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#121
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...Lesson for Nasa! US Airmail and Aviation
On Fri, 26 May 2006 19:46:07 -0400, in a place far, far away, Alan
Anderson made the phosphor on my monitor glow in such a way as to indicate that: Forgive me, I'm feeling contrary today. Fred J. McCall wrote: The only way we would ever 'use it all up' is if there is some critical use for which absolutely no substitute exists at any price. Then it will stay very expensive so that price exceeds the cost of getting it out of the ground and we'll keep pumping it up until there is no more. Note that the preceding is pretty much an economically impossible situation, since there are no uses for anything that are infinitely valuable and for which no possible substitute will do. How about phosphorus? It's been proposed as the ultimate limiting factor for the size of the human population the Earth will support. Yes, well, barring some genetic mods. That are beyond current understanding/technology... |
#122
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...Lesson for Nasa! US Airmail and Aviation
Alan Anderson wrote:
:Forgive me, I'm feeling contrary today. Climb out on whichever frail limbs please you. :-) :Fred J. McCall wrote: : : The only way we would ever 'use it all up' is if there is some : critical use for which absolutely no substitute exists at any price. : Then it will stay very expensive so that price exceeds the cost of : getting it out of the ground and we'll keep pumping it up until there : is no more. : : Note that the preceding is pretty much an economically impossible : situation, since there are no uses for anything that are infinitely : valuable and for which no possible substitute will do. : :How about phosphorus? It's been proposed as the ultimate limiting :factor for the size of the human population the Earth will support. How about phosphorus? See any danger of us running out? How ass deep in people would we have to be before it bacame a limiting factor? -- "Some people get lost in thought because it's such unfamiliar territory." --G. Behn |
#123
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...Lesson for Nasa! US Airmail and Aviation
In article .com,
Dave O'Neill wrote: Depends on the "office building", but if you consider the average home, even in the relatively sun starved UK, covering the roof in PV cells should make a typcial home a nett exporter of electricity. The problem is currently it doesn't make economic sense for the individual because energy is still so cheap. The other problem is that the storage systems needed to hang onto that energy until it's needed cost even more than the PV cells. -- spsystems.net is temporarily off the air; | Henry Spencer mail to henry at zoo.utoronto.ca instead. | |
#124
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...Lesson for Nasa! US Airmail and Aviation
Hyper wrote:
Could you elaborate on that. Why is $150/barrel "ludicrous"? Coal-to-liquids, oil shale, indirectly liquified biomass, etc. are all competitive at prices well below that level. Even the current price of oil is unsustainably high. The only thing holding back investment in CTL and the like is the fear that the price will decline before the investment in large CTL plants can be recouped (as happened with synfuels in the last energy 'crisis'.) Paul |
#125
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...Lesson for Nasa! US Airmail and Aviation
Fred J. McCall wrote:
How about phosphorus? See any danger of us running out? How ass deep in people would we have to be before it bacame a limiting factor? Humans don't transmute phosphorus, so of course we won't 'run out' (unless the population of the solar system becomes so large that the total mass of available phosphorus is inadequate to supply the amount present in all the human bodies. This would be an enormous population.) What we may be forced to do is mine lower and lower grade ores, ultimately down to the average crustal abundance (1000 ppm, IIRC). It would also make sense to increase conservation, for example by recycling the element from sewage and by reducing erosion, in order to reduce the overall cost if phosphate becomes more expensive. Paul |
#126
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...Lesson for Nasa! US Airmail and Aviation
Paul F. Dietz wrote: Hyper wrote: Could you elaborate on that. Why is $150/barrel "ludicrous"? Coal-to-liquids, oil shale, indirectly liquified biomass, etc. are all competitive at prices well below that level. They had an article in Newsweek- oil sands generate oil at $20 to $30 per barrel. Pat |
#127
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...Lesson for Nasa! US Airmail and Aviation
Pat Flannery wrote:
:They had an article in Newsweek- oil sands generate oil at $20 to $30 er barrel. And there is a HUGE oil sands operation up in Canada. It's expanding hugely, much to the chagrin of Canadian greens, because all by itself it imperils Canada's adherence to Kyoto. We buy most of the output. -- "The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable man persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man." --George Bernard Shaw |
#128
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...Lesson for Nasa! US Airmail and Aviation
Fred J. McCall wrote:
Pat Flannery wrote: :They had an article in Newsweek- oil sands generate oil at $20 to $30 er barrel. And there is a HUGE oil sands operation up in Canada. Several, in fact, all located just north of Fort McMurray. (I've done some consulting for one of them.) It takes a fair amount of energy (and water!) to liberate the tar from the sand, then add hydrogen to produce light crude. There is some talk about building a nuclear reactor to supply the required power rather than rely on ATCO. -- Dave Michelson |
#129
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...Lesson for Nasa! US Airmail and Aviation
Henry Spencer wrote: In article .com, Dave O'Neill wrote: Depends on the "office building", but if you consider the average home, even in the relatively sun starved UK, covering the roof in PV cells should make a typcial home a nett exporter of electricity. The problem is currently it doesn't make economic sense for the individual because energy is still so cheap. The other problem is that the storage systems needed to hang onto that energy until it's needed cost even more than the PV cells. Which is why the total set up is circa £20K. There is a good argument for a subsidised system part funded for all new builds though. Of course, the storage cells will need to be renewed too. Dave |
#130
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...Lesson for Nasa! US Airmail and Aviation
In sci.space.policy Henry Spencer wrote:
In article .com, Hyper wrote: ...and the limits imposed on fission by uranium supply. Isn't the problem of supply obviated by using breeder reactors? If you build the breeder reactors, and the corresponding reprocessing plants; there are non-trivial political obstacles to doing so, not to mention some remaining technical issues with existing breeder designs. After India builds a dozen - and there are good reasons to think they will - it will be much less of a problem. Give it a couple of decades. [snip] a long-term energy infrastructure on. Breeding -- preferably U-233 from thorium rather than Pu-239 from U-238 -- would fix that, but it means restarting breeder-reactor technology work quickly, and then building a lot of breeder reactors and reprocessing plants in a hurry. A lot of that demand is in places that have far more easier access to thorium than uranium. -- Sander +++ Out of cheese error +++ |
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