Electric ship?
As you'll recall, we agreed you would need a solar panel 245 times the surface area of a typical container vessel to power a typical container vessel.
Or a very, very long extension cable.
Electric ship?
The industrial manufacturing system (the apparatus by which the viable substitutes you hope for depend on) depends on the global political economy, and it depends on a monotonically increasing supply of net energy (because of the rules of fractional lending, compound interest bearing, debt based finance). The financial system doesn't gradually stop working at the point when production cannot keep up with consumption. It stops.
We will not gradually develop more and more viable substitutes, because the system upon which such development depends will have ceased to function.
As you'll recall, we agreed you would need a solar panel 245 times the surface area of a typical container vessel to power a typical container vessel.
Or a very, very long extension cable.
Ta for that elbows. Great post.
There are many systems that exibit the property that a small change in input gives rise to a large change of state.
Falling off your bike is "only" the point at which the bike's forward velocity falls below a critical minimum - you are still moving forward at the point you fall off, and only a fraction slower than the speed at which you were stable.
Consumption by a bear is "only" the point where your running velocity falls a fraction below the bear's - you are still running flat out at the point you are consumed, and only a fraction slower than the speed at which you were alive.
Thereafter, you don't gradually fall off your bike, and you don't gradually get eaten.
The industrial manufacturing system (the apparatus which the viable substitutes you hope for depend on) depends on the global political economy, and it depends on a monotonically increasing supply of net energy (because of the rules of fractional lending, compound interest bearing, debt based finance). The financial system doesn't gradually stop working at the point when production cannot keep up with consumption. It stops.
This isn't hypothetical. The supply of net energy stopped rising in 2005. The global financial system entered its terminal phase in 2008 - the illusion of viability is currently being sustained through the issuance of synthetic debt (a.k.a. "quantitive easing") - an unsustainable process.
We will not gradually develop more and more viable substitutes, because the system upon which such development depends will have ceased to function.
As you'll recall, we agreed you would need a solar panel 245 times the surface area of a typical container vessel to power a typical container vessel.
Or a very, very long extension cable.
Falcon said:As you'll recall, we agreed you would need a solar panel 245 times the surface area of a typical container vessel to power a typical container vessel.
80`s Mobile Phone
My mobile phone
You're expecting someone will be engineering the sun to emit between 25 and 250 times more?
Or just change the rules of arithmetic?
a watt of solar power in 1970 cost $ 100 to produce , today it is under $ 1 .00 a watt ( ripped from Wikipedia )
So you are still applying current technology restrictions to evidence what we won`t be able to do in the future ?
On that basis I concede we are all doomed .
No, I'm applying the output of the Sun as a restriction on what we'll be able to do in the future.
No, on your basis we are all doomed.
but not applying the possibility that the conversion rate of the output of the sun into usable energy MAY improve ? It is only one of many options after all , it isn`t the solution
Me said:Best (not most cost-effective) practical photovoltaics convert about 10% of incoming radiation to energy (ripped from memory). So an improvement to nearly 100% would still leave you needing 25 times the area of the ship - or require that insolation increased 25-fold. Which would produce problems of its own.
Bloody hell.
Please read slowly. You may count on your fingers.
Are you saying that there is no room for the conversion rate of the sun`s energy to be improve from present levels at all , ever ? really ?
PV panels now have a conversion rate of 17%-20%
It would be interesting to do some back-of-envelope calculations to work out the logistics of electrifying the world's railways and roads. How much steel and copper. How much additional generating capacity. How many electric trains and trucks. How quickly it could be built.
I suspect, but am ready to be proved wrong, that declining oil production would a)make it harder to build as time goes on and b)race ahead of our attempts to catch it up.
Electric boats? Forget about it.
A question for anyone who might know:
Assuming current problems to do with storing and transporting electricity can be overcome, what proportion of the world's energy requirements could realistically be supplied by turning the whole of Saudi Arabia's Empty Quarter and huge sections of the Sahara over to solar-powered electricity generation?
To me, this kind of blocking out of massive areas of unused space and dedicating it to energy production is a very likely future. The Empty Quarter is larger than France, and it really is empty - there really isn't much of a lot of consequence going on there in terms of life, certainly nothing whose disappearance is likely to adversely affect anywhere else.
In the Empty Quarter? Nobody lives there and there is precious little wildlife.Plenty of wildlife there, and people do live in parts of it (the oases).
In the Empty Quarter? Nobody lives there and there is precious little wildlife.