What I doimagine happening is that people will have to live near their jobs, preferably within walking distance. Secondarily, jobs will regres to le-energy intensive versions. JIT manufacturing will go away; CNC will again be limited to prototype development; computers will be used for CAD, math, and engineering, but perhaps not for office communications, and not for filing when it isn’t needed for that.
Volume production will again trump one-off robotic production. Process will again be important, industrial engineering will again be important.
Buy-Local will again have a distinct price value that is significant; and I don’t think that will work unless a lot of IP (intellectual property) law is done away with. Of course, I don’t expect IP owners to let that happen without a fight.
Of course, I’m probably wrong on a lot of this, but I’d like to see a discussion of how others think I might be wrong, and why.
The solution of 3 problems could benefit of making work in unison 3 technologies so we could AT THE SAME TIME find a solution for Energy generation, Electricity bulk storage, Clean Water Generation.
Generate electricity with any method, use the surplus electricity generated redirecting it to a water electrolysys facility, thus splitting water into its base constituents, oxygen and Hydrogen, with unused electricity that would otherwise would have been lost (returned to ground).
These gases could in turn be stocked and as Hydrogen is an highly efficient source of non poluting energy, could in turn be used to boil water and generate more electricity, power motors, etc.
The process of electrolysis doesn't require clean water. One can split water coming from poluted sewage, the process of splitting separate PURE gases that when thay are burned recombine into PURE water.
Problems solved
[quote] increasing utilization for autos from 3% to 80% with self-driving technology [/quote]
Help me understand … why is being able to hail a self-driving car an improvement over the taxicabs we have now?
What percentage of your day do you spend in your car? I bet it's less than 5%… What if you could send your car out to drive people around while you're not using it?
Better yet, what would your life be like if taking an uber was just 25 cents per mile? Would you even bother owning a car?
cars are capital goods that are underutilized. If their utilization went from 5% to 80%, there would be far fewer cars manufactured.
Mike_R wrote;
"What I doimagine happening is that people will have to live near their jobs, preferably within walking distance."
Of course millions of jobs will disappear. Consider that as the cost of energy goes up, people will spend and consume less. Less consumption and spending means few goods and services need to be produced to meet demand, which will require less workers. This can cause a feedback loop as when workers lose their jobs they consume less, leading to even less demand for workers.
Mike_R wrote;
"Secondarily, jobs will regres to le-energy intensive versions. JIT manufacturing will go away; CNC will again be limited to prototype development; computers will be used for CAD, math, and engineering, but perhaps not for office communication"
Nope, just the opposite. Machines use considerable less energy that people do. It takes a lot of energy to feed a worker, transport him to the job site, Provide him with a working enviroment, and so on. Machines are replacing workers as labor costs for workers continue to rise and as energy costs also rise.A machine can operate 24x7x365 and do not need bathroom breaks, need raises, vacations, etc.
JIT was applied to save money and energy, and its not going away. It costs a lot of money to warehouse goods and materials. Outsourcing will continue to make gains is that is far cheaper to produce good overseas, especially in Asia where there are no restrictions on burning cheap coal.
I expect at least 15% of US jobs to be permanently replaced by machines in less than 10 years, From factory automation, office automation and even in retail jobs (cashiers with Kiosks, Food service with machines). I know this going to happen because I already see it happening. I already see companies replacing IT, Finance, Sales, and back-office support jobs with software automation. Much like the first PCs eliminated the need for basic administrative jobs (Typing pools, filing clerks, etc) so are lots of high level jobs.
Mike_R wrote;
"Buy-Local will again have a distinct price value that is significant"
Not for most people. The Major of the populations are located in urban areas which have virtually no farmland and very little industrial production. Production moved out of the cities starting after WW2 because of regulations, costs, pollution, etc. Most of the production is now located in the suburbs, but is in the process of being relocated to rural regions. Only those that live in rural or semi-rural will be able to buy most of the day to day goods they need. Farms are not going to be moving to citties since there is no farm land left. Manufacturing plants aren't going to return because its too expensive to operate them in cities.
My guess is that most cities will evolve into Fed-gettos. The people living there be supported on gov't handouts and low wage service jobs. We can already see this happening in a few major cities like Detriot, Chicago, Philadephia, etc. Companies are relocating south and the people that are able to get jobs are leaving too. Eventually even tech-hubs like San Francisco will fall as the companies and workers realize they don't have to remain in extremely expensive places.
energyskeptic Wrote:
"A recent report concludes that although the $3.5 billion National Ignition Facility (NIF)—a Department of Energy (DOE) laser lab designed to heat and compress capsules of hydrogen isotopes until they fuse"
Actually the NIF was built to design and test Nuclear weapons. Since the US signed the Nuclear Test ban treaty, the US built the NIF to test small amounts of fissile material to make sure its going to work, as well as to develop non-fission (ie pure fusion) bomns (ie Gen IV nuke Weapons), idealy to use them as in "conventional" warfare. FYI: Same story with the Z-Machine, it to designe Gen IV bombs and test existing stockpile of fission bombs.The Fusion power is just a cover story used to get public support.
A Fusion emplosion method would never really be a practical fusion to electricity power source. We should be rather fortunate if the NIF, Z-Machine turn out to be failures, Otherwise we risk the globe being populated with easy to produce Fusion bombs.
HydrogenPower Wrote:
"These gases could in turn be stocked and as Hydrogen is an highly efficient source of non poluting energy, could in turn be used to boil water and generate more electricity, power motors, etc."
Sorry but its impractical and terribly energy inefficient:
-
Electroysis has a max of 85% efficiency (in perfect laboratory conditions, and considerable less in industrial scale production)
-
Burning H2 + O2 to run a steam turbine would have even higher energy loss. The very best Gas turbines convert about 62% of the thermal energy into mechanical power, but also have conversion losses converting mechanical power into electricity. Burning H2 +O2 to produce thermal energy will have loss since not all of the thermal energy is captured.
-
Hydrogen is difficult to store and it embrittles metals. There are also large loss compressing hydrogen for storage. Some work has been done on using Zeolites to store compressed hydrogen more efficiency, but its still pretty poor.
-
No electrolysis system is perfect in converting water into H2 + O2. The feedstock water needs an electrolyte to permit current flow. In the process of releasing H2 + O2 it also has secondary reactions with the electrolyte as well as the electrodes.
My guess is that after adding up all of the losts from electrolysis to generation is that it would be about 25% to 30% efficient in ideal conditions.
"The process of electrolysis doesn't require clean water. One can split water coming from poluted sewage"
No you would want to do that!. You would comtainment the electrotrodes and fowl up the electrolysis system. Ideallly you want pure water with an pure electrolyte so that mineral deposits do not fowl up the system.
The reason why batteries are preferred over hydrogen is that the overall efficiency is much better. This is important when you trying to store low density/intermittent power sources (solar & wind).
I'm no expert, but the semiconductor industry has basically admitted that Moore's Law is done.
Here's an article discussing the transition - AFTER MOORE'S LAW
Paraphrasing the words of a Microsoft VP of research… "while the benefits of smaller have been decreasing, the costs have been increasing. This is because the components are approaching a fundamental limit of smallness: the atom."
Decreasing benefit, increasing cost - that sounds familiar.
Semiconductors are more likely to become less powerful, but more focused. Industries like cloud computing and IoT have different requirements than exponential processor speed. There's more profit for chip companies in those industries than in chasing the dream of the smallest, fastest chip ever produced.
Here’s a thought: maybe, if we could some how store hydrogen on long chains, then the chains would keep the density greater than in compressed gas. If the chains were long and convoluted enough, you wouldn’t need high pressure.
Ideally, maybe you coulo make the chains out of something that itself could be burned, so that you wouldn’t have so much complicated waste. Maybe, for example, the chains could be made out of carbon, since each carbon could hold two hydrogen atoms.
The only question, to my mind, would be how to take something like solar energy, and convert it to these chained carbon-hydrogen strands, en masse.
Ah, well.
Maybe this is too complicated to figure out. I guess I’ll just continue burning 87-octane gasoline.
Isn't the whole point that we have to use less energy?
Instead much of this thread has been devoted to "Yeah, but…"
Well, I for one am not putting my money on "Yeah, but." I'm going to make it a point to raise more of my own food and become less dependent on the $ that comes from my J.O.B. because things are going to change. It could happen very fast and a lot of people could die when the SHTF. This is pretty much what Alice Friedemann was saying if i understood it correctly. Several of the commenters on this thread appear to be in denial.
Jeff
In this group we have Tech guys,engineers,scientists,doctors,traders,farmers,teachers and others.I come here to learn from each and everyone of them.We are like minded folks who I believe are in no way in denial.Just alternative ideas and practical solutions.Nothing in this article has been lost on me…
I think the only way hydrogen becomes a fuel is if electricity somehow becomes too cheap to meter, given all the losses in energy involved. My metaphor for hydrogen is that it consumes 2 units of power to store 1 unit. I'm not sure about the math, but that's the sense I get.
Solar could get suddenly a lot more efficient, and/or there might be certain times of the day when wind & solar power are "too plentiful" for the grid to handle, and at that time you could (probably) profitably use the surplus electricity to construct and store hydrogen economically.
Bridge fuel for long haul trucking could be natgas. LNG is currently in use for trucking in other countries - but of course it would require building fueling stations. T Boone Pickens is a proponent of this approach.
Converting cars (but not trucks) to natgas isn't too difficult. If we got out of our own way, conversion kits would be $1500 or so. Other countries much less advanced that the US do this routinely. In asia I see about 50% of taxis are CNG or LNG. A friend's car uses LNG. This is not seen as anything exciting. They do this because the cars are cheaper to operate.
http://www.bangkokpost.com/print/430904/
My mom got a CNG car (after some prodding by me) and she was definitely the only one on her block to have such a beast. Rarer than hen's teeth. In 2013 she was happy about fueling cost: per gge it was about $1.50 vs maybe $4.00/gallon for gasoline. Car ran great, only issue was the relatively short range (about 220 miles). That, and the relative dearth of fueling stations. One had to plan trips carefully. I heard about that a lot. Mom: "I can't take a trip anywhere!" Me (pulling up the CNG fueling station map for California) "Ok, so where do you want to go?" Mom: "I don't know. But if I wanted to go somewhere, I couldn't!"
There was also the lure of being able to use a home fueling system, which never materialized. Pumping your own CNG at home into your car sounded really cool. Really cheap in terms of cost, too. Never happened.
davefairtex Wrote:
"Bridge fuel for long haul trucking could be natgas. LNG is currently in use for trucking in other countries - but of course it would require building fueling stations. T Boone Pickens is a proponent of this approach."
I am not a big fan of burning natgas in trucks or to spin turbines to generate electricity, simply because its too valuble for other uses, such as heating, hot water, feedstock for petro-chemicals. This whole clean-energy movement is betting on the farm on natgas. using it for electricity (already happening) and for transportation is going to speed up depletion and end up leaving tens of millions in the cold when it become too expensive.
Another risk is explosions for leaking or ruptured tanks. yes I know there are some trucks with compressed natGas, but there aren't very many of them, If natgas became the majority the odds of major incidents would increase.
Right now, Natgas is dirty cheap that has large been funded with debt, coming from pension plans. Do to the regulations against coal, power companies are building a lot of new NatGas power plants, which will put a permanent increase in natgas consumption. Sooner or later, the cost of natgas will soar, causing a cluster of problems for business and consumers. North America only has about 20 years of natGas Supply at current consumption rate.
To be honest I don't have a answer. What I could propose is that the US use a lot more rail to transport goods. There is an awful lot of goods transported by long haul trucks that could be transported by rail which is much more energy efficient. Making public transportation more availble would also help as well as the promotion of office workers to work remotely (either at home or some type of shared/co-op local offices). Ditching Global airline travel and airfreight would also help a lot. I think the would consumes about 10 mbpd for the aerospace industry (guestimate). This wouldn't prevent a crisis, but would likely buy some more time.
That said, I strongly believe we are head for a crisis that leads to a collapse or major war. To date, no industrial power has even discussed future shortages with the public. They don't want to spook the public, so I think nothing will be done until a major crisis unfolds and its too late. I think its already too late.
TechGuy-
I think we have more natgas than we have oil.
Heating water: you can always use solar thermal. Its not even that expensive, as some posters pointed out the other day.
If the US has imports cut off, for whatever reason, it will probably be a whole lot easier to obtain natgas than it will be to obtain gasoline. That was my thinking. Probably best to use the stuff we actually produce domestically vs the stuff we have to import.
Plus, even "crazy expensive" natgas at $10/mmbtu is only $1.29 per GGE. Current natgas price is $2.70/mmbtu. We were being overcharged at our natgas station. If we could have used that home fueling station, it would have been insanely cheap - like 50-60 cents/gge.
Rail makes the most sense. Stop driving to the 7-11 and walk a bit more. How about using coal to make dimethyl ether in your UPS van instead of diesel. Electric assisted tricycles?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6JkpryxaR8E
Until we all run out of the cheap stuff, I'm going to keep growing as much of my own fuel as I can and enjoy the experience. Fried eggs, bacon, potatoes and onions in cast iron over the camp fire? Mmmmm! We may be there before you know it. Bon appetite.
Death of the car, no problem it's called public transport. The concept is easy: walk or cycle (on your fold away bike) to the nearest bus/train stop, take public transport, walk or cycle to your final destination. Trolley buses will come back to our towns and cities. Cars, airplanes and high speed rail have no long term future.
As to a model for our future; Cuba. Highest standard of living / energy consumption ratio
I was talking with a chip engineer a while back about speed of the chips, which has been a function of smallness, and he alerted me to the fact that chip speed is facing limits imposed by…the speed of light.
Yes, that's right, once you start to clock in at multiple gigahertz, the amount of time it takes light (or electromagnetic wave propagation to be specific) to travel from one side of the chip to the other becomes a real and limiting factor.
I hadn't ever thought about the length of time required for light to traverse 1.25 inches, but apparently we've bumped up against it. Thus, all gains hence are from carefully engineering chip tasks to be physically closer to each other and that's a much more intensive, careful, and therefor slower process than simply miniaturizing things.
It's totally cool that we've hit this limit…and it's totally inappropriate to keep extrapolating Moore's Law to current chip designs. The low-hanging fruit got picked first…go figure…and now people have assumed that low-hanging fruit is a "Law" - also go figure.
Quantum computing may be a whole different matter, but that's a different story…
As a chip guy myself (materials focus) I would say that, when viewed from the overall system level (vs. just the chip level) performance improvements continue coming. For sure it is getting harder and harder, and MUCH more expensive, to get that next increment of improvement at the chip level… I don't quite understand the argument about light traversing the chip… because we don't have optical chips yet… we still operate with electrons at the chip level. With regard to electrons, every time we shrink the smallest Copper conductor lines again, we increase the electrical resistance in these lines, and move them closer together (between the insulator) which exacerbates the so-called RC (resistance/capacitance) delay factor.
The semiconductor industry has already fended off one major challenge brought about by our inability to scale individual atoms… that was the entire motivation for the shift from so-called Poly SiON transistor gates to (Hafnium based) High-k metal gates… the Si-based gates were down to just a few atoms thickness, and they were too leaky.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-%CE%BA_dielectricSo work goes on to address various bottlenecks in overall system performance, while we eke out improved performance at the chip level. While the chips don't work with photons, there is much more emphasis on taking the latency out of all ex-chip data movement via photonics.. i.e. photonic cables for data centers, etc.The term high-κ dielectric refers to a material with a high dielectric constant κ (as compared to silicon dioxide). High-κ dielectrics are used in semiconductor manufacturing processes where they are usually used to replace a silicon dioxide gate dielectric or another dielectric layer of a device. The implementation of high-κ gate dielectrics is one of several strategies developed to allow further miniaturization of microelectronic components, colloquially referred to as extending Moore's Law.
I would not characterize our conception of Moore's law as being similar to other forms of magical thinking that deny the finite nature of the earth… but that's just me : )
Maybe we aren't driving the chip architecture maybe the chip designs are driving us? Terrance made note that language is a technology as is psilocybn as is the internet. The only difference between a drug and a computer is that one it just a bit to large to swallow, and our best minds are working on that problem.
davefairtex:
"I think we have more natgas than we have oil."
Not much more, and Oil can be more readily transported from oversea. Not so much with natgas.
"Heating water: you can always use solar thermal. Its not even that expensive, as some posters pointed out the other day."
Not pratical in high density urban regions, or when people live in multi-story apartments where there isn't sufficient roof space to meet demand. Also it not sunny at night, or during bad weather. Most people don't have the means to climb on there roofs to remove snow from solar thermal panels. Not all roof are facing south.
"Plus, even "crazy expensive" natgas at $10/mmbtu is only $1.29 per GGE."
Natgas is grossly underpriced! its should be between $16 to $25 mmbtu. Its been subsidized with pension money as pension money managers invested heavily in Oil & Gas because the Federal reserve's ZIRP (Zero Interest policy). Sooner or later prices are going to soar. When it happens it going to bankrupt a lot of businesses and going to cause severe problems reliant on Natgas for winter heating.
As I stated we have about 20 years at current consumption (see Chris recent interview with Arthur Berman). The Shale gas drilling is evidence that we are scraping the bottom of the barrel for natgas.
"If the US has imports cut off, for whatever reason, it will probably be a whole lot easier to obtain natgas than it will be to obtain gasoline."
The US imports natgas from Canada. So if imports are cut off, then the US is still in trouble.
https://www.eia.gov/dnav/ng/hist/n9102cn2m.htm