Mining Engineering. (2 Viewers)

[laney]

At least we have women.

Hello? i'm a girl doing mining! at least there are heaps of guys doing mining *purrrrrrs*

 

[Shuter]

Hello? i'm a girl doing mining! at least there are heaps of guys doing mining *purrrrrrs*

90% are asian.

 

[velox]

So ? At least they're not westy bogans.

 

[Shuter]

So ? At least they're not westy bogans.

That's your choice once you start working on the mines.

 

[Slidey]

At current finds, we have 90 years of currently economically viable oil, and 500 years of coal. You'll only be working for about 40 years at most.

You'll find those figures are inaccurate, but whatever. I'm not going to try to 'convert' you. You don't know what you're talking about, nor do you care to. I'm sure you'll convert yourself once you realise it costs too much to run your car in 10 years time.

As for nuclear - it's an alternative, but it's not a replacement, Justin. Renewable won't be going anywhere.

I mean, think about something like photolysed water - once something like hat is converted to an industrial process it is amazingly cheap and produces exorbitant amounts of hydrogen gas. What need would you have for nuclear then? I imagine you could increase the yield over time of the Haber process quite significantly, aswell.

 

[Templar]

We need controllable fusion.

Otherwise, agree with Slide on renewables. Although photolysis could provide cheap hydrogen for fusion.

 

[Shuter]

You'll find those figures are inaccurate, but whatever. I'm not going to try to 'convert' you. You don't know what you're talking about, nor do you care to. I'm sure you'll convert yourself once you realise it costs too much to run your car in 10 years time.

As for nuclear - it's an alternative, but it's not a replacement, Justin. Renewable won't be going anywhere.

I mean, think about something like photolysed water - once something like hat is converted to an industrial process it is amazingly cheap and produces exorbitant amounts of hydrogen gas. What need would you have for nuclear then? I imagine you could increase the yield over time of the Haber process quite significantly, aswell.

Why don't you provide the accurate figures.

 

[Slidey]

You're right in some ways. The world has coal reserves to last around 300 years (I believe Australia has enough for 150). Australia doesn't even meet it's current oil demand with it's oil, so you can't say that's going to last very long and even if it does it's not an adequate supply. So if it has that much coal, why is it a problem?

Well, you have the environmental impacts of getting to all that coal, obviously, as well as the impact it has on our atmosphere and health, but I suspect you don't care about that.

Fine, the monetary problems, then. Look up something called 'Hubbert's peak'. It's clear that it's not a matter of when oil runs out. It's a matter of when we hit that peak, because from then on it's a downhill slide until the point where it just becomes completely uneconomical to extract oil.

http://www.answers.com/hubbert's%20peak

Shell Oil for example plans to derive 50% of its energy from renewables by 2050. And solar energy is a billion dollar industry which BP Solar has a large chunk of. Look these companies up for their own defence of renewable energy.

You could also take a look at France, Germany, Japan, America, Iceland - all of these places put a great deal of money into renewable energy. Australia does to, but not near as much as it should.

Templar: Do you need hydrogen for fusion, do you? I was thinking of just plain burning the hydrogen in air. It's a very good fuel.

Further reading: http://www.answers.com/topic/future-energy-development?hl=fossil&hl=fuel&hl=reserves

 

[Not-That-Bright]

Renewable energies are very nice for PR, but when it comes to crunch time imo they will move towards nuclear power. Hopefully within a few hundred years we'd work out fusion of some sort...

 

[Shuter]

Fine, the monetary problems, then. Look up something called 'Hubbert's peak'. It's clear that it's not a matter of when oil runs out. It's a matter of when we hit that peak, because from then on it's a downhill slide until the point where it just becomes completely uneconomical to extract oil.

http://www.answers.com/hubbert's%20peak

As I already stated, my numbers were from the economically viable quantities at current market rates. I was of course reffering to world supplies, not just Australia.

Clearly, mining will be around for a long time and the disolution of the industry is not a factor for consideration at this point.

 

[Slidey]

Is that what your point was? I agree. That's why I suggested looking into petroleum engineering as well as renewable energy. Both would provide a nice job for as long as any of us will be around. Gavrillo should choose the one that suits his interests and personality.

Although you should recall that India and China grow rapidly, as does the world's population. The fuel reserve numbers do not consider these things, so it's likely that they are generous estimates.

 

[withoutaface]

You're right in some ways. The world has coal reserves to last around 300 years (I believe Australia has enough for 150). Australia doesn't even meet it's current oil demand with it's oil, so you can't say that's going to last very long and even if it does it's not an adequate supply. So if it has that much coal, why is it a problem?

Well, you have the environmental impacts of getting to all that coal, obviously, as well as the impact it has on our atmosphere and health, but I suspect you don't care about that.

Fine, the monetary problems, then. Look up something called 'Hubbert's peak'. It's clear that it's not a matter of when oil runs out. It's a matter of when we hit that peak, because from then on it's a downhill slide until the point where it just becomes completely uneconomical to extract oil.

http://www.answers.com/hubbert's%20peak

Shell Oil for example plans to derive 50% of its energy from renewables by 2050. And solar energy is a billion dollar industry which BP Solar has a large chunk of. Look these companies up for their own defence of renewable energy.

You could also take a look at France, Germany, Japan, America, Iceland - all of these places put a great deal of money into renewable energy. Australia does to, but not near as much as it should.

Templar: Do you need hydrogen for fusion, do you? I was thinking of just plain burning the hydrogen in air. It's a very good fuel.

Further reading: http://www.answers.com/topic/future-energy-development?hl=fossil&hl=fuel&hl=reserves

Please, please tell me you're not raving about Peak Oil.s

 

[Slidey]

What, you think our rate of consumption of oil will be linear?

 

[Courtenay]

What, you think our rate of consumption of oil will be linear?

I second that notion...You think it is like a flat gradient of oil over the past 100 years? Our use of oil must be so close to being exponential. Plus we will reach peak oil in the next 5 years and hmm interesting...

Solar would be so much more efficeint if people admitted we need an alternative but ignorance is bliss so before people deal, i will just go and make lots of money in europe

 

[Meldrum]

For solar effectively replace coal and oil in generating energy, how many panels would we need? I heard something like we'd have to the entire surface of Greenland in solar panels to do so.

 

[withoutaface]

What, you think our rate of consumption of oil will be linear?

I suggest that 90% of people who talk about peak oil also attach the obligatory "OMG TEH WORLD IS GONNA END AND NUKES ARE GONNA BE LAUNCHED AND WE'RE ALL GONNA DIE WHEN OIL RUNS LOW" conspiracy theories.

 

[Shuter]

Did I ever say the estimates I provided were based on linear consumption?

 

[Slidey]

Was talking to waffy, Shuter. Chill.

Obviously solar will not be the only source of energy. But solar has no moving parts and is mobile. It can be put on things like cars or it can be used to liberate something like hydrogen so that the hydrogen can be used as a primary source of energy.

And I suspect gress <3 tig's figure is based on 2nd generation solar arrays. The number would be a lot better using 3rd generation arrays. Not that 2.3% of Tasmania's area is bad - but that would be extremely costly using 2nd gen arrays.

Take a look at 3rd gen cells here: http://www.pv.unsw.edu.au/Research/3gp.asp

Obviously 3rd generation cells would be many times cheaper than nuclear or oil! Coal is something like $1 per watt and nuclear 7$ per watt.

 

[tech.knockout]

No, I don't. It's hard to explain it to people. I've read and seen enough to know that renewable energy isn't a pipe dream but it's hard to convince others.

These articles might help you, but otherwise look at UNSW's Centre for Photovoltaics website.

http://physorg.com/news5370.html

Further: http://www.earthtoys.com/emagazine.php?issue_number=04.04.01&article=photovoltaics

And you could also take a look at Iceland as a model for a society suceeding of renewables. Renewables power about 80% of Iceland. (type iceland or 'hydrogen economy' into wikipedia)

Plenty of other information on the net.

I was thinking that the articles you presented actually has some revelations of new incredible technical acheivements in existing renewables(wind and solar), or a new method of renewable energy is developed. Instead I see just the same old wishful thinking and promotion for solar/wind without anything on real advances towards what really matters, their inefficiency, unreliability, and cost.
At the moment we need some crazy amount of solar panels/wind turbines to power any substantially populated city/country(iceland ). Solar's/wind's cost/watt has to increase a hundredfold or perhaps a thousand( let alone their unreliability) to be considered as major sources of energy instead of as the political tools they are today. Its still a pipedream.

 

[Slidey]

I started reading your post thinking you were a person well informed on the subject of energy, but it turns out you're just another uninformed drone knocking renewables because you you think it's for hippies and that destroying the world is the manly thing to do. Ah well.