World Energy Depletion

There are researches over tidal energy, they're going on and gaining space, but, of course, only in places with the favorable natural resources.

Here in Brazil tha main fronts are tidal energy, wind and sugar can, the last one being used successfully for decades. It is not worldwide used because the production is controlled by a segment that also gets a good amount of money exporting suggar, and that hase the politicians in their pockets. So...

But don't be fooled. The energy alternatives already exist. There's enough technology. But while petrol companies are making money, they don't care about global heat or oil depletion. Even better, they can always start another war and make the price skyrocket. Once more, it's all about money. Alternatives will be used only after the money source has finished.

You might be interested in my blog An Engineer's Look at the Future of Energy. The title thread Possible Technologies for Future Energy and Power Production has a list of the technologies we intend to discussing and has links to the discussions that have already taken place. Each Sunday I start a new thread to discuss one of the technologies and if you join the CR4 community you will get e-mail notification of the new thread each day.

Since tidal energy seems to be tapping into the earth's kinetic energy of rotation, I hope it gets left well enough alone. I'm looking forward to the full discussion on this topic in Masu's thread in the near future.

Hi Emjay4119

We have already had the discussion on using the worlds oceans to generate energy but I think the tidal subject deserves some more so I will revisit the subject in next Sundays discussion

Actually there is a lot of disinformation out there about the effect of generating power form tidal energy and the effect it would have on the earths rotation. I did some calculations in another thread and if we used the earths rotation to supply all our energy needs it would only add a few milliseconds to the length of the day over several decades. I will redo the calculations and include them in the introduction to the new discussion.

I would hazard to say though, that a few milliseconds here and there would have considerably less effect on the Earth's climate that the billions of tonnes of CO₂ that we are currently belching into the atmosphere.

Yeah Masu,

The normal tidal action chews up power for sure. Considering the lack of forethought that has been applied to where our energy comes from already we need great care in our choices. Nothing is inexhaustible.

And how's Steak N Kidney today.

The weather is pretty good at the moment, it's 14:45 local time the temperature is 26° C and there is a gentle breeze blowing off the ocean at about 8 Kt. The cloud cover is 8 octas at around 10,000 feet which looks to be prefrontal. The weather radar certainly shows that there are thunder storms lurking about so I would expect we are going to get the usual late afternoon thunder storm. This is pretty typical early autumn (fall) weather where we get a reasonably warm and humid day followed by a late afternoon or early evening thunderstorm.

It has been very dry of late and Sydney is on what is called level 2 water restrictions at the moment. You can only water gardens by hand on Wednesdays and Sundays, can't fill swimming pools and are not allowed to wash cars using a hose. We are in the midst of the worst drought in what is believed to be the last 1,000 years and if the weather doesn't break Sydney will completely run out of water around the middle of next year. There is a mad dash to build a huge desalination plant going on at the moment but it is unlikely that it will be completed in time. People amaze me, the green groups are complaining and trying to stop the construction of the desalination plant without thinking about the consequences or offering a viable alternative. They have completely lost the plot and can't seem to get it into their heads that unless this plant is up an running in 18 months we will need to move a large portion of the 4.5 million people that live in Sydney. Problem is all the major cities are in the same situation so it means shipping a couple of million people off to another country.

Actually I was trying to do some experiments and get some pictures of mirages for the Radiator Leak: Newsletter Challenge (02/20/07). The mirages were starting up and I was about to go out and get some photographs with and without polarizing filters when the afternoon thunderstorms hit. That was last Thursday and it hasn't been hot or cloud free enough to from mirages since.

The weather is pretty good at the moment, it's 14:45 local time the temperature is 26° C and there is a gentle breeze blowing off the ocean at about 8 Kt. The cloud cover is 8 octas at around 10,000 feet which looks to be prefrontal. The weather radar certainly shows that there are thunder storms lurking about so I would expect we are going to get the usual late afternoon thunder storm. This is pretty typical early autumn (fall) weather where we get a reasonably warm and humid day followed by a late afternoon or early evening thunderstorm.

It has been very dry of late and Sydney is on what is called level 2 water restrictions at the moment. You can only water gardens by hand on Wednesdays and Sundays, can't fill swimming pools and are not allowed to wash cars using a hose. We are in the midst of the worst drought in what is believed to be the last 1,000 years and if the weather doesn't break Sydney will completely run out of water around the middle of next year. There is a mad dash to build a huge desalination plant going on at the moment but it is unlikely that it will be completed in time. People amaze me, the green groups are complaining and trying to stop the construction of the desalination plant without thinking about the consequences or offering a viable alternative. They have completely lost the plot and can't seem to get it into their heads that unless this plant is up an running in 18 months we will need to move a large portion of the 4.5 million people that live in Sydney. Problem is all the major cities are in the same situation so it means shipping a couple of million people off to another country. To give you some sort of perspective of how bad it is the Darling River (see picture at right) has stopped flowing and is now only a collection of mud pools. The Darling River is about as long as the Mississippi river so think of it like the Mississippi drying up.

Actually I was trying to do some experiments and get some pictures of mirages for the Radiator Leak: Newsletter Challenge (02/20/07). The mirages were starting up and I was about to go out and get some photographs with and without polarizing filters when the afternoon thunderstorms hit. That was last Thursday and it hasn't been hot or cloud free enough to from mirages since. Mind you I really shouldn't be complaining because we desperately need the rain.

In Mackay the drought has broken finally we've had good soaking rain with very little disruption (unlike Ingham). The weirs on the Pioneer River are flowing over nicely and the water hyacinth has been washed out to die in the salt. We aren't getting anything much in the thunderstorm dept just a top up each night. There are baby frogs everywhere, haven't seen any baby toads, they are probably around but I gave the adults a touch up during the dry as do the Crows. I had to convince some of the local kids that brown frogs weren't toads.

I'm kinda hoping that one of the lows in the Coral Sea becomes about a cat 2 cyclone and takes a right turn at about Bundaberg and gives the Brisbane, Condamine, Balonne etc a good drink. That'll give the Darling a good tickle up. Unfortunately the good rain inland has only fallen in the Lake Eyre system and the Gulf Rivers. There has been plenty of water just not far enough South.

I hope we never see a repeat of the droughts in the 1600s when the Burdekin didn't flow for decades (according to coral samples). If the Burdekin was dry what would the Murray / Darling have been like.

Brisbane is about to go on level 5 water restrictions, Toowoomba is in real bad shape. Political interference from a former mayor stopped Toowoomba's recycling scheme and the Goss government sold off the Wolfdene Dam site in the 90s, don't know what they did with the money. Now Beattie wants to build the Traveston Crossing Dam, if the site was any good Bjelke Petersen would have pegged it in the 70s, it is not just the greenies that want to stop that one.

The greenies have generally been harmful the environment of Australia and the World. The Wet Tropics World Heritage Area is the direct cause of much of the Equatorial deforestation, and we import timber from these areas or grow rubbish pine instead of sustainable yield forestry. Notice the Woodchip Industry in Southern States is still operating though. North QLD was far enough from Sydney for city voters to know nothing, so closure was easy and it bought the ALP a few green votes.

I am all for using ecologically sound practices but I have to agree with you the greenies have cause more damage to the environment that they have prevented. They are not looking at the problem as a whole and by opposing everything little project they are holding everything up.

No matter what we do there is going to be an effect on the environment so trying to completely avoid damaging the environment is an impossibility. What we need to do is take a step back and look at the problem as a whole then calculate what we can do that will have the least detrimental effect.

The construction of dams and reservoirs dose cause a fair amount of damage but they are not looking at the overall effect and sea level rises are going to inundate huge tracts of land. I havn't done the calculations but if the construction of a dam and reservoir only reduced the sea level rise by a fraction of a millimeter then the area saved would most likely be far greater than the area lost

We havn't got the time to sit around procrastinating stupid misconceptions that may ill-informed people are claiming are negative effects. Yes the construction or reservoirs dose damage the environment but having 4.5 million people run out of water and electricity with large tracts of land inundated by rising sea levels make it pail into insignificance.

Yeah mate,

Well put again. Did you hear that one of the QLD government's strategies for coping with water shortage is shutting down the power stations?

About 5 years ago the farmers in the Lockyer wanted access to purified Brisbane wastewater to restore the aquifers in the Lockyer and Laidley creek basins. They first received promises then the pollies went to water under green pressure. Now Govt is spending 8 billion on a recycled network but not a drop goes to the Lockyer.

In many ways I believe we can repair damage previously done to nature, especially by replanting native species. Feral pests too can be controlled, have a look at how the territorians are keeping the toads out of Darwin. Native animals are starting to get them on the East Coast, but if you clobber one with a golf club, then queer greenies like the rspa (not good enough for capitals) will try to prosecute you. They say catch them and freeze them, like hell.

I've been looking at the countryside in my travels about the back country (about 70,000km per year) and I'm starting to think that the cockies are doing themselves more harm than good clearing open Savannah country. When the mature trees are left then they are widely spaced, but bring in the dozers and chain and the result is closely spaced shrubbery (saplings, woody weeds call it what you like).

I'm hoping celulosic sourced liquid fuels get a guernsey, that way the poor old Brigalow might get some long overdue recognition.