11 ms·

Land area hides the true scale though. The oil fills vast volume under the ground. Solar panels may take up more surface area, but the energy output per unit o

by gibolt 4y ago

Land area hides the true scale though. The oil fills vast volume under the ground. Solar panels may take up more surface area, but the energy output per unit of material and volume should easily out-class oil. There is also no shortage of area on land or sea that is otherwise useless to us.

folli 4y ago
> There is also no shortage of area on land or sea that is otherwise useless to us That's a bold statement considering ecological factors.
- nine_k 4y ago
  I'd say that Sahara is an ecological disaster already, the result of ancient deforestation. Even if we might considering preservation of its ecosystem, we likely won't plan to preserve all of it.
  - rob74 4y ago
    While some ecological disasters are definitely man-made, the Sahara has been mostly the way it is today for the last 10,000 years (source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sahara#Desertification_and_prehistoric_climate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sahara#Desertification_and_pre...). Of course the current climate change will influence whether it will expand in the future, but the "core" Sahara has been there before human influence...
  - jsjohnst 4y ago
    > I'd say that Sahara is an ecological disaster already, the result of ancient deforestation. There is literally zero scientific evidence I’ve seen to back up that claim, unless by “deforestation” you mean natural “deforestation” by glaciars.
- kuhewa 4y ago
  They could be put on top of the massive surface area of oil sands deposits that are currently being treated as ecologically unimportant. A lot of oil extraction isn't as 'punctiform' as it used to be.
  - dredmorbius 4y ago
    Much oil sands extraction occurs in regions poorly suited to large-scale reliable solar generation.
    - kuhewa 4y ago
      Alberta has wind though.
m463 4y ago
What's interesting is that oil pretty much prevented the entire world from being deforested in our crazy search for fuel. It also saved the (remaining) whales when it replaced whale oil for lamps. (I think I learned this reading "the rational optimist")
- rob74 4y ago
  ...but, being so cheap, it also enabled crazier ways of using fuel, like cars and airplanes, which wouldn't have been possible (or would have been possible, but not feasible at the scale we have nowadays) with wood or coal. So now our civilization is addicted to cheap oil and other fossil fuels, and the question is how we can keep up our level of civilization (or let's call it "standard of living") while beating this addiction.
  - automatic6131 4y ago
    > it also enabled crazier ways of using fuel Which massively raised the quality of life most humans can live in, in various direct (we can transport a wide variety of foods quickly) and indirectly. The question is how we can feed this "addiction" (stupid word: you're also "addicted" to breathing and eating) yet ever more whilst reducing or eliminating the negative externalities. A low energy use society is also poor society which is also, in most of the ways you presumably care about, a bad society. And I don't mean poor as in dollars.
    - developer93 4y ago
      "A low energy society is a poorer society" while you're right in general, in the west we can live far more efficiently than we do without really impacting our quality of life via things like longer product life cycles, more public transport, living closer to places we need so we don't have to travel so far every day, better distribution of resources. These things could be improved if society took enough interest. Still might not be enough and we have to beware of efficiency increases getting swallowed by increased use, but my point was it's not 100% true.
dredmorbius 4y ago
Smil's point was more that it is possible to control a tremendous amount of energetic capacity and consequent power (industrial, economic, financial, political, ...) that literally comes out of a hole in the ground. This also has implications when considering EROEI --- energy returned on energy input. I mentioned the First Oil Well, Bahrain. It produced at 70,000 bbl/day (not 80k as I'd stated earlier). Typical oil well casing pipe is about 12" in diameter, let's call that 30cm, giving a wellhead area of 700 cm^2. Let's call that 0.1m^2 just to make the maths easier. That is roughly 55GW/m^2 of continuous energy throughput. Solar power delivers about 1kW/m^2, 10 MW/hectare, or 1 GW/km^2. Effectively, that's typically achieved for only about 1/3 of a day. I'm not factoring that into the discussion which follows. The 55 GW of the First Oil Well are equivalent to the peak incident sunlight falling on a region 55 km^2 in area --- about 7.5 km (4.6 mi). The net solar PV generation is a very small fraction of that, typically less than 10% net efficiency, so you'd need to expand that to 550 km^2, or 23 km ( 14 mi) on a side. (San Francisco is 11km / 7mi square.) Yes, oil fields are far larger, they're also far less prevalent, and unevenly distributed. Sunlight tends to be much more evenly distributed. The notion that there's more than adequate solar energy arriving on Earth is attractive, but potentially dangerous given various factors: - 2/3 of sunlight falls on oceans rather than land. Capturing this would prove extraordinarily difficult. - Net of conversion, we'd do well to capture 10% of the incident energy. - Transmission and storage further reduce energy. Transmission is surprisingly efficient. Storage has proved quite challenging. - PV solar infrastructure has a lifetime of ~20 years. Put another way, 5% of infrastructure assuming no growth would require replacement each year. - There are ecological impacts to very-large-scale land-use changes. - The human population is continuing to grow, and is anticipated to do so through the end of this century. - Roughly 5 billion people would like to achieve at least an approximation of a Western standard of living. The US standard of living, based on ~100 quads (quadrillion BTUs) per year, and 330 million people, is about 10 kW. The global standard of living, based on ~500 quad/yr and 8 billion people, is about 2.3kW. That's an average, and for a huge population, the net energy rate is a fraction of this. At a US standard of living, 10 kW/person translates to 2,400 quad/year, 4.4 times greater than total present consumption. At 0.1 kW/m^2, this is the equivalent of 802,000 km^2. Or about 895 km on a side. Since I mentioned net production is about 1/3 of nameplace capacity, we actually need 3x the area. So: 2,700,000 km^2, or 1,600 km (1,000 mi) on a side. That's ... large. But not entirely infeasible. In truth, population is projected to grow through ~11 -- 16 billions by 2100. And there are other factors which would further diminish net delivered energy. I suspect the global average per-capita power consumption by 2100 will be somewhat below 10 kW/person.
dredmorbius 4y ago
Also on oil fields: virtually all are ancient shallow fields. The Persian Gulf region was also subjected to latitudinal compression, as the African and Asian plates collided, which further concentrate the oil by land area. If you look at reconstructions of the world from ~150--300 mya, and look at which regions were shallow oceans, those are where you'll find present-day oil reserves (or the spent fields which have already been exhausted). The United States had largely worked out where its own potential oil reserves might be found by the 1870s / 1880s, based both on surface evidence and geology. This even before accurate age of the earth or understanding of plate tectonics were developed.
sandworm101 4y ago
>>There is also no shortage of area on land or sea that is otherwise useless to us. 1) Yet. There is not yet any shortage of land. 2) There are other users of land than "us". Few would want to chop down forests to make room for solar panels. Yet we will flood those forests to power dams. Put the solar panels somewhere with no animals or plant life. Don't assume that all this land is ours to do with what we please. It isn't.

by gibolt 4y ago

folli 4y ago

> There is also no shortage of area on land or sea that is otherwise useless to us That's a bold statement considering ecological factors.

nine_k 4y ago
I'd say that Sahara is an ecological disaster already, the result of ancient deforestation. Even if we might considering preservation of its ecosystem, we likely won't plan to preserve all of it.
- rob74 4y ago
  While some ecological disasters are definitely man-made, the Sahara has been mostly the way it is today for the last 10,000 years (source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sahara#Desertification_and_prehistoric_climate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sahara#Desertification_and_pre...). Of course the current climate change will influence whether it will expand in the future, but the "core" Sahara has been there before human influence...
- jsjohnst 4y ago
  > I'd say that Sahara is an ecological disaster already, the result of ancient deforestation. There is literally zero scientific evidence I’ve seen to back up that claim, unless by “deforestation” you mean natural “deforestation” by glaciars.
kuhewa 4y ago
They could be put on top of the massive surface area of oil sands deposits that are currently being treated as ecologically unimportant. A lot of oil extraction isn't as 'punctiform' as it used to be.
- dredmorbius 4y ago
  Much oil sands extraction occurs in regions poorly suited to large-scale reliable solar generation.
  - kuhewa 4y ago
    Alberta has wind though.

m463 4y ago

What's interesting is that oil pretty much prevented the entire world from being deforested in our crazy search for fuel. It also saved the (remaining) whales when it replaced whale oil for lamps. (I think I learned this reading "the rational optimist")

rob74 4y ago
...but, being so cheap, it also enabled crazier ways of using fuel, like cars and airplanes, which wouldn't have been possible (or would have been possible, but not feasible at the scale we have nowadays) with wood or coal. So now our civilization is addicted to cheap oil and other fossil fuels, and the question is how we can keep up our level of civilization (or let's call it "standard of living") while beating this addiction.
- automatic6131 4y ago
  > it also enabled crazier ways of using fuel Which massively raised the quality of life most humans can live in, in various direct (we can transport a wide variety of foods quickly) and indirectly. The question is how we can feed this "addiction" (stupid word: you're also "addicted" to breathing and eating) yet ever more whilst reducing or eliminating the negative externalities. A low energy use society is also poor society which is also, in most of the ways you presumably care about, a bad society. And I don't mean poor as in dollars.
  - developer93 4y ago
    "A low energy society is a poorer society" while you're right in general, in the west we can live far more efficiently than we do without really impacting our quality of life via things like longer product life cycles, more public transport, living closer to places we need so we don't have to travel so far every day, better distribution of resources. These things could be improved if society took enough interest. Still might not be enough and we have to beware of efficiency increases getting swallowed by increased use, but my point was it's not 100% true.

dredmorbius 4y ago

Smil's point was more that it is possible to control a tremendous amount of energetic capacity and consequent power (industrial, economic, financial, political, ...) that literally comes out of a hole in the ground. This also has implications when considering EROEI --- energy returned on energy input. I mentioned the First Oil Well, Bahrain. It produced at 70,000 bbl/day (not 80k as I'd stated earlier). Typical oil well casing pipe is about 12" in diameter, let's call that 30cm, giving a wellhead area of 700 cm^2. Let's call that 0.1m^2 just to make the maths easier. That is roughly 55GW/m^2 of continuous energy throughput. Solar power delivers about 1kW/m^2, 10 MW/hectare, or 1 GW/km^2. Effectively, that's typically achieved for only about 1/3 of a day. I'm not factoring that into the discussion which follows. The 55 GW of the First Oil Well are equivalent to the peak incident sunlight falling on a region 55 km^2 in area --- about 7.5 km (4.6 mi). The net solar PV generation is a very small fraction of that, typically less than 10% net efficiency, so you'd need to expand that to 550 km^2, or 23 km ( 14 mi) on a side. (San Francisco is 11km / 7mi square.) Yes, oil fields are far larger, they're also far less prevalent, and unevenly distributed. Sunlight tends to be much more evenly distributed. The notion that there's more than adequate solar energy arriving on Earth is attractive, but potentially dangerous given various factors: - 2/3 of sunlight falls on oceans rather than land. Capturing this would prove extraordinarily difficult. - Net of conversion, we'd do well to capture 10% of the incident energy. - Transmission and storage further reduce energy. Transmission is surprisingly efficient. Storage has proved quite challenging. - PV solar infrastructure has a lifetime of ~20 years. Put another way, 5% of infrastructure assuming no growth would require replacement each year. - There are ecological impacts to very-large-scale land-use changes. - The human population is continuing to grow, and is anticipated to do so through the end of this century. - Roughly 5 billion people would like to achieve at least an approximation of a Western standard of living. The US standard of living, based on ~100 quads (quadrillion BTUs) per year, and 330 million people, is about 10 kW. The global standard of living, based on ~500 quad/yr and 8 billion people, is about 2.3kW. That's an average, and for a huge population, the net energy rate is a fraction of this. At a US standard of living, 10 kW/person translates to 2,400 quad/year, 4.4 times greater than total present consumption. At 0.1 kW/m^2, this is the equivalent of 802,000 km^2. Or about 895 km on a side. Since I mentioned net production is about 1/3 of nameplace capacity, we actually need 3x the area. So: 2,700,000 km^2, or 1,600 km (1,000 mi) on a side. That's ... large. But not entirely infeasible. In truth, population is projected to grow through ~11 -- 16 billions by 2100. And there are other factors which would further diminish net delivered energy. I suspect the global average per-capita power consumption by 2100 will be somewhat below 10 kW/person.

dredmorbius 4y ago

Also on oil fields: virtually all are ancient shallow fields. The Persian Gulf region was also subjected to latitudinal compression, as the African and Asian plates collided, which further concentrate the oil by land area. If you look at reconstructions of the world from ~150--300 mya, and look at which regions were shallow oceans, those are where you'll find present-day oil reserves (or the spent fields which have already been exhausted). The United States had largely worked out where its own potential oil reserves might be found by the 1870s / 1880s, based both on surface evidence and geology. This even before accurate age of the earth or understanding of plate tectonics were developed.

sandworm101 4y ago

>>There is also no shortage of area on land or sea that is otherwise useless to us. 1) Yet. There is not yet any shortage of land. 2) There are other users of land than "us". Few would want to chop down forests to make room for solar panels. Yet we will flood those forests to power dams. Put the solar panels somewhere with no animals or plant life. Don't assume that all this land is ours to do with what we please. It isn't.