Arctic Icecap to Dissapear in 20-30 years

[Lartrak]

The same goes for solar energy.

....what? We place huge beds of solar panels on sand. The only difference is the panel absorbs the energy rather than the sand. Unless we cover billions of acres of the earth with pure solar panel, it's not going to matter.

[Ex-Cyber]

Yes, I very well may be insane, but part of the reason we're in a bind now is because someone found out that coal, then oil and gas were fantastic for generating energy and nobody questioned it.

It's not that nobody questioned it, it's that, as C.A.R. Hoare observed, "There is nothing a mere scientist can say that will stand against the flood of a hundred million dollars". Scientists have been studying and debating anthropogenic contributions to the greenhouse effect for over a century.

[BlackAura]

Yes, I very well may be insane, but part of the reason we're in a bind now is because someone found out that coal, then oil and gas were fantastic for generating energy and nobody questioned it.

They were better than the existing alternatives. In the case of things like petrol, the alternative was to keep using horses. Major cities were being choked under piled of horse poo and carcasses. Cars don't pollute the local environment nearly as much as horses do (or at least, not as obviously as horses do), and the air pollution wouldn't really be a problem until you have unimaginable numbers of cars.

Of course, we've long since passed that point.

Same thing happened with coal, for steam engines. A few small steam engines are OK. They smell a bit, but that's not really a problem, since the wind carries it away. Advance a couple of hundred years, and in large cities the air becomes nearly unbreathable. So we work on cleaning it up.

Basically, one particular pollutant becomes a problem, so we work on eliminating it, or reducing it to something we can live with. Over time, as usage goes up, the pollutants that were only present in tiny amounts start to build up, so we work on eliminating those. Usage goes up, and something that we barely noticed was being produced at all becomes a problem, so we work to eliminate that. We've carried on doing this over a couple of hundred years now.

We've finally got to a combustion product that we can not do anything about - carbon dioxide. There's no way to burn carbon-based fuel in oxygen without producing carbon dioxide. There's no way to burn the fuel in a way that produces less carbon dioxide. Capturing it is complex, and probably prohibitively expensive.

Had you told someone 200 years ago that, ultimately, the problem with burning fossil fuels was going to be carbon dioxide production, they'd think you were mad. Burning fossil fuels produces a tiny little bit of carbon dioxide, which is harmless, and present in large quantities in the atmosphere anyway. They'd be far more concerned about soot (solid carbon waste), and would still find that preferable to wading through horse dung all day.

It was absolutely the right thing to do. No question about that. It's just probably not the right thing to keep doing.

....what? We place huge beds of solar panels on sand. The only difference is the panel absorbs the energy rather than the sand. Unless we cover billions of acres of the earth with pure solar panel, it's not going to matter.

It's probably OK for now. If you start having millions of square kilometres of nothing but solar panels, you're going to be affecting the environment somehow. Since we don't have any experience with it yet, there's no way to predict exactly what effect that would have on weather, the ecosystem, or whatever.

We aren't likely to get to that point any time soon, but it could happen. Once we have an unimaginable number of solar panels...

One other unsolved issue with solar panels - they currently require lots of toxic chemicals to manufacture, which have to be disposed of, and contain plenty of other toxic chemicals that have to be reclaimed when you're done with them. Chances are that technology will fix this problem

[Chilly Willy]

Personally, I think most countries should be putting more into tidal generators. It's free energy! Well, as long as the moon is still around it's free.

[Ex-Cyber]

Personally, I think most countries should be putting more into tidal generators. It's free energy! Well, as long as the moon is still around it's free.

There are ecosystem impacts with tidal power, and IIRC the energy is extracted from the angular momentum of the Earth. That doesn't mean it's a bad idea, but it's not "free" in any meaningful sense.

[Jeeba Jabba]

Personally, I think most countries should be putting more into tidal generators. It's free energy! Well, as long as the moon is still around it's free.

I'm pretty sure New Orleans could be powered by putting turbines all over our region of the Mississippi.

[Chilly Willy]

Personally, I think most countries should be putting more into tidal generators. It's free energy! Well, as long as the moon is still around it's free.

There are ecosystem impacts with tidal power, and IIRC the energy is extracted from the angular momentum of the Earth. That doesn't mean it's a bad idea, but it's not "free" in any meaningful sense.

First, there's LOTS of places you can put tidal generators where there aren't even fish. I wasn't talking about putting them in estuaries or anything similar. How about a bare rock in the North Atlantic? You want to put them as far north and south as you can because the tides are much greater than close to the equator. For that matter, they have designs where they don't even need land - they're tethered to the ocean floor somewhere well away from shore.

Second, any angular momentum taken from the Earth by tidal generators will be minuscule compared the total. This would be an issue a BILLION years from now. You might as well protest NASA using the Earth and other planets for gravitational slingshots for probes - same thing. In the terms of humans as a species, it's absolutely free energy in any realistic sense.

[Ex-Cyber]

First, there's LOTS of places you can put tidal generators where there aren't even fish. I wasn't talking about putting them in estuaries or anything similar. How about a bare rock in the North Atlantic? You want to put them as far north and south as you can because the tides are much greater than close to the equator. For that matter, they have designs where they don't even need land - they're tethered to the ocean floor somewhere well away from shore.

Doesn't that pretty severely limit the number of cities/regions that can use it as a practical power source, though? You can only crank up the voltage on transmission lines so far before dielectric leakage/breakdown starts becoming a serious problem.

Second, any angular momentum taken from the Earth by tidal generators will be minuscule compared the total. This would be an issue a BILLION years from now.

Where are the numbers? Serious question; I want to know what the assumptions are that make the number a billion years.

You might as well protest NASA using the Earth and other planets for gravitational slingshots for probes - same thing.

By that logic, fossil fuel use isn't a problem because we all exhale CO2, so why are we even talking about alternative energy sources?

[Quzar]

Second, any angular momentum taken from the Earth by tidal generators will be minuscule compared the total. This would be an issue a BILLION years from now.

Where are the numbers? Serious question; I want to know what the assumptions are that make the number a billion years.

That's what I'm talking about. Every time I see such a statement I get vivid flashes of 'The Gods Themselves' (without the weird alien sex).

[Chilly Willy]

Second, any angular momentum taken from the Earth by tidal generators will be minuscule compared the total. This would be an issue a BILLION years from now.

Where are the numbers? Serious question; I want to know what the assumptions are that make the number a billion years.

That's what I'm talking about. Every time I see such a statement I get vivid flashes of 'The Gods Themselves' (without the weird alien sex).

Never actually looked at the numbers before since what we're talking about is VAST on an unimaginable scale (mass of the Earth as it rotates). I did some quick googling, and here's a few interesting links I came across.

http://simulatedcomicproduct.com/2008/0 ... mer-wheel/
http://echochamber.me/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=31352
http://inventors.about.com/od/tstartinv ... _power.htm
http://mb-soft.com/public2/earthrot.html

The third one says a French study said planetary use of tidal generation would slow the Earth 24 hours every 2000 years - or 24 hours out of about 17.5 M hours (about 0.00014%). So I think it's pretty fair to call tidal energy "free". By the time we slowed Earth enough to need to change our clocks, we'll have developed something else to replace it.

[Quzar]

This is totally why google isn't a reliable source of information 'as-is'. One of your resources was a webcomic, one another forum post like this, and the other two were basically 'hey, here's what I think about it'. Hell, wikipedia's article on the subject probably at least links to some source material.

[Chilly Willy]

This is totally why google isn't a reliable source of information 'as-is'. One of your resources was a webcomic, one another forum post like this, and the other two were basically 'hey, here's what I think about it'. Hell, wikipedia's article on the subject probably at least links to some source material.

The web comic was chosen to represent the point of view of the idiots against tidal power. It was WELL down the google results, not at the top. The forum post was chosen to show that this thread isn't the only place people have discussed this. One article mentioned some results by the French, and the final one had hard calculations to show that extracting energy from the Earth's angular momentum wasn't going to effect anyone any time soon.

There are many other articles, but I just picked a few I thought represented people on the thread here in a slightly humorous manner. My main point is that coming up with the FACT that tidal generators are "free" energy is pretty easy with a simple search. Anyone could do it, and people questioning the "free" aspect should do their own damn research if they're that worried.

Let's turn it around - gimme four links that prove tidal power will crash the Earth into the sun in 100 years. It's OBVIOUS to anyone who isn't brain-dead that tidal power is about as free as you can get, so the onus is on YOU to prove otherwise.

[Quzar]

It's OBVIOUS to anyone who isn't brain-dead

I don't understand why you so often lace your discussion with attacks on anyone who doesn't agree 100% with you. It does nothing to get your point across and certainly any reputation or credibility you may have.

Nobody here said 'the earth will crash into the sun if we use tidal generators, now prove me wrong'. The only thing was a curiosity towards research, calculation, or measurements of actual numbers. You said billion, a number of folks in some of the links you provided also said billion. Is there something you're privy to that would lead you to that obvious assumption instead of 100 million, billions, or septillion. I assume it's just as a figure of speech, but again, none of this should be so obvious as to negate the asking of the question:

Where are the numbers? Serious question; I want to know what the assumptions are that make the number a billion years.

As to the link you posted with 'hard calculations', the only calculation he did was to calculate the rotational energy of the earth, then subtract 1000x the amount of power used in some year by all the people of earth (present day), and show that the result would cause a 0.0007 difference in rotation time over the 1000 years. That makes at least two assumptions that are 'obvious' to me and indicate no real research or attempt to determine anything 1) power needs will stay the same over the next 1000 years and 2) tidal generators or 'gyroscopic power plants' are 100% efficient. I know the value represents providing the power needed by the entire population of Earth and not 30% or whatever might be a high end point for these things, but the glossing over of such points is disconcerting. The author of the page seems to believe that the entire planet could be switched over to this form of power, are there enough raw materials anywhere to make enough of these devices to do so? What about local effects as opposed to global, or the effect of filling a relatively small area with a high density of such devices?

Down here the Turkey Point power plant ended up having odd unexpected effects, the crocodile population exploded because of the warm semi-protected waters and a few frog and fish species were decimated because the higher temperature waters created a lopsided population (too many males).

[Chilly Willy]

Now YOU'RE the one making the personal attack - claiming I attack anyone who doesn't agree with me 100%. That's a load, and you only made the statement in an attempt to make yourself look better by making me look worse.

I don't think gyroscopic generators are in the future - I only linked that guys page because his math demonstrates clearly how little affect taking energy from the Earth's angular momentum would have. Even if tidal generators are inefficient, the figures clearly prove that no one alive today will ever see a measurable difference. People a thousand years from now MIGHT be able to measure it... maybe.

The webcomic about the Earth crashing into the sun was not meant to be serious, as I stated. It's HYPERBOLE. If you aren't familiar with that, please look it up in an online dictionary.

You'll have to do better than personal attacks to prove your side of the argument. So far, all we know is you exaggerate the opposing side's position, you don't like gyroscopes, and one plant you know of changed the population of crocodiles and frogs. You didn't even provide links for that, either.

[Quzar]

Now YOU'RE the one making the personal attack - claiming I attack anyone who doesn't agree with me 100%. That's a load, and you only made the statement in an attempt to make yourself look better by making me look worse.

viewtopic.php?p=1013441#p1013441
viewtopic.php?f=48&t=98548&p=1012351#p1012351 (and pretty much anything else in that topic)
viewtopic.php?p=1011954#p1011954

Every time I've seen another member here disagree, I do see mudslinging from you. I suppose I could have PM'd you that bit, but I'm not sure I would have felt like I had defended myself at all nor gotten my point across to you.

If you aren't familiar with that, please look it up in an online dictionary.

Again, an attack.

You didn't even provide links for that, either.

I'm not sure that the frog stuff is on the internet. I'm aware of it because both of my parents work at the plant and I've been there many times. They have a bit about it in their environmental tour area. At least one study was performed at the University of Miami on it, if I still had access to jstor I'd probably be able to provide a reference to it. As for the crocodiles: http://www.fpl.com/environment/nuclear/ ... oint.shtml .

[Kevin Beckman]

Climate change is a tricky subject. It's so full of hyperbole, falsehoods, and half-truths that separating fact from fiction is a giant pain. The only thing that I'm sure of is that scientists have found a correlation between rising CO2 and rising temperatures.

Also Tidal Power is 'free' in what sense?

[Chilly Willy]

viewtopic.php?p=1013441#p1013441

Not a personal attack in the slightest - at most, it's a personal observation that doesn't mention anyone at all.

viewtopic.php?f=48&t=98548&p=1012351#p1012351 (and pretty much anything else in that topic)

This was repudiating FUD - and really BAD and OLD FUD at that! Such blatant lies must be countered or the Windows shills/trolls win.

viewtopic.php?p=1011954#p1011954

Again, not a personal attack, but an observation of fact not directed at anyone in particular. You seem to have trouble separating statements of fact directed to the public in general from attacks at one person.

Every time I've seen another member here disagree, I do see mudslinging from you. I suppose I could have PM'd you that bit, but I'm not sure I would have felt like I had defended myself at all nor gotten my point across to you.

Sorry, but the only "attack" you've pointed out is countering FUD from a troll. If that's what you consider personal attacks, you must not like the majority of all posts in any forum, including this one.

If you aren't familiar with that, please look it up in an online dictionary.

Again, an attack.

That was sarcasm. You seem to have trouble with THAT as well (and yes, I know you will consider THIS post another attack when it's not).

I'm not sure that the frog stuff is on the internet. I'm aware of it because both of my parents work at the plant and I've been there many times. They have a bit about it in their environmental tour area. At least one study was performed at the University of Miami on it, if I still had access to jstor I'd probably be able to provide a reference to it. As for the crocodiles: http://www.fpl.com/environment/nuclear/ ... oint.shtml .

That's not the one I was asking for links on. I have no doubt that a power plant built in/near an estuary caused some damage. It's the rest of your stance that needs citation.

Also Tidal Power is 'free' in what sense?

As in not needing any fuel, and not producing any waste.