thirty years, but the several small alternative plasma fusion efforts.
There are three companies pursuing hydrogen-boron plasma toroid fusion, Paul Koloc, Prometheus II, Eric Lerner, Focus Fusion and Clint Seward of Electron Power Systems
Vincent Page (a technology officer at GE!!) gave a presentation at the 05 6th symposium on current trends in international fusion research , which high lights the need to fully fund three different approaches to P-B11 fusion
He quotes costs and time to development of P-B11 Fusion as tens of million $, and years verses the many decades and ten Billion plus $ projected for ITER and other "Big" science efforts
Here are the links:
http://www.electronpowersystems.com/
U.S., Chilean Labs to Collaborate on Testing Scientific Feasibility of Focus Fusion http://pesn.com/2006/03/18/9600250_LPP_Chilean_Nuclear_Commission/
However, short of a Energy "silver bullet" like fusion or Nano Solar, Here is a fully DOABLE technology
Time to Master the Carbon Cycle with Terra Preta Soil Technology;
The integrated energy strategy offered by Charcoal based Terra Preta Soil technology may
provide the only path to sustain our agricultural and fossil fueled power
structure without climate degradation, other than nuclear power.
The economics look good, and truly great if we had CO2 cap & trade in place:
Terra Preta Soils Carbon Negative Bio fuels, massive Carbon sequestration, 1/3 Lower CH4 & N2O soil emissions, and 3X FertilityToo
Terra Preta soils I feel has great possibilities to revolutionize sustainable agriculture into a major CO2 sequestration strategy.
I thought the current news and links on Terra Preta soils and closed-loop pyrolysis would interest you.
SCIAM Article May 15 07
http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?articleID=5670236C-E7F2-99DF-3E2163B9FB144E40
After many years of reviewing solutions to anthropogenic global warming (AGW) I believe this technology can manage Carbon for the greatest collective benefit at the lowest economic price, on vast scales. It just needs to be seen by ethical globally minded companies.
Even with all the big corporations coming to the GHG negotiation table, like Exxon, Alcoa, .etc, we still need to keep watch as they try to influence how carbon management is legislated in the USA. Carbon must have a fair price, that fair price and the changes in the view of how the soil carbon cycle now can be used as a massive sink verses it now being viewed as a wash, will be of particular value to farmers and a global cool breath of fresh air for us all.
If you have any other questions please feel free to call me or visit the TP web site I've been drafted to co-administer. http://terrapreta.bioenergylists.org/?q=node
It has been immensely gratifying to see all the major players join the mail list , Cornell folks, T. Beer of Kings Ford Charcoal (Clorox), Novozyne the M-Roots guys(fungus), chemical engineers, Dr. Danny Day of EPRIDA , Dr. Antal of U. of H., Virginia Tech folks and probably many others who's back round I don't know have joined.
Also Here is the Latest BIG Terra Preta Soil news;
S.1884 – The Salazar Harvesting Energy Act of 2007
A Summary of Biochar Provisions in S.1884:
Carbon-Negative Biomass Energy and Soil Quality Initiative
for the 2007 Farm Bill
http://www.biochar-international.org/newinformationevents/newlegislation.html
(...PLEASE!!..........Contact your Senators & Repps in Support of S.1884........NOW!!...)
ConocoPhillips Establishes $22.5 Million Pyrolysis Program at Iowa State 04/10/07
Mechabolic , a pyrolysis machine built in the form of a giant worm to eat solid waste and product char & fuel at the "Burning Man" festival ; http://whatiamupto.com/mechabolic/index.html
Erich J. Knight
540-289-9750
shengar at aol.com
woah...
tons of good info there, thanks Erich! I've heard about Metabolic, but that Terra Preta stuff is news to me. I'll need to look into it.
I'm also heartened that a Big Evil Company© like General Electric is gung-ho about alternative energy. The 3-pronged approach to funding fusion research makes total sense: hedge your bets. However, we still need massive cash from the government to get things off the ground. I'd rather have fusion than most of the billion-dollar projects the government wastes money on...
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