Shannon Larratt is Zentastic

Operating under the assumption that “peak oil” is real and we will either run out or have drastically less over the next fifty years, I've read articles that say it's impossible for us to generate our power needs using alternative power sources, and I've read others that suggest we've got “nothing to worry about”. So, I thought I'd try and estimate just how large our alternative power platforms would need to be to meet our needs.

Last year the US consumed 337 million BTU per person. Let's expand that to a world scale (6.5 billion people), bringing us to a total desired world consumption of about two quintillion (2,190,500,000,000,000,000) BTU. Let's say we could reduce energy use to 1/5 what it is now (personally I think that's possible and reasonable while still maintaining “first world” standards). That brings us down to 438.1 quadrillion BTU, the equivalent of 128.4 trillion kWh.

Here's some ways to generate that power:

• Biofuels currently yield about 375 gallons of fuel per acre. Each gallon of fuel is about 132,000 BTU, but if you factor in the cost of production (using current European plants as a model), you're only able to retrieve about half of that. So if one acre of biofuel crop generates 24,750,000 BTU, to generate world needs using biofuel, we would need 1.7 billion acres (about half of all the current arable land on the entire planet).

• Nuclear reactors generate about seven million MWh (23,918,304,000,000 BTU) per year. This does not include the cost of production, maintenance, and so on. I don't know what these costs amount to. If they're low (say 10%), we'd need to build about 20,000 nuclear reactors to meet energy needs. If they're high that number could double…
• Solar power plants optimistically generate about 350,000 kWh per acre per year (assuming they're in a prime location and have consistent sun). Not including the cost of construction and maintenance, that means we'd need about 365 million acres of solar plants to power the world.
• Giant wind turbines (like the forty story high ones) generate about 6,570,000 kWh per year (5 MW maximum generator at their observed 15% efficiency), and that doesn't count the cost of construction and maintenance. In any case, we would need to build about 20 million of the biggest towers in the world to meet world needs, and they'd need to be replaced on a regular basis.

Anyway, I apologize if I made any mathematical errors; feel free to double check them. As I'm reading these numbers, meeting energy needs in a way that's equitable (which it must be if we're to be a peaceful planet). My personal feeling is that we need to cut our energy consumption by a lot more than 80%, and that we also need to cut our population radically in order to maintain even a semblance our current life.

Seriously though, feel free to offer alternate numbers or point out errors and other options in the comment forum (like the math for tidal power plants and so on). I could have easily put a comma in the wrong place in any of these.

So I'm not surprised that yet another Republican sex scandal is in the news. Nor am I surprised that the White House says he's just “naughty” and that Clinton had done worse. Nor am I surprised that the Republicans have blocked investigation, or that pages were warning each other about Foley since 1995 and that the Republican staff has known about him for at least five years — after all, that's what a giant bribe buys you. I'm not surprised that Newt Gingrich is saying that the Republicans didn't take action because they thought it would look like it was “gay bashing, or that Rush Limbaugh says this is all a fraudulent “Democrat setup” and that Democrats in general support pedophiles, nor am I surprised that the Religious Right has said this should be blamed on “tolerance and diversity“.

I'm not even particularly surprised that Foley is a Scientologist or that the Repubicans are exploiting children to avoid “adult” questions. I'm not surprised that FOX News and other agencies knew about the story a year ago and chose to cover it up… But I have to admit that I was a little surprised that FOX would have the balls to spend a while actually calling Foley a Democrat.

I guess it distracts from tensions with a real nuclear nation (and I don't mean the most likely fake one), or that European airlines are potentially being banned from entering the US, or that the US recently slipped through a bill that includes text making it punishable by torture and permanent imprisonment without trial if you write negatively about the US government… Or even of the fact that the majority of Americans now believe that Bush is one of the most prolific mass murderers of his countrymen in US history (and he vows not to stop killing Americans).

Or does that only apply to reptiles?

So I've been doing a not-entirely-on-purpose experiment with my “garden” (a bunch of planters on the porch)… Because I'm pretty terrible at reliably watering or otherwise caring for the plants, I've been learning which plants are bullet proof and which aren't… Celery and strawberries for example appear to be unkillable, heh.

I feel like when I comment on this, I'm either preaching to the choir, or talking to people who won't see it until it's far too late, but I think we could be within twenty years — maybe less, maybe more… but not much more — of a complete environmental collapse. I would be very, very shocked if within the next hundred years we don't see the world's population drop (without our “consent”) to ten percent of what it is now through a combination of megaplague and environmental changes that make much of the planet both unlivable and incapable of continuing to produce resources for humans.

Other than that, I've been asked to be on a gameshow where different groups of people are pitted against each other in various IQ-related tests. I want to do it, but at the same time, I'm terrified of looking stupid on TV. I don't mind looking weird on TV (been there, done that), but I definitely don't want to look dumb.