Polywell and Peak Oil

If polywell fusion is developed, in what ways will the world change for better or worse? Discuss.

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classicpenny
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Post by classicpenny »

David_Jay wrote:Maker? there's a Maker? A first cause???
No, no: Maker as in, "Bless the Maker and his water, bless the coming and going of Him. May his passage cleanse the world. May he keep the world for his people." :)

Bill Flint

joedead
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Post by joedead »

Dune fans, eh?

MSimon
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Post by MSimon »

classicpenny wrote:
David_Jay wrote:Maker? there's a Maker? A first cause???
No, no: Maker as in, "Bless the Maker and his water, bless the coming and going of Him. May his passage cleanse the world. May he keep the world for his people." :)

Bill Flint
I'm going to take that up with my C3PO unit.
Engineering is the art of making what you want from what you can get at a profit.

BSPhysics
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Post by BSPhysics »

I've always known it but now it is official. Nerds really do rule the world. 8)

BS

Roger
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Post by Roger »

BSPhysics wrote:An article highlighting the political hurdles to drilling and production, specifically ANWR but others, also.

http://www.reason.com/news/show/128096.html

BS
That made me confused.

The one well drilled in ANWR was KIC, NE corner of the coastal plain of ANWR, that was in 1985. Seismic studies tell us 80% of the oil in ANWR is in the NW corner of the coastal plains, next to Point Thompson.

Oil companies are buying leases right next to the NW corner of ANWR, the newest seems to be Slugger, just south of Sourdough, which is just south of Pt Thompson. Its likely someone is horizontal drilling into ANWR, currently 4 or 5 miles is the limit to horizontal drilling.
compared to 32 billion nationwide
,

Sigh, thats wrong by a lot...2x to 3x, re 68 million acres of existing leases have 100 billion barrels.

75-mile pipeline spur needs be built to connect to the main Alyeska Pipeline from Prudhoe Bay to the Southern shipping port.
I have no idea what this refers to. THe TAP, has been added onto over the yrs, I know that Badami is connected to the TAP, and Badami is about 25 to 30 miles from the ANWR border.


One of the major problems not mentioned in the piece is nat gas. Oil companies wants to get the oil out first before getting the nat gas out. In significant fields where oil and gas are found, like in Pt Thompson, the Nat gas helps pressure the crude, w/o the nat gas, getting the crude out is problematic.

The lack of Nat gas pipelines are holding up crude production.

and the oil drilling could be done from a concentrated small area, about the size of Dulles Airport.
Utter BS. 30 wells can be managed in a 400 ft by 500 ft area.
ANWR was typically portrayed as if it was like the Rockies, with happy goats jumping around. But the land is actually flat and desolate for most of the year,
Forgot about the Moutain range, eh ?
The Alaska National Petroleum Reserve.... may also have large new oil reserves,
MAY ? I know the USGS has many documents as to the potential. Seemingly missing are the links to these documents, I would hope the author wasnt trying to downplay ANPR and emphasizing ANWR ? NAh that wouldnt be going on.....

Or does ANPR hold 3 times that of ANWR ?

As the the editor notes
Jon Basil Utley is associate publisher of The American Conservative and a former foreign correspondent for Knight Ridder newspapers. He has decades of experience in the oil business, including as the owner and operator of a small oil drilling partnership.

Editor's Note: Due to editing errors, the original version of this story misidentified the location of Prudhoe Bay and misstated the average depth of oils wells in Prudhoe Bay and ANWR. Additionally, it mistakenly claimed that the federal government prohibits all offshore drilling; in fact, the government effectively prohibits offshore drilling in any new areas.
Right, factual errors.
I like the p-B11 resonance peak at 50 KV acceleration. In2 years we'll know.

zenakuten
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Post by zenakuten »

http://www.chrismartenson.com/crashcour ... a-peak-oil

If you watch or read chapters 17-end, I think this gives a decent explanation of peak oil and how it relates to the economy, and how energy use in general relates to the environment.

I'll try and give an analogy although I'm not sure how good of an analogy it will be.

Imagine all of the world's economy in aggregate as a single, extremely large backhoe, digging at the earth, knocking down forest as it goes, gathering fish, etc.

Oil is currently what fuels the backhoe. Before it was coal, and before that wood. The machine is much more powerful running oil than it was running wood or coal. As a result, we all live much better off due to the energy we get from oil. But as a consequence, we consume the environment faster than before.

What happens when the machine becomes nuclear powered? How quickly will that backhoe devour the earth? We will have nearly limitless energy, but a finite bubble to use it in. We will just destroy it faster if we are not careful. :(

Betruger
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Post by Betruger »

Have you considered what such available power means for cleaning applications like plasma torches? And other concurrent tech like Venter/Exxon's CO2>Oil scheme?

Helius
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Post by Helius »

zenakuten wrote:http://www.chrismartenson.com/crashcour ... a-peak-oil

If you watch or read chapters 17-end, I think this gives a decent explanation of peak oil and how it relates to the economy, and how energy use in general relates to the environment.

I'll try and give an analogy although I'm not sure how good of an analogy it will be.

Imagine all of the world's economy in aggregate as a single, extremely large backhoe, digging at the earth, knocking down forest as it goes, gathering fish, etc.

Oil is currently what fuels the backhoe. Before it was coal, and before that wood. The machine is much more powerful running oil than it was running wood or coal. As a result, we all live much better off due to the energy we get from oil. But as a consequence, we consume the environment faster than before.

What happens when the machine becomes nuclear powered? How quickly will that backhoe devour the earth? We will have nearly limitless energy, but a finite bubble to use it in. We will just destroy it faster if we are not careful. :(
Wow. You actually *drank* the coolaid.
Why a backhoe? Why not a nuclear powered tree planter?

Minimizing energy production will increase reliance on soft nature, not save it.

In Haiti They cut down "trees" when they're the diameter of broomsticks. They lost much of their topsoil. A dream for such a place is to desalinate vast quantities of water for intensive farming, and have the energy to restore much of the topsoil.

Are we going to do that with windmills and Iranian Natural gas?

We need to take the wraps off the *real* physics of energy production. That's why we're here, among other places.
Last edited by Helius on Sat Aug 08, 2009 10:49 pm, edited 1 time in total.

kunkmiester
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Post by kunkmiester »

Evil is evil, no matter how small

zenakuten
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Post by zenakuten »

:) I'm all for fusion. I'm just trying to play devil's advocate here ;) And your right about the energy use. The energy could just as easily be productive rather than destructive to the environment (as in your e.g. nuclear powered tree planter).

That's not what history shows, however. Human nature is to use the most readily available resources first, which means chopping down all the available forest before putting the effort into planting a new one. That's what happened in the US. It was almost entirely forested. Now all that remains are a few federal and native american reserves. All new paper and wood products comes from tree farms, but we didn't start farming until after the forests were gone. This situation may change with fusion. The effort to plant a new forest with fusion power may be trivial compared to the effort of chopping an existing one down.

Another thing to consider is that as standards of living go up, the number of children a couple has generally goes down. Free energy for all may be what stops the out of control population growth, which I admit is the real resource issue, not energy.

MSimon
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Post by MSimon »

That's not what history shows, however. Human nature is to use the most readily available resources first, which means chopping down all the available forest before putting the effort into planting a new one.
Private forests are sustaining themselves. Public ones do not.

Do not underestimate economic incentives. The amount of forested land in the USA has been growing since 1900.

Germany cut down a LOT of trees in '45 and '46 due to low coal supplies and lack of money.

BTW the reasons forests were cut down in America was to get land for agriculture. With yields up less land is used so that unused land is going back to forest.

If you don't know the cause the cure is hard to figure.
Engineering is the art of making what you want from what you can get at a profit.

joedead
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Post by joedead »


Old news. Bakken has quite abit of oil, but not that much.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bakken_Formation

Helius
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Post by Helius »

zenakuten wrote::) I'm all for fusion. I'm just trying to play devil's advocate here ;) And your right about the energy use. The energy could just as easily be productive rather than destructive to the environment (as in your e.g. nuclear powered tree planter).

That's not what history shows, however. Human nature is to use the most readily available resources first, which means chopping down all the available forest before putting the effort into planting a new one. That's what happened in the US. It was almost entirely forested. Now all that remains are a few federal and native american reserves. All new paper and wood products comes from tree farms, but we didn't start farming until after the forests were gone. This situation may change with fusion. The effort to plant a new forest with fusion power may be trivial compared to the effort of chopping an existing one down.

Another thing to consider is that as standards of living go up, the number of children a couple has generally goes down. Free energy for all may be what stops the out of control population growth, which I admit is the real resource issue, not energy.
zenakuten,
I've nearly always live in upstate New York, which for all my life has been very densely forested, The Adirondack "park" covers 9380 square miles, (24,300 sq km) and is, with the exception of it's small towns, very densely forested by not only tree farms but natural beech-maple-cherry hardwood forest. The land is split nearly half private half public, and both are densely forested. http://www.apa.state.ny.us/About_park/index.html Wikipedia also has an excellent overview of the region.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adirondack_Park

I agree that historically we cut down forests, and cleared land in the name of economic development in the past, but now we are clearly better served economically by letting swaths of forests stand, especially where water sources are protected. We know the benefits in upstate New York.

I have to disagree with your contention that birth rates decline when "living standards" go up; I really believe it is coincidental. I believe birth rates decline as people have ever more choice; I believe declining birth rates track where populations stand in terms of individual actualization. Think Maslow. You're not worried about the basics, so you do other things that build your personal esteem and personal accomplishment. "Living standards" is less precise, and open to more interpretation. Maslow is less so. An actualizing people breed far less than people whom spend more time ensuring enough food, shelter, sex, and safety. It seems counter intuitive, but it appears to be the case.

cgray45
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Post by cgray45 »

The biggest problem with peak oil, and this is as a California resident, is that it tends to increase other economic problems, especially in states that were designed from the view point of having cheap gas for your cars.

Now, Oil will not "run out." but it will increase in average price, and that makes the US more vulnerable to other economic problems, since the cost of transport is for a lot of people, pretty inflexible. (Yes, there are advanced cars out there, but if you're middle or lower class, you probably can't afford them, and you certainly don't get to telecommute).

On the other hand, this may be a good thing-- consider how much work has been done over the last ten or so years on ever more gas efficient cars, better batteries, etc, etc, and not just as floor models that nobody ever expects to see production. We have fears of peak oil and growing gas prices to thank for that.

Bad news: Oil and gas will likely continue to increase in price, good news, that will spur the sort of development that you never, ever would have seen in the era of 1 dollar/gallon gasoline.

MSimon
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Post by MSimon »

The difficulty is that we have no idea how much oil is in the ground.

No idea.

Why? Because governments in the West have made so much land off limits for exploration and extraction. And the oil countries (other than the US and Canada) have totally mismanaged their resources.

Iran is due to be a net oil importer in the next few years due to subsidies on oil products and mismanagement of their oil fields.

Mexico's National Oil Company, Pemex, is a political company not an oil extraction company. They are not managing their resources well.
Engineering is the art of making what you want from what you can get at a profit.

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