Energy

[Jeremiah]

I'd like to see a sizeable amount of our energy produced from renewable - say 30-40%. I know its very unlikley that in their current state they'll be able to be a major player, and that the majority of our energy will always come from consumable stuff.

I believe that it wouldnt take all that long to research, develop and build fission reactors, but unfortunatley the major world players have their own money tied up in the pollutant stuff.

 

[Naetha]

Well I know in Denmark - prob lots of other places around that area too - they have an energy source from underground. Think it is hot water. It supplies heat to lots of homes. Seems a pretty nifty idea to me. How viable is it for the UK? Is it possible to drill and then pipe cold water down to be heated up - for free? Big huge boiling bubbling mass underneath the earth's crust just waiting to be exploited! Clean too. Is that wot Biomass is?

That's geothermal, and is only possible where the crust is thin (usually flat areas) or where there's a break in the earth's crust.

Biomass is when biodegradeable matter decomposes to give out methane, which is then burned.

 

[pholas]

whatever won't give me cancer!

 

[crispy]

mmh nukelar fusion........

its pronounced nukelar...

 

[fl3a]

As blair put it a few days ago (not exact quote, don't know the words used anymore): Even if we shut down everything in the UK using energy, and we don't use any electricity anymore, China's growth in energyconsumption would've nullified our efforts in only 2 years time.

but if everything in the UK using energy isnt shut down chinas enegry consumption will still grow - and more electricity will be used in 2 years yet again.
i think that we shouldnt strive to pull a 180 degree turn and start reducing the amount of enegry used/pollution created. 90 degrees should be our target right now - stopping the consumption from rising. once we have done that, we can look for measures to start decreasing it.

by the way, i had a rather fresh idea on how to get energy - use dead humans you can burn them or use them as biomass or whatever, instead of just throwing them in a hole and putting a stone over it.

 

[Fana]

Well I know in Denmark - prob lots of other places around that area too - they have an energy source from underground. Think it is hot water. It supplies heat to lots of homes. Seems a pretty nifty idea to me. How viable is it for the UK? Is it possible to drill and then pipe cold water down to be heated up - for free? Big huge boiling bubbling mass underneath the earth's crust just waiting to be exploited! Clean too. Is that wot Biomass is?

I think what you are refering to is Geothermal Energy, and its not water thats pumped up. You just drill deep holes (thousands of meters) into the earths crust down to where it is much warmer and then have highly heat conducting metal staves put down all the way down there to lead the heat up to the surface where it can be used to boil water to power standard steamturbines (most power sources use steamturbines to actually generate power - f.ex. nuclear powerplants are just highly effective waterboilers used to provide steam to power turbines).

Very clean, but the power output isnt enough to provide all the power our society needs (unless you drilled shafts in a lot of places). I think geothermal energy together with fusion reactors is the way to go, personaly.

 

[Kagato]

Problem is the oil companies have to much power.

Ford developed a brilliant electric car (ok, as brilliant as fords get at least, which is not that brilliant at all but...) that could be plugged into the mains, was silent, no noise polution no emissions and still fast enough to get you a driving ban.

Then suddenly without warning they pull the plug and stop producing them, allegedly after pressure from the billion dollar oil industry, but of cause nothing can be proven and they 'claimed' the car was not viable even though everyone that brought the first few production cars, including some celebrities said how great they were.

If even the big companies like Ford and all the other major car companies are to scared to take on the oil companies what chance does anyone else have? The technology for clean, zero emission electric cars is there, but they are not produced, why? ask the oil companies.

Instead they produce this stupid Hybrid cars that are actually worse economy then a good diesel. Even the Toyota Prius, supposedly the best hybrid, doesn't have an engine half as economical in practise as they claim, it only works of the electric engine at very low speeds, the second you get on a dual carraigway your working of the poor economy petrol engine. Its only of real use to someone who never goes above 30 mile an hour and stays in the city.
And this is the company thats now over taken Ford and GM as the biggest car company in the world and even they are to scared to push forward a good electric car and cut out the oil companies they depend on. And in the same breath they claim to be commited to improving the environment.

Incidently, I work for Toyota

 

[OohhoO]

That's geothermal, and is only possible where the crust is thin (usually flat areas) or where there's a break in the earth's crust.

Biomass is when biodegradeable matter decomposes to give out methane, which is then burned.

We have a fair amount of geothermal in Switzerland, & I wouldn't exactly call Switzerland flat

 

[leviathane]

they can use w/e energy they want to fuel the worlds power stations, just leave me with my petrol cars, and motorsports

 

[chretien]

The technology for clean, zero emission electric cars is there

Just need to make a point here. You're probably right on the oil companies = bastards front however electric cars aren't 'clean, zero emissions'. The Electricity that powers them has to come from somewhere and the chances are it's coming from the filthy dirty coal plant at Radcliffe-on-Soar for you matey.

Nuclear plants aren't hugely popular with energy companies for the simple reason that they aren't very flexible. Energy usage changes constantly and the power companies monitor the demand very closely. If there's a sudden rise in demand then they need to bring more power stations online and ramp up production. It takes days to get a nuclear station running and you can't change the output very fast. Coal plants are also very slow but coal is cheap and the technology is so old it's practically free so it's not so much of a loss to keep them spinning even when they aren't needed. Gas and oil fired stations are much more responsive, you can get them running from cold in a matter of hours.

 

[psyco]

i don't know if this has already been said... i cba to read all the replys

but anyone believe the rumour that it was inevitable... and its due to cow shit? no lie... its a real theory

 

[Bugz]

I suggest those who are sceptical of our ozone layer getting pwned check out the situation on the tip of south America, where the ozone hole is.

 

[Congax]

I suggest those who are sceptical of our ozone layer getting pwned check out the situation on the tip of south America, where the ozone hole is.

Link bitch. (I didn't go to bed, muaha!)

 

[psyco]

I suggest those who are sceptical of our ozone layer getting pwned check out the situation on the tip of south America, where the ozone hole is.

i thought it was at the south pole:-/

 

[Dr_Evil]

It's already too late. The yearly global waste from fossil fuel is 7.000.000.000 tons. Even if we decreased this to 0, climate changes are inevitable. The biggest impact of the global warming hits at the arctic zones, wich have already had a temperature increase of 2-3 degrees Celcius during the last 40 years, and will increase by minimum 4 degrees during the next 100 years. That will melt perma-frost down to atleast 3 meters deep. Many places the perma-frost in the tundra are already melting, and if this continues it will release 400.000.000.000 tons of carbon (methane and CO2) into the atmosphere during the next 100 years. This will lead to a significant increase in the greenhouse effect.

The temperature on Greenland only need to increase by 2.7 degrees Celcius before it can start a self-amplifying and uncontrollable process that may bring the entire ice sheet to collapse. If the Greenland ice sheet melts, the height of the water level in the world's oceans will increase by 6 meters and flood large areas across the globe. It may also unleash underwater landslides at the coast of Greenland wich will create tsunamis.

Since we can't stop the greenhouse effect, we need to find other solutions to the global warming. One solution is to increase the global dimming by realising particles into the atmoshpere to reflect the sun. USA and France are working on the world's first LIDAR satelite, Calipso, that's gonna investigate together with the radar satellite, CloudSat, the global distribution of atmospheric particles. We need to know this to find out how they affect the water drop formation, so that we can release a type of particles into the atmosphere that increase the global dimming controlled without harming the weather patterns.

(Disclaimer: English is not my mother tongue so pardon me if you can't understand what I wrote.)