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Can we go back to focusing on Quebec sucking.
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"The issue is there are still many people out there that use religion as a crutch for bigotry and hate. Like Ben."
Ben Kenobi: "That means I'm doing something right. " -
Dams prolong the time the water is out of the oceans. This means more of the water is out of the oceans at any given time.Originally posted by KrazyHorse
So fricking wrong. Hydro doesn't take water directly from the oceans. It takes water which has already evaporated and made its way to a river or lake.
The dam forces it to release a large portion of its potential energy as electrical energy in a specific location rather than over a large distance as heat. Depending on the specifics of whether the river is flowing north, south, east or west, and the flow characteristics of the river the hydro generation may add or subtract from the planet's angular momentum.
Perfectly irrelevant.
And this is supposed to change anything how?Also wrong is the assumption that more of the water's energy is released as heat; as a matter of fact, flowing water reaches equilibrium rather quickly, due the the v^2 nature of the drag forces acting on it.Why can't you be a non-conformist just like everybody else?
It's no good (from an evolutionary point of view) to have the physique of Tarzan if you have the sex drive of a philosopher. -- Michael Ruse
The Nedaverse I can accept, but not the Berzaverse. There can only be so many alternate realities. -- ElokComment
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To a little rock popularly known as 'the Moon'.Originally posted by KrazyHorse
Unless you want to explain to me where the supposed lost angular momentum goes?Why can't you be a non-conformist just like everybody else?
It's no good (from an evolutionary point of view) to have the physique of Tarzan if you have the sex drive of a philosopher. -- Michael Ruse
The Nedaverse I can accept, but not the Berzaverse. There can only be so many alternate realities. -- ElokComment
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They have quite a bit, but I meant to use them as an example, not as a sole-source of cheap crude. Venezuela has substantial additional resources of heavy crude, for example. Canada's oil sands are more expensive of course, but still pretty damn cheap in the scheme of things.Originally posted by KrazyHorse
The saudis don't have enough to pump at anywhere near the rate we require.I came upon a barroom full of bad Salon pictures in which men with hats on the backs of their heads were wolfing food from a counter. It was the institution of the "free lunch" I had struck. You paid for a drink and got as much as you wanted to eat. For something less than a rupee a day a man can feed himself sumptuously in San Francisco, even though he be a bankrupt. Remember this if ever you are stranded in these parts. ~ Rudyard Kipling, 1891Comment
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IMO, the jump in oil prices at this time is beneficial for three reasons.
We have enough remaining supplies of crude oil to carry us through some tougher times (at reasonable prices) until alternatives are available.
Despite OPECs desire to keep the price at $30/barrel, the price of crude is now above the level where the development of renewable alternatives is financially viable. That means that the development of those alternatives will happen in the private sector long before the various governments get their heads out of their respective asses to actually support such changes.
The development of alternative fuels/infrastructure/vehicles will end the OPEC energy domination and we will finally be able to negotiate with those countries as they deserve without the threat of losing the oil supply.We need seperate human-only games for MP/PBEM that dont include the over-simplifications required to have a good AI
If any man be thirsty, let him come unto me and drink. Vampire 7:37
Just one old soldiers opinion. E Tenebris Lux. Pax quaeritur bello.Comment
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They have enough oil in the ground but they dont have enough rigs to get it out. Right now the Saudis are paying top dollar (twice the rate in the Gulf) for rigs to be moved there. The Saudis want to bring the price down in order to perpetuate their strategic/political importance but Chinese and Indian demands are growing too rapidly.Originally posted by KrazyHorse
The saudis don't have enough to pump at anywhere near the rate we require.We need seperate human-only games for MP/PBEM that dont include the over-simplifications required to have a good AI
If any man be thirsty, let him come unto me and drink. Vampire 7:37
Just one old soldiers opinion. E Tenebris Lux. Pax quaeritur bello.Comment
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Interesting column from George Monbiot:
It's better to cry wolf now than wait for the oil to run out
In 1985 Kuwait announced that it possessed 50% more oil than it had previously declared. Had it just discovered a new field? Had it developed a new technology that could extract more oil from the old fields? No. Opec, the price-fixing cartel to which it belongs, had decided to allocate production quotas to its members based on the size of their reserves. The bigger your stated reserve, the more you were allowed to produce. The other states soon followed Kuwait, adding a total of 300bn barrels to their reserves: enough, if it existed, to supply the world for 10 years. And their magic oil never runs out. Though extraction has long outstripped discovery, Kuwait posts the same reserves today as it claimed in 1985.Comment
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I think it's a retarded position to take. He readily accepts that he doesn't have the faintest clue as to when oil will run out, but then suggests that the world can't wait any longer before finding alternatives. He cannot know this. We might be able to afford waiting just fine.
I shall take my cues from the market, and right now the market is suggesting that alternatives might be advantageous, if they can be had relatively easily.I came upon a barroom full of bad Salon pictures in which men with hats on the backs of their heads were wolfing food from a counter. It was the institution of the "free lunch" I had struck. You paid for a drink and got as much as you wanted to eat. For something less than a rupee a day a man can feed himself sumptuously in San Francisco, even though he be a bankrupt. Remember this if ever you are stranded in these parts. ~ Rudyard Kipling, 1891Comment
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Huh? It seems to me that if we had no clue when the oil was to run out, we should be trying to switch ASAP.Why can't you be a non-conformist just like everybody else?
It's no good (from an evolutionary point of view) to have the physique of Tarzan if you have the sex drive of a philosopher. -- Michael Ruse
The Nedaverse I can accept, but not the Berzaverse. There can only be so many alternate realities. -- ElokComment
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Why? Our economy is built on all sorts of unknowables. We get along just fine.I came upon a barroom full of bad Salon pictures in which men with hats on the backs of their heads were wolfing food from a counter. It was the institution of the "free lunch" I had struck. You paid for a drink and got as much as you wanted to eat. For something less than a rupee a day a man can feed himself sumptuously in San Francisco, even though he be a bankrupt. Remember this if ever you are stranded in these parts. ~ Rudyard Kipling, 1891Comment
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Because preparing for a switch prematurely is likely to hurt alot less than getting caught by the oil suddenly running out when you're not prepared for it.
If you knew that your electricity supply would be cut one day with no advance warning, would you not try and sever your dependence on it ASAP? I sure would.Why can't you be a non-conformist just like everybody else?
It's no good (from an evolutionary point of view) to have the physique of Tarzan if you have the sex drive of a philosopher. -- Michael Ruse
The Nedaverse I can accept, but not the Berzaverse. There can only be so many alternate realities. -- ElokComment
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Oil doesn't suddenly run out. I thought we already established this. And what's this "preparing for a switch" nonsense, anyway? Do we live in communist countries? We have a broad portfolio of energy sources. We adjust our mix on the fly all the time based on market signals.Because preparing for a switch prematurely is likely to hurt alot less than getting caught by the oil suddenly running out when you're not prepared for it.
It wouldn't be cut all of the sudden. That's an unrealistic view.If you knew that your electricity supply would be cut one day with no advance warning, would you not try and sever your dependence on it ASAP? I sure would.I came upon a barroom full of bad Salon pictures in which men with hats on the backs of their heads were wolfing food from a counter. It was the institution of the "free lunch" I had struck. You paid for a drink and got as much as you wanted to eat. For something less than a rupee a day a man can feed himself sumptuously in San Francisco, even though he be a bankrupt. Remember this if ever you are stranded in these parts. ~ Rudyard Kipling, 1891Comment
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I know this. But your complaint against Monbiot doesn't make any sense unless we're discussing a contrafactual were it does.Originally posted by DanS
Oil doesn't suddenly run out. I thought we already established this.Why can't you be a non-conformist just like everybody else?
It's no good (from an evolutionary point of view) to have the physique of Tarzan if you have the sex drive of a philosopher. -- Michael Ruse
The Nedaverse I can accept, but not the Berzaverse. There can only be so many alternate realities. -- ElokComment
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I was answering to your criticisms with my post.
As to Monbiot, let's look at it this way. The economy can buy one big futures contract on oil. If the futures contract costs a lot of money, then people will be incentivized to develop alternatives in order to reduce the uncertainty of when we run out of oil. However, Monbiot is assuming that the futures contract is and will forever be more expensive than developing alternatives, because we don't know when the oil will run out. It's a bad assumption. It's bad logic.
Should we have been spending money in the year 1900 for alternatives to oil, simply because we didn't know when oil would run out? Of course not. We had a resource, so we used it to its fullest, and enjoyed ourselves while doing so.Last edited by DanS; October 3, 2005, 17:19.I came upon a barroom full of bad Salon pictures in which men with hats on the backs of their heads were wolfing food from a counter. It was the institution of the "free lunch" I had struck. You paid for a drink and got as much as you wanted to eat. For something less than a rupee a day a man can feed himself sumptuously in San Francisco, even though he be a bankrupt. Remember this if ever you are stranded in these parts. ~ Rudyard Kipling, 1891Comment
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from the articleOriginally posted by Sandman Interesting column from George Monbiot:
All I can say is that George Bush himself does not appear to share the US Geological Survey's optimism. "In terms of world supply," he said in March, "I think if you look at all the statistics, demand is outracing supply, and supplies are getting tight." What has he seen that we haven't?
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The Hirsch report has no truck with those who believe in the magic of the markets. "High prices do not a priori lead to greater production. Geology is ultimately the limiting factor." There are plenty of oil shales, tar sands and coal seams available for turning into liquid fuels, but it would take years and a massive investment before enough came online. Hirsch compares the projections of the oil optimists to those of the gas optimists in the late 1990s, who promised "growing supply at reasonable prices for the foreseeable future" in the US and Canada. Today the same people are bemoaning the deficit. "The North American natural gas market is set for the longest period of sustained high prices in its history, even adjusting for inflation ... Gas production in the United States (excluding Alaska) now appears to be in permanent decline.""In Italy for 30 years under the Borgias, they had warfare, terror, murder and bloodshed. But they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci and the Renaissance. In Switzerland, they had brotherly love. They had 500 years of democracy and peace. And what did that produce? The cuckoo clock."
—Orson Welles as Harry LimeComment
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