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  1. #41
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    Quote Originally Posted by Jaybar View Post
    (nuclear, while extremely clean and great for air quality, withdraws and consumes an extravagant amount of fresh water). Desalination is a possibility but consumes massive amounts of power...which requires fresh water without a solar/wind farm to generate the power.
    Should note that nuclear doesn't actually require outside sources of fresh water. Aside from pretty much all naval vessels several coastal plants not only make their own fresh water (which not all that much is really needed) but also can make extra water. Like Naval vessels most the fresh water is made from seawater that is either distilled with power generated by the plant or in older plants directly with some of the heated steam. In coastal land plants where fresh water is pretty hard to come by plants often generate fresh water for the surrounding area from what I've read mostly using excess power and some waste heat (depending on the method of desalination) when not during peek hours as nuclear power plants tend to run at full power regardless of load and as such are already looking for things to do with the excess.

    Now currently civilian wise not a lot into desalinating for the population because who wants to pay just to make water but from what I remember reading some middle eastern areas and I think Australia has done it and there has long been a proposal for a plant down in California because water in those areas is already extremely precious and if it starts being that way for other areas I think you'll see an uptick in nuclear for combine power/desalination

  2. #42
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    Trump's been President Elect for less than two weeks and we're already talking about culling the populations of China, India, and Africa?

  3. #43
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    We could also dramatically decrease carbon emissions by localizing transportation. I was on the subject of food earlier, and currently we spend a lot of carbon emissions on the transportation of food. Localizing our population into denser districts is a great first step which has been trending upward recently in the States. This doesn't mean you live in a box. Post-war suburban housing is awfully inefficient land use, especially in the way it is planned (residential districts separated by commercial districts requiring vehicular transportation to reach common needs such as food, school, work, etc). If we lived in denser mixed-use districts with a multi-modal infrastructure, our transportation costs would decrease. Common planning techniques try to limit essential amenities within 5-minute walking distances from front doors. Thus instead of relying on a vehicle, residents could walk or take several different means of transportation to their intended destination (bike, bus, light rail, commuter rail, shared cab, trolley, tram, etc).

    This hearkens back to urban planning models such as the Radiant City which was modified in recent decades to Transit-Orient Development (TOD), which is predominately used in the California region and throughout most cities in the States. Proliferation of the electric car is not a panacea and will just continue the same song and dance of suburban sprawling/vehicle-centered design.

  4. #44
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    Quote Originally Posted by Jaybar View Post
    Food production has always been a problem as population increases. We consistently hit a period where population outgrows production, and it's a change in technology that lets us overcome production inefficiencies. Hydroponics have a high yield per acre compared to other conventional methods specifically related to urban farming. The issue with some of these technologies such as hydroponics is fresh water supply. Unfortunately fresh water isn't the easiest thing to come by. Not only is it used for irrigation, it is withdrawn and consumed extensively for thermo-power plants (by increasing rank: Gas, Coal, Nuclear). We may have to decide on where we pour our production in the future: water for food or water for energy.

    Thus the American Lawn will have to go extinct in order to preserve enough water to feed crops. Coal plants will need to be converted/dismantled for natural gas (nuclear, while extremely clean and great for air quality, withdraws and consumes an extravagant amount of fresh water). Desalination is a possibility but consumes massive amounts of power...which requires fresh water without a solar/wind farm to generate the power.
    It is worth pointing out with regards to the argument of how many people the world can support. Food production isn't the issue it is food distribution. The world produces more than enough food to feed everyone already it is just very difficult to get that food to where it needs to be requiring transportation making more emissions as well as food spoilage.

  5. #45
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    Quote Originally Posted by Niiro View Post
    The people in India and Africa are not the ones contributing massively to global warming, we are.
    India's a weird one. Read an article awhile back about general electricity consumption per capita for a lot and reasons why. And while India was way down on the list a lot of it had to do with most people used nearly nothing while those that actually consumed did so in amounts similar to most industrial countries. So while they are currently way down on the list if more of the citizens move the wealth ladder and more energy becomes available that might change. Though no one will beat the U.S. lol

  6. #46
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    Quote Originally Posted by dasva View Post
    Should note that nuclear doesn't actually require outside sources of fresh water. Aside from pretty much all naval vessels several coastal plants not only make their own fresh water (which not all that much is really needed) but also can make extra water. Like Naval vessels most the fresh water is made from seawater that is either distilled with power generated by the plant or in older plants directly with some of the heated steam. In coastal land plants where fresh water is pretty hard to come by plants often generate fresh water for the surrounding area from what I've read mostly using excess power and some waste heat (depending on the method of desalination) when not during peek hours as nuclear power plants tend to run at full power regardless of load and as such are already looking for things to do with the excess.

    Now currently civilian wise not a lot into desalinating for the population because who wants to pay just to make water but from what I remember reading some middle eastern areas and I think Australia has done it and there has long been a proposal for a plant down in California because water in those areas is already extremely precious and if it starts being that way for other areas I think you'll see an uptick in nuclear for combine power/desalination
    I think the issue I was interested in was water supply away from the sea. Nuclear plants withdraw about 950gal/MWh and consume 720gal/MWh (vs. Gas @ 230 / 180 respectively). This study was from 2010 so not sure what new sources of fresh water creation is out there if you care to inform me. We aren't concerned with water withdrawal because it simply gets put back into a system and re-used, but consumption does not put water back into a system. I'd be interested to know what water supplies/creation can support nuclear @720gal/MWh. The same article mentions saltwater desalination to cost 13,100kWh/Mgal which I believe would solve fresh water supply for coastal cities like California (only 13.1 MWh required to produce 1 million gallons which is a 106:1 ratio of desalination to energy consumption if I maths right) but that's not feasible for inland regions away from the sea.

    Note, I am not trying to advocate for any specific energy production plant, but rather representing facts related to energy and water.

  7. #47
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    Better start improving water desalination technology.

  8. #48
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    Quote Originally Posted by Jaybar View Post
    I think the issue I was interested in was water supply away from the sea. Nuclear plants withdraw about 950gal/MWh and consume 720gal/MWh (vs. Gas @ 230 / 180 respectively). This study was from 2010 so not sure what new sources of fresh water creation is out there if you care to inform me. We aren't concerned with water withdrawal because it simply gets put back into a system and re-used, but consumption does not put water back into a system. I'd be interested to know what water supplies/creation can support nuclear @720gal/MWh. The same article mentions saltwater desalination to cost 13,100kWh/Mgal which I believe would solve fresh water supply for coastal cities like California (only 13.1 MWh required to produce 1 million gallons which is a 106:1 ratio of desalination to energy consumption if I maths right) but that's not feasible for inland regions away from the sea.

    Note, I am not trying to advocate for any specific energy production plant, but rather representing facts related to energy and water.
    I'd really have to look it up as my civilian plan knowledge is a little less and daily water usage wasn't exactly as interesting to me lol and maybe check out the article if you have a link but those numbers do seem a really oddly high like they might have some interesting ideas on what consumption is.

    That said every plant is different and it's highly possible the ones in question were designed not caring about water consumption. But it can definitely be much much more efficient. Like on my boat we had a 165 mw core which could though rarely did run full power (well technically we couldn't actually load ours to 100%) all day for months on end. We produced all our own water and had a steam heated distillation system which was for the whole boat and then an electric POS evaporator which I believe was designed to be able to keep up with plant losses. The evaporator on a good day if it actually worked would be around 1.6k... so that suggests the plant used significantly less than a gallon per MWh...even if you factor in the distiller that would be at most 10k gallons produced a day and that's for the whole boat using around 3 gallons per mwh. Which is why that 720 seems really odd even if you consider some seawater consumed which shouldn't be a lot but don't think that was really kept track of. But again different plants different designs for different concerns and no one is more concerned about fresh water than a boat that will be at sea for months lol

    That said coastal is definitely the way to go. Aside from the production aspect just not having to borrow even if temporarily fresh is a huge boon especially with people always raising a ruckus about you heating up the river a few degrees. And generally the public good will gained from producing will outweight the outcry of people protesting we heated up some shrimp or something off the coast. Though they have to compete with some gas fired ones I've read about that are well just decently cheaper thanks to the boom. Interesting note about California is the coastal areas largely get their water from the non coastal/northern areas and some out of state currently thru a large aqueduct and reservoir system. So just giving the coastal regions (which is where most the people live anyways) their own supply would help ease burden elsewhere... for now

  9. #49

    Quote Originally Posted by Buffy View Post
    You're going to need to show me something credible that the planet could even support a single (1) trillion people. Most credible sources I've read on the topic is somewhere between 40 billion - 100 billion max population and then everyone is barely eating because we can barely grow enough food to support that many people.
    My number is an idealistic scenario where we have future technologies like fusion and are capturing a sizeable portion of the suns energy which allows us to do things that are otherwise very inefficient like vertical hydroponic farming with artificial sunlight, mass desalinization, and producing materials via electrolysis and other things that support turning our planet into a ecumenopolis.

    It's not realistic in the near term, and 40-100billion sounds more reasonable for how our society currently operates, but when you're discussing it from a morale standpoint you have to take into account the absolute maximum capacity, because if we're not near that capacity, then the question proposed by Thetruepandagod always defaults to "There is no morale imperative because there's still something more we can do".

  10. #50
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    Quote Originally Posted by dasva View Post
    I'd really have to look it up as my civilian plan knowledge is a little less and daily water usage wasn't exactly as interesting to me lol and maybe check out the article if you have a link but those numbers do seem a really oddly high like they might have some interesting ideas on what consumption is.

    That said every plant is different and it's highly possible the ones in question were designed not caring about water consumption. But it can definitely be much much more efficient. Like on my boat we had a 165 mw core which could though rarely did run full power (well technically we couldn't actually load ours to 100%) all day for months on end. We produced all our own water and had a steam heated distillation system which was for the whole boat and then an electric POS evaporator which I believe was designed to be able to keep up with plant losses. The evaporator on a good day if it actually worked would be around 1.6k... so that suggests the plant used significantly less than a gallon per MWh...even if you factor in the distiller that would be at most 10k gallons produced a day and that's for the whole boat using around 3 gallons per mwh. Which is why that 720 seems really odd even if you consider some seawater consumed which shouldn't be a lot but don't think that was really kept track of. But again different plants different designs for different concerns and no one is more concerned about fresh water than a boat that will be at sea for months lol

    That said coastal is definitely the way to go. Aside from the production aspect just not having to borrow even if temporarily fresh is a huge boon especially with people always raising a ruckus about you heating up the river a few degrees. And generally the public good will gained from producing will outweight the outcry of people protesting we heated up some shrimp or something off the coast. Though they have to compete with some gas fired ones I've read about that are well just decently cheaper thanks to the boom. Interesting note about California is the coastal areas largely get their water from the non coastal/northern areas and some out of state currently thru a large aqueduct and reservoir system. So just giving the coastal regions (which is where most the people live anyways) their own supply would help ease burden elsewhere... for now
    This article is mostly about terrestrial power plants and not naval, so I there is probably a technological divide within the system.

    Energy Water Nexus in Texas (pages 5-12,22)

  11. #51
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    Quote Originally Posted by dasva View Post
    I'd really have to look it up as my civilian plan knowledge is a little less and daily water usage wasn't exactly as interesting to me lol and maybe check out the article if you have a link but those numbers do seem a really oddly high like they might have some interesting ideas on what consumption is.

    That said every plant is different and it's highly possible the ones in question were designed not caring about water consumption. But it can definitely be much much more efficient. Like on my boat we had a 165 mw core which could though rarely did run full power (well technically we couldn't actually load ours to 100%) all day for months on end. We produced all our own water and had a steam heated distillation system which was for the whole boat and then an electric POS evaporator which I believe was designed to be able to keep up with plant losses. The evaporator on a good day if it actually worked would be around 1.6k... so that suggests the plant used significantly less than a gallon per MWh...even if you factor in the distiller that would be at most 10k gallons produced a day and that's for the whole boat using around 3 gallons per mwh. Which is why that 720 seems really odd even if you consider some seawater consumed which shouldn't be a lot but don't think that was really kept track of. But again different plants different designs for different concerns and no one is more concerned about fresh water than a boat that will be at sea for months lol

    That said coastal is definitely the way to go. Aside from the production aspect just not having to borrow even if temporarily fresh is a huge boon especially with people always raising a ruckus about you heating up the river a few degrees. And generally the public good will gained from producing will outweight the outcry of people protesting we heated up some shrimp or something off the coast. Though they have to compete with some gas fired ones I've read about that are well just decently cheaper thanks to the boom. Interesting note about California is the coastal areas largely get their water from the non coastal/northern areas and some out of state currently thru a large aqueduct and reservoir system. So just giving the coastal regions (which is where most the people live anyways) their own supply would help ease burden elsewhere... for now
    The apathy you have for the environment, as well as your ignorance to what the difference "a few degrees" can do, is alarming; especially when you are such a staunch supporter of nuclear power. I'm glad you're excited about nuclear, and I'm glad you have no say in nuclear policy because your attitude would be disastrous.

  12. #52
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    Quote Originally Posted by Jaybar View Post
    This article is mostly about terrestrial power plants and not naval, so I there is probably a technological divide within the system.

    Energy Water Nexus in Texas (pages 5-12,22)
    Thanks try to read thru it when I get the chance. Probably right though with a lot of being difference between terrestrial and naval

    Quote Originally Posted by Salodin View Post
    The apathy you have for the environment, as well as your ignorance to what the difference "a few degrees" can do, is alarming; especially when you are such a staunch supporter of nuclear power. I'm glad you're excited about nuclear, and I'm glad you have no say in nuclear policy because your attitude would be disastrous.
    Sorry if I gave that impression. And I'm not that ignorant of it but these plans like pretty much all energy production are designed in ways to minimize said effects (or at least local effects we often tend to ignore the costs incurred by other nations in order for us to build stuff. See China's tailing ponds and the ridiculous effect that has on the environment) and have studies done on them to analyze the effects to be small but certainly measurable and so I feel a certain level of derision towards people who will protest shutting plants down often based on what the effects they feel could maybe happen (ironically often not even mentioning the effects that are proven)... while completely ignoring how the fishing industry is depopulating our oceans. My apathy is more towards the people who push for environmental protections when it's convenient for them while completely refusing to do any cost to benefit analysis... or worse refusing to see that said protections might actually be having an opposite then intended effect.

  13. #53
    I'll change yer fuckin rate you derivative piece of shit
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    Some optimism regarding Trump and climate change: http://mobile.nytimes.com/2016/11/29...ww.google.com/

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    Man, that coal is lookin' super clean there.

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    https://arstechnica.com/science/2017...a-great-again/
    * National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (a suborganization within the EPA) is being attacked by idiots.
    * Said idiots want to make it so the EPA can only consider open access data (no private medical data) and replicatible data (no epidemiological studies) when determining what levels of pollutants are harmful.
    * They also want to pack the EPA's Scientific Advisory Board with non-scientists to provide "balance."
    I knew Tanaka would come back to troll me again at some point. I just didn't think it would be in US environmental policy.


    Why do we elect such stupid people?

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    Also, this:
    https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeaut...al_for_jan_31/

    The distance from the center represents the amount of sea ice and the angle represents the time of year. You can see that it was shrinking slowly (the circle spirals inwards), but the recent departure takes it to a whole new level.

    I'm pretty sure I posted this in another thread, but relevant: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/...=.e396c1d3f738

  17. #57

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    Gulf jet stream is gone, Spain's harvests are fucked, but we'll get wild snow storms occasionally and idiots will think it's okay.

    Maybe the people living in coastline parishes will be able generate some urgency as Louisiana turns into the Mississippi delta. Yeah, no.

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    To be clear, they're only predicting a 2~3 foot sea level rise over the next 80 years. For most of the continental US, it's going to have very little effect and the 3.7 million Americans who live 0-10 feet above sea high tide will mostly just be inconvenienced more often (until a hurricane hits). I probably won't be investing in waterfront property, but that's more out of fear of changing weather patterns (more hurricanes) because I'm probably not going to be around to see the 2 foot sea level increase hit 80 years hence.

    We're going to be in for some pretty crazy weather in the next 50 years. Droughts are probably going to be the first thing we notice, although big storms are more likely to make the news.

  19. #59
    I'll change yer fuckin rate you derivative piece of shit
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    Drought? What drought? We've gotten so much rain in the past month here in southern California that it buckled my deck boards

    (fuck)

  20. #60
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    Quote Originally Posted by archibaldcrane View Post
    Drought? What drought? We've gotten so much rain in the past month here in southern California that it buckled my deck boards

    (fuck)
    We saw just over 50 inches of rain in the month of January here in mid California. So nice to not be in a drought but the roads are a mess.

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