4 ms·
I like talk of fuel cells, alternate energy storage mediums and all that. But there's always the question of where the energy comes from. All energy we use com
by betwixthewires 5y ago
I like talk of fuel cells, alternate energy storage mediums and all that. But there's always the question of where the energy comes from.
All energy we use comes from the sun. Every single drop of it. For a billion years plankton and algae were sequestered from the biosphere and converted to the explosive energy "source" we use now to allow for our population and standard of living, this is petroleum, but the energy came from the sun. We are lucky. Even wind, which is fluid current, is caused by convection from energy that originated in the sun. Hydroelectric is water rushing downwards, that was moved upwards by the sun evaporating water. Even fission is energy in elements that was stores there from fusion in the sun.
So where do you get the energy from? The entire earth needs energy from the sun for the biosphere to continue. You aren't going to get the energy you got from it slowly accumulating over a billion years, waiting for us to find it, not without paving the earth in solar panels. Short of sending a dyson swarm to collect solar energy from the vast surface area of the sun that does not radiate onto the earth directly, you're not going to get an energy source that is more environmentally friendly than burning petroleum, because you have to pave the natural landscape just to get a miniscule percentage of what tectonic activity accrued on our behalf for a billion years.
This is what people who talk about carbon neutral and environmentally friendly energy fail to grasp. There is energy out there that isn't oil, but it requires more disruption to natural ecosystems than burning oil, and it is far less energy dense. The best thing that can be done is to use oil to launch solar panels into orbit around the sun and somehow send that energy here, what you're ultimately doing is creating a lens to concentrate solar radiation to earth in a round about way. Bar that, you're talking about eradicating a significant portion of the human population.
- robbedpeter 5y agoJust to pick nits, the sun is not the source of our heavy elements. Those came from other stellar phenomena, elsewhere in the galaxy. All of the iron on earth came from supernovae of red supergiant stars. Gold requires much higher energy and some comes from neutron star collisions. Nucleosynthesis of heavy elements requires more energy, and thus more energetic or more massive stars as they get heavier. Through cosmic eons, as stars produce these elements and get exploded, smeared, or otherwise diffused into clouds of elemental ions, the heavy elements coalesce into asteroids that are then captured by the gravity of other stellar systems. Early in the solar system's formation, the heavy elements in asteroids served as seeds around which the lighter elements were attracted. When earth (and other planets) were at their present mass and orbital configuration, there was a period of heavy bombardment, in which asteroids smashed into the surface, depositing nearly all of the heavy elements which humans have access to. Our nuclear energy comes from supernovae from almost half the age of the universe ago (6 bn years.) The radioactive elements in the earth contribute about half of the heat at the surface, the remainder of which comes from the sun. Geothermal is actually partially nuclear energy. Cosmochemistry is wild! https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/nuclear-fuel-cycle/uranium-resources/the-cosmic-origins-of-uranium.aspx https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/nuclear-fuel-c...
- betwixthewires 5y agoThank you for correcting me. It's important to learn!
- rex_lupi 5y ago>This is what people who talk about carbon neutral and environmentally friendly energy fail to grasp. they don't. >There is energy out there that isn't oil, but it requires more disruption to natural ecosystems than burning oil, and it is far less energy dense Again, that's true only when you believe paving the natural landscape with solar panels is the only environment friendly and sustainable source of energy in existence. If you think it's okay to continue use oil until we achieve the technological capabilities to build a Dyson sphere (assuming Earth's fossil fuel reserves are unlimited), I highly doubt humanity will survive that long.
- betwixthewires 5y ago> they don't. You say that, but then... > Again, that's true only when you believe paving the natural landscape with solar panels is the only environment friendly and sustainable source of energy in existence. There is only one source of energy on this earth. No matter what you build to produce energy, that energy comes from the sun, which means some surface area on earth must be dedicated to it, which means some natural process and landscape must be severely hindered. Whether it is damming up rivers or paving some desert or clear cutting a windmill farm or whatever it is, to get the energy we need you have to destroy some landscape, and what you have to destroy is a function of how much solar energy lands on a square meter of surface.
- ncmncm 5y agoIt is hard to find any correct statement here. Power we generate from nuclear and geothermal heat sources is not in any sense ultimately solar. The area that must be covered by solar panels to reproduce current power generation would be quite small. Existing pasturage alone suffices. Pasture grass does not need full sun, and benefits from decreased evaporation. Other low-impact sites include reservoirs, residential and industrial roofs, and parking lots, with important secondary benefits in each case.
- betwixthewires 5y agoWhere do you think the the heat in the earth ultimately comes from? Maybe you can't find a correct statement because you don't understand. Just because you can't understand something doesn't mean it doesn't make sense.
- ncmncm 5y agoIf you think the heat in the earth comes from the sun, you are even more confused.
- betwixthewires 5y agoSo where does the energy originate then? Since you know and I apparently don't, teach me.
- ncmncm 5y agoI know this had already been explained to you in a sibling comment. So, you seek to waste our time.