what do you think is the best way of making energy?

[John_M]

Originally Posted by animartco

Hi all have you heard the latest? They' re so scared of global warmin' that they are suggesting seeding the seas to produce huge algal blooms to raise the albedo. Or else putting things in the sky to block the sunlight. Most of the suggested schemes tend to want to dump all the carbon dioxide into the bottom of the sea. It is too drastic a measure as no one knows what would happen to the sea.
Nature doesn't just dump unwanted stuff; she turns it into something that IS wanted. Why don't we? Greenhouse gases are causing global warming. We need fuel (which also causes global warming). Why don't we at least use something that causes global warming AS fuel?
I suggest power stations that move across the tundra warming the peat beneath them and harvesting the resultant greenhouse gas. We would be providing the world with an enormous natural resource of fuel while at the same time pre-empting the releases of the gas caused by global warming that are threatening to destroy the Earth. Simple!

Yes, simple. Why oh why don't all those scientists, engineers and technologists listen to you; our problems would be solved at a stroke.

[bigdave60dog]

Really we are talking people living on this planet in a sustainable manner rather than just discussing the best way to produce more sustainable energy.
Do we really need to live in such an energy wasteful manner?
Is there another more sustainable LIFESTYLE that we could be living?
Is what we term "The Developed World" really a whole bunch of people who are conditioned into believing that it is OK to live a predatory, "top of the food chain" lifestyle at the cost of most other human lifestyles and even our own life support system?
To think How can we use more sustainable forms of energy to support our current lifestyle? is a self defeating object. History has proven that the more energy that we can obtain, the more energy hungry becomes our society.
If we had inexhaustible stocks of totally free environmentally friendly energy historical evidence shows that we would just use this energy to further desecrate our planet by our own greed.
Unless we radically alter our way of thinking we are on an increasingly steep road to oblivion.
Dave

[Doggle Avaddit]

Originally Posted by bigdave60dog

Do we really need to live in such an energy wasteful manner?

No. The simple fact is, we can afford to.


If you really want to change things, you need to make the bad things expensive and the good things much cheaper.

[STYRBJORN]

[quote=Doggle Avaddit;670975]No. The simple fact is, we can afford to.


QUOTE]

We can. Our grandchildren won't be able to. Eat drink and be merry for tomorrow the next generations will starve/die of thirst/freeze/boil/drown/be reduced to a peasant economy by lack of fuel/poisoned by the air they breathe . . . But who cares? We won't live to see it.

Ric aka Cassandra

[bigdave60dog]

Can we afford not to?
Dave

[STYRBJORN]

Originally Posted by bigdave60dog

Can we afford not to?
Dave

I take it you mean can we afford not to care? I don't think we can if only because climate change is getting faster and more extreme then predicted. You and me and every other member of WAB vs Big Oil. I woildn't bet on us, would you?

Ric

[animartco]

Originally Posted by bigdave60dog

Really we are talking people living on this planet in a sustainable manner rather than just discussing the best way to produce more sustainable energy.
Do we really need to live in such an energy wasteful manner?
Is there another more sustainable LIFESTYLE that we could be living?
Is what we term "The Developed World" really a whole bunch of people who are conditioned into believing that it is OK to live a predatory, "top of the food chain" lifestyle at the cost of most other human lifestyles and even our own life support system?
To think How can we use more sustainable forms of energy to support our current lifestyle? is a self defeating object. History has proven that the more energy that we can obtain, the more energy hungry becomes our society.
If we had inexhaustible stocks of totally free environmentally friendly energy historical evidence shows that we would just use this energy to further desecrate our planet by our own greed.
Unless we radically alter our way of thinking we are on an increasingly steep road to oblivion.
Dave

Absolutely. I shouldn't think ANYONE disagrees. But do they do anything about it? I have one of the greenest lifestyles going. I don't have a car have never been in an aeroplane and don't have central heating. But I still do naughty things like forget to turn the electric fire off when I go out in the garden.
Oh and most important I don't have any kids.

[animartco]

Originally Posted by eeyore

and as a consequence destroying the tundral ecostystem and releasing a shedload of carbon dioxide (also a greenhouse gas) from burning the methane. Fantastic idea...... not

(damn, sucked in again)

Eeyore, I was hoping that ALL the gases that came out of the warmed tundra would be captured and processed. They'd have to be seperated anyway. The CO2 could be frozen and stacked in canisters on site until someone thinks of a use for it. (make fire extinguishers compulsory in households. With global warming, not a bad idea.) Think of the amount of nuclear waste! No different.
And abut the tundra wildlife. When global warming starts heating it it'll all die anyway! Anyway there isn't much on the tundra except musk ox and mossies. There aren't patches of rare stuff. It is perhaps the vastest ecosystem where everything is the same.

[John_M]

Originally Posted by animartco

Eeyore, I was hoping that ALL the gases that came out of the warmed tundra would be captured and processed. They'd have to be seperated anyway. The CO2 could be frozen and stacked in canisters on site until someone thinks of a use for it. (make fire extinguishers compulsory in households. With global warming, not a bad idea.) Think of the amount of nuclear waste! No different.

It would take a phenomenal amount of energy to warm the tundra, and in the process you would be destroying an ecosystem, with who knows what results. I think the CO2 Eeyore mentioned was as a result of burning the methane, not emitted from the tundra.
Household fire extinguishers are not a bad idea, but I fail to see what relevance global warming has to this; but household extinguishers are generally powder. CO2 is essentially useless against a burning fat fire or a carbonaceous fire, unless you can hermetically seal the room the fire is in.
Are you seriously suggesting that because the arctic ecosystem will, at some undefined future point, fail anyway, it's OK to wilfully destroy it?
To state that there isn't much there except musk ox and mossies shows a complete lack of knowledge.

[eeyore]

Originally Posted by John_M

It would take a phenomenal amount of energy to warm the tundra, and in the process you would be destroying an ecosystem, with who knows what results. I think the CO2 Eeyore mentioned was as a result of burning the methane, not emitted from the tundra.

spot on - if you somehow managed to extract the methane hydrate and used it as a fuel you would generate million of tonnes of co2 through burning it far more than could be captured and used. (not to mention the huge carbon footprint of building this huge powerstation on rails)

Also incidentally using co2 as a fire extinguisher doesnt save it from the atmosphere as when it is used the co2 is released.

Originally Posted by John_M

To state that there isn't much there except musk ox and mossies shows a complete lack of knowledge.

given that this comes from the same "authority" that brought us the concept of windpower that can supply all our energy needs via pumped storage and reservoirs on mountain tops, the lethality of ragwort, and maneating pandas, should this really be a suprise