Show me a working prototype, otherwise it's just hot air. Fusion power has been 5-10 years away since the 1970's, and the rainbow isn't getting any closer. Also, please explain how fusion is going to fuel the Indonesian moped or the European family hatchback.
End Of Britain
- Thread starter Dave
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Show me a working prototype, otherwise it's just hot air. Fusion power has been 5-10 years away since the 1970's, and the rainbow isn't getting any closer. Also, please explain how fusion is going to fuel the Indonesian moped or the European family hatchback.
Ahh Ronnie don't forget that we were told, in 1954, by the US chairman of the atomic energy commission that we would all be enjoying power that was "too cheap to meter".
We all know how accurate that proved to be
We all know how accurate that proved to be
Electric vehicles.
Ill sit back and wait for you to tell me how impractical that is.
Necessity is the mother of all invention.
Oh that's easy, by the time they've perfected fusion power, they will have developed how to beam it around the globe.
Peak oil is not peak innovation. We will find other ways of making power. We will find ways of using power more efficiently.
They are finding oil all over the place, it will be pumped, we won't run out for a long time Ronnie so I ain't going to loose sleep over it now or ever to be honest. I would like to see us as a nation stop wasting money on wind farms and build more nuclear power plants because they work and wind farms don't most of the time.
How can it be the end of Britain, otherwise known as 'the world as I know it'? As long as we are all selling coffee to each other, its going to be ok. Isnt it?
Electric vehicles are unable to replace our current fleet of liquid petroleum powered vehicles. Without recourse to electric roads, the technology simply doesn't exist to manufacture vehicles with the required range, speed and durability. Solutions with much less utility cost an awful lot more to produce and their lifespan is measured in months rather than years. And remember, we are in a financial depression which isn't likely to end any time soon and are experiencing a resource crunch.
We should be extremely cautious in planning our future around the development of yet to be invented technologies.
Electric aircraft never really took off.
I refer you to Jevon's Paradox
I refer you to one of my previously posted graphs:
To say that "we are finding oil all over the place" is patently untrue. Oil discoveries peaked in 1965. Here's some more graphs that say the same thing:
I don't lose sleep over Peak Oil, at least not any more. But I do use my predictions for the future course of the world to inform my decision making.
If anyone would like to PM me I'll point you towards some useful Peak Oil resources.
.....and yet, oil is now being produced by bugs, fed on green stuff. And fracking will take the USA (and many other countries) out of dependence on external oil supplies in the near future. Regardless of all that, nuclear requires uranium, which most people don't realise is a very common element on Earth - it can even be recovered from common or garden seawater! And fusion will eventually come on-line too.
Forget the "peak oil" exponents - it will not be a problem in either the short or long term. And as far as probablt future vehicles, my money would be on hydrogen-power. The existing hybrids are purely a sop to the greenies and a classic case of impressive marketing to the non-intelligensia- very poor whole-life costs, hugely expensive batteries which are major pollutants in their production.
Forget the "peak oil" exponents - it will not be a problem in either the short or long term. And as far as probablt future vehicles, my money would be on hydrogen-power. The existing hybrids are purely a sop to the greenies and a classic case of impressive marketing to the non-intelligensia- very poor whole-life costs, hugely expensive batteries which are major pollutants in their production.
Dont you just love this subject.
Self-reliance is a great subject, one that falls very closeto our hearts, you have the thinkers and doers and those that dont think beyond their mortgage ending and the next round of golf.
I often think of my neighbours, out there mowing the frontlawn of their £¼ million houses and driving off to the office in the new BMW, despite their OTT salaries moaning about the price of everything. How would they survive if the ****! Well, most of them wouldnt have a clue what to do. Mydirect neighbour would be on the phone to his builder, cos hes the only one that will speak to the dick! The others up and down the road will be clucking around probably wondering who will be the first to pluck-up courage to knock on the door of the strange bloke who is off playing in the woods, who grows whatever he can, who has the chickens and heats his house with that smelly smoky fire! Some of you on here may know that I heat the house with a wood burner, and that my annual heating bill is about £30. That took the smug look off the neighbours faces when we compare gas bills!!!!! Oh and not forgetting the smelly old Landy, yup and Im the one they come to inthe snow cos they have got their bloody cars stuck!
Folk will mock those who think ahead and prepare, be it extra food, a vehicle that suits their needs and will cope with all eventualities etc.
There is nothing wrong in prepping; I must say that with our interests and lifestyles coupled with the wealth of knowledge we all share here on BCUK we are ¾ of the way there. I could easily live without Gas or Electric. We can cook on the wood burner, or the same for our tent, we like most of the members on here use our vast collection of cookers we have amassed over the years. But, what have our neighbours got? In most cases bugger all, you may have one or two with some camping kit or a caravan but thats it. It doesnt sound good enough to tell everyone in the office that we went roughing it inthe woods for the past two weeks, much better to say we went to the Maldives,not that theres anything wrong with that but when it comes down to the survival of the fittest and the knowledgeable I feel safe that amongst ourcommunity we BCUK members will be safely at the forefront. All we need to do is to provide sufficient security for ourselves and protect what will keep us healthy and alive until sanity comes around again.
Self-reliance is a great subject, one that falls very closeto our hearts, you have the thinkers and doers and those that dont think beyond their mortgage ending and the next round of golf.
I often think of my neighbours, out there mowing the frontlawn of their £¼ million houses and driving off to the office in the new BMW, despite their OTT salaries moaning about the price of everything. How would they survive if the ****! Well, most of them wouldnt have a clue what to do. Mydirect neighbour would be on the phone to his builder, cos hes the only one that will speak to the dick! The others up and down the road will be clucking around probably wondering who will be the first to pluck-up courage to knock on the door of the strange bloke who is off playing in the woods, who grows whatever he can, who has the chickens and heats his house with that smelly smoky fire! Some of you on here may know that I heat the house with a wood burner, and that my annual heating bill is about £30. That took the smug look off the neighbours faces when we compare gas bills!!!!! Oh and not forgetting the smelly old Landy, yup and Im the one they come to inthe snow cos they have got their bloody cars stuck!
Folk will mock those who think ahead and prepare, be it extra food, a vehicle that suits their needs and will cope with all eventualities etc.
There is nothing wrong in prepping; I must say that with our interests and lifestyles coupled with the wealth of knowledge we all share here on BCUK we are ¾ of the way there. I could easily live without Gas or Electric. We can cook on the wood burner, or the same for our tent, we like most of the members on here use our vast collection of cookers we have amassed over the years. But, what have our neighbours got? In most cases bugger all, you may have one or two with some camping kit or a caravan but thats it. It doesnt sound good enough to tell everyone in the office that we went roughing it inthe woods for the past two weeks, much better to say we went to the Maldives,not that theres anything wrong with that but when it comes down to the survival of the fittest and the knowledgeable I feel safe that amongst ourcommunity we BCUK members will be safely at the forefront. All we need to do is to provide sufficient security for ourselves and protect what will keep us healthy and alive until sanity comes around again.
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We need oil, for everything, just because it costs more to get out than we get back won't stop folks drilling and processing.
Tar sands being a good example.
An electric vehicle has to be made, it has to be serviced and maintained. Seatbelts, wheels, driveshafts, windscreen wiper motors, lights etc etc. All of those things have planned, designed, approved, run by focus groups, dug out of the ground, processed, transported, cut from the back of a cow, moulded, machined, assembled, transported, assembled, packaged, couriered, assembled, tested, painted, transported. delivered, displayed, test driven. bought and driven home.
Now if you can do all that without oil you are on a winner, but you cannot, not without an awful lot of preparation.
A much easier means of getting around already exists...
...when it stops working you can eat it.
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Ahh Ronnie don't forget that we were told, in 1954, by the US chairman of the atomic energy commission that we would all be enjoying power that was "too cheap to meter".
We all know how accurate that proved to be
Ah yes!
And the other thing about nuclear power is that it's not cheap at all if you factor in waste storage/disposal, decommissioning and the direct and indirect costs of titanic screw ups like Long Island, Chernobyl and Fukushima which seem to happen every 25 years or so.
Except Fukushima was more of a "natural" incident, all the others have been due to human error, which can be a problem overcome, Nature cannot be so controlled, only by putting manmade barriers and safety measures in place.
At the end of the day the nuclear fuel is only used to generate heat to make steam in a lot cleaner and/or safer way that coal or gas does for this country.
At the end of the day the nuclear fuel is only used to generate heat to make steam in a lot cleaner and/or safer way that coal or gas does for this country.
Ronnie your graphs are pretty but don't reflect the discoveries of oil fields found in this last year or so, you believe what you want but I'm not panicking about running out of crude oil, won't happen in our lifetimes.
Nuclear power is safe and reliable and its the only common sense approach to producing the power we need.
I leave worry to the tree huggers/save the whale/protect the bat types, I'm just enjoying life.
Nuclear power is safe and reliable and its the only common sense approach to producing the power we need.
I leave worry to the tree huggers/save the whale/protect the bat types, I'm just enjoying life.
I've just watched it !!! WHAT an advertising statement !!! "click on the link below" and let us save you ... for a fee of course !!!
"people like you" - "responsible, hardworking people who've saved all their lives" etc, etc ... so glad I'm not one of them !!!
It's all the welfare-state's fault - we shouldn't care about others, etc !!! "I'm all right, Jack" !!! compassion does not compute with wealth ... etc, etc.
The whole concept of "pay back the debt" is wrong - look at Iceland, which I notice was NOT mentioned.
I'm not saying the collapse they speak of won't happen, I've been watching this grow for the past 40 years and I'm not some poncey "financial expert" just an ordinary educated person who was taught to think at school over 50 years ago. I'm certain "thinking and reasoning and problem solving" are no longer on the curriculum, they may be "extras" as they are at Hubby's expensive private school. When he was a pupil there they were part of the normal fare but that was back in the 1950s.
Furthermore, I was a grown-up, working person during the 1970s - I doubt the person who wrote the comentary was even born then, certainly not out of nappies. I've no idea what history book he learned his speach out of but it weren't like what he pretends at all !!! But there you go, watch any rubbish history programme on TV nowadays and you find your life re-written if you're over 50, or is it 40 now?
The whole concept of shares, investments, interest, stockholding, property-as-investment instead of a place to live, etc will change. Ownership is the death-sentence, the whole concept of ownership, along with the idea that "wealth" is something to be desired, and along with the whole concept of money as a "commoditiy" instead of a "means of exchange". Add in the "fear-concept" ... I must have more just-in-case ... and you build the gods-forsaken attitudes by which most of the 7+ billion people currently infesting this planet live by. And there's a real root to the problem ... the fact that the human population has risen from 1 billion to over 7 billion in about 120 years ... and that it has more than doubled (yes more than doubled) from 3 billion to over 7 billion, in the last 60 years. If that happened to the cells in your body your doctor would diagnose cancer ...
So, yes, we (the whole world) not just Britain are at crisis point but this weasel-worded con-advert is not telling the truth, only little bits of it carefully spliced in to confuse you into agreeing with them and buying their product - like any ad-man or politician - just enough to scare you into doing what they tell you. Independant ... my backside! All they want is to increase their rating and readership - ie get your money and increase their own wealth and power!
On interesting thing to note from the graphs they put up ... the debt begins to grow in a serious exponential manner from 1980 ... now, can I remember who came into power in Britain then ???
Advice ... discover in yourself what makes you happy - other than money, wealth, ownership, et al ... and focus your life on that. I do realise I'm likely doing this
Wonderfully put! Two thumbs up!
Cheers
Alex
Ronnie, your comment on Energy Returned Over Energy Invested is spot on. This concept is lost on a vast number of people, not necessarily the folks in this forum. This basic concept can be applied to every living thing including us. You expend more energy than you take in(in the form of food), you starve to death.
I live in Alberta, Canada, in a city not far from the famous(infamous?) Canadian tar sands. I have read, depending on whose sourcing you use, that the energy input ratio to energy returned from extraction and processing of said tar sands is in the order of 1.1-1.2 to 1. Here we have the classic expending more energy to create energy conundrum. That being said this will STILL go on until the tar sands are fully utilized. The world is in that desperate a state for energy. We're perilously close to the tipping point from what I've read. As per the OP's concerns, Britain is no different than the US, Canada, Europe, large parts of the world.
As a few posters have mentioned the party had to end sometime, enjoy the decline.
Cheers
Always optimistic(but usually wrong)Alex
I live in Alberta, Canada, in a city not far from the famous(infamous?) Canadian tar sands. I have read, depending on whose sourcing you use, that the energy input ratio to energy returned from extraction and processing of said tar sands is in the order of 1.1-1.2 to 1. Here we have the classic expending more energy to create energy conundrum. That being said this will STILL go on until the tar sands are fully utilized. The world is in that desperate a state for energy. We're perilously close to the tipping point from what I've read. As per the OP's concerns, Britain is no different than the US, Canada, Europe, large parts of the world.
As a few posters have mentioned the party had to end sometime, enjoy the decline.
Cheers
Always optimistic(but usually wrong)Alex
Most graphs of oil consumption seen nowadays don't take into consideration the third world countries who are entering their own industrial age or about to. Once these guys start using oil as we have done, then that's where the big problems begin.
touched by nature
touched by nature
It's not that safe & there's the little problem of storing the radioactive waste for the next 250,000 years.............not cheap either, electricity bills will be rising here in France by 5% on the 1st august & again another 5% next august .....why? ..............to cover the costs of maintaining the older reactors in operation.
Had a little 'incident' in a central 30 Km from me a few weeks sgo, serious enough to be mentioned on the National news.....living under the threat of a nuclear accident is hardly comforting.....but I suppose if one is nearer the grave than the craddle it's less worrying.
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