Good job I don't like fish....
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It's called supply and demand. If more people would restrict the amount of fish they consume then there would be less incentive for the large trawlers to overfish the remaining supply. Wouldn't you agree? Getting people to do that is impossible. Theres too much of a demand.
I don't eat fish that often, which is wierd because I really like fish!! I will have proper fish and chips each year when I get back to Blighty, but apart from that it's smoked trout. Have you ever tried smoking a trout? I can never get the damned things to light first time!! 
Tengu said:
It may not be magic, but I have a very hard time believing that this civilization will understand the phenomena in time to use it, before things go down the drain.
Depends if people start studying or no.
Project Hessladens been around a main few years, but as far as I know its still the only one of its kind.
People prefer superstition, it seems.
Me, I want to know things. I have seen several earthlights, as no doubt some of you have.
Project Hessladens been around a main few years, but as far as I know its still the only one of its kind.
People prefer superstition, it seems.
Me, I want to know things. I have seen several earthlights, as no doubt some of you have.
One of my other hobbies was diving and a few years ago i was diving of the coast of northern france some of the best underwater scenery diving drop offs from 5-40 mts pinnicle rising up kelp in the shallowes etc yet i saw very few fish
but 1 dive out of brighton in 10mtrs of water i saw more fish than all 10 in france . It was sad to see the damage caused however by trawling, beds of mussles smashed barren patches on the sea bed . our only hope is to create artificial reefs ect and ban any sort of commercial fishing from the area .
but 1 dive out of brighton in 10mtrs of water i saw more fish than all 10 in france . It was sad to see the damage caused however by trawling, beds of mussles smashed barren patches on the sea bed . our only hope is to create artificial reefs ect and ban any sort of commercial fishing from the area .
torjusg said:
Gassification of coal isn't a terribly difficult process as long as you have the industrial base to generate the catalysts; the South Africans did it for years and Nazi Germany was forced to it during the war. It is possible to generate most anything from coal that you can get from oil, but the energy costs are higher as you have to first convert that coal and then process it into jet fuel or plastic or whatever.
The problem isn't really whether it can be done (because it can), it's whether the energy return on energy invested (EROEI) is greater than one. That is, if it costs 100 energy units to generate 50 energy units of jet fuel, you're losing energy and only the most wealthy will benefit. As it stands, it requires little energy to extract and process a barrel of oil, far less than the energy contained in that oil. As supplies dwindle, it requires more energy to extract those supplies and eventually it becomes so difficult to extract that it isn't worth it from a thermodynamic point of view.
So, yeah. The other problem is that coal is far more polluting than oil and natural gas. There are great gobs of nitrogen and sulfur locked up in there, requiring a good amount of processing to clean it up and that costs even more energy, making it an even more expensive alternative.
Voivode said:
We usually don't seem to care about that factor do we...
The EOREI doesn't really matter as long as the output is of higher quality (usable for fuel etc...) and the input energy is abundant. If there is a shortage of the energy type needed for the process (input) it will however not be profitable. From what I hear, that is one (of many) reasons why the tar sands operations in Alberta is a very bad idea. Since the process consumes lots of natural gas which is becoming increasingly short in supply in North America.
Coal is though very much abundant in many places, but please let society collapse before we go down that road. That will in the long run surely be our doom.
torjusg said:We usually don't seem to care about that factor do we...
The EOREI doesn't really matter as long as the output is of higher quality (usable for fuel etc...) and the input energy is abundant. If there is a shortage of the energy type needed for the process (input) it will however not be profitable. From what I hear, that is one (of many) reasons why the tar sands operations in Alberta is a very bad idea. Since the process consumes lots of natural gas which is becoming increasingly short in supply in North America.
Coal is though very much abundant in many places, but please let society collapse before we go down that road. That will in the long run surely be our doom.
I'm right there with you on all counts. Since there is no other abundant energy supply to act as an input, at least not on the scale we're talking, gassification of coal or any of the other cures for oil aren't going to cut it at the dimensions that oil dominates the world. The oilsands are a bad idea for many reasons, not least of which is the massive amounts of natural gas (a very high quality energy source used to improve a poor quality one to good-enough quality) and the fantastic amounts of water consumed and polluted by the process. Along with the environmental damage, of course.
I'm not much for the collapse of society, but something has to change and I suspect that's the likely answer.
given that the human population will need to be reduced to a level at which a natural balance will be restored would there be sufficient people to maintain a modern life style or would we need to go back in time to a pre industrial age /
Still trying to get my head around all this global warming as there are millions of people without the basics who will become energy consumers whilst we in the west will need almost draconian reductions in our consumtion just to balance it out ?
Still trying to get my head around all this global warming as there are millions of people without the basics who will become energy consumers whilst we in the west will need almost draconian reductions in our consumtion just to balance it out ?
