Oil half gone?

Murdoch said:
The only real problem is getting the waste from the reactors to the underground storage depots.
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We already have plenty of radioactive contamination in the desert. As far as I know, synroc and glassification techniques are still not yet adequate protection against the effects of radioactive materials. We can build more robots and vehicles to handle the waste, but it will still be a problem there, just as burying CO2 in aquifers should be avoided if possible. However, we may have no other choice but to increase the use of nuclear power in such a way.

PROFESSOR DAVID GOODSTEIN: It would only be a temporary fix.

You can use the rest of the uranium to breed plutonium 239 then we'd have at least 100 times as much fuel to use.

But that means you're making plutonium, which is an extremely dangerous thing to do in the dangerous world that we live in.
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And it is also, ultimately a finite resource. In the long term, we will have to more efficiently harness the sun's energy, or copy a similar process with fusion, as well as modifying our lifestyles drastically.
 
I'm going to do my part by not having more than 2 children. If you want to talk about the dark future, talk to India or China, whose energy consumption is about to explode due to an improving economy.
 
One funny thing about that.

At this moment in Beijing, I have to pre-pay every single resources I get.

My electric is paid by buying credits on a pre-paid ic card where I plug into my meter.

Natural gas, the same.

Every drop of drinking water is pre-paid by buying 19 liter bottles.

Water, the same. I am only allowed certain amount of water before I am cut off.

Given the fact that I didn't have my power cut off before prior notice in Vancouver, this was rather amusing. :shock: :D
 
Oh man, I guess you're right. With a country nearly twice the size of China and a dangerous 1/46th the population China has, I just don't know how we can be so wasteful. [/sarcasm]

Funny thing is, without emigration, Canada would have a negative population growth rate.
 
So would the US, and its immigration, not emigration. All the white people (like myself and I imagine most of this board) aren't having 2.1 kids per couple. Consequently all the wealth that has already been concentrated in WASPs is now being concentrated in ever fewer people.

I would venture that wealth concentration was one of the causes of the French and many other Revolutions. Kinda scary.
 
Murdoch said:
So would the US, and its immigration, not emigration. All the white people (like myself and I imagine most of this board) aren't having 2.1 kids per couple. Consequently all the wealth that has already been concentrated in WASPs is now being concentrated in ever fewer people.

I would venture that wealth concentration was one of the causes of the French and many other Revolutions. Kinda scary.
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emigration from other countries, Immigration to Canada, this is what I meant, but I guess you're right in that I should have used Immigration. You're kina right on the growth for the USA too, I looked up the stats for pop growth in the USA and Canada and found that they both have a growth rate of 0.92%. While the USA doesn't have 2.1 children per woman, they have 2.07. Canada on the other hand has 1.61.

I agree on the concentration of wealth. I think that stat for Canada is that the top 50% own 90% of the wealth, but don't quote me on that. There's a few people in the USA who are millionaires and billionaires who own much of the wealth and it's not just economic. There are a few people in lobby groups who have far more political influence then they should as individual citizens.
 
:P

I kinda meant literally what I said, without any hint of sarcasm.

I just find the whole situation amusing, that is all.

Everything is pre-paid in China. I guess this is one way they are dealing with the resources shortage.

The experience has been quite interesting so far. A lot of amusing things happen here.

Maybe I should start a blog... :?
 
I just thought you were insinuating that Canadians were wasteful. (Especially with a certain country right below us for comparison.)

Canada has a lot of space and resources because it's the second biggest country in the world with only 30 million people. (Only 8 million in my half of the country.)

All I'm saying is that Canada is one of the last countries that you'd want to blame for energy consumption.
 
LOL

Urr..., no. Don't read too much into that. :P

Actually, given the availabilty of the resources, the Chinese here are pretty wasteful. Most things aren't recycled, and it's not really evenly divided.

They throw a lot of stuff out that can still be used otherwise, but I guess that's the Canadian in me talking. :D

Well, at least I have the choice to pay for my heat/natural gas. Last time I was here, I had to wait for the building to decide to turn on the heater while the temp. outside was 0 degrees C. :x

I still wish I have a camcorder for every stupid/amusing thing happen here. I can make a movie out of it. :shock: :lol:
 
calculon00 wrote:
I agree on the concentration of wealth. I think that stat for Canada is that the top 50% own 90% of the wealth, but don't quote me on that. There's a few people in the USA who are millionaires and billionaires who own much of the wealth and it's not just economic. There are a few people in lobby groups who have far more political influence then they should as individual citizens.
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If you want to talk about improper wealth distribution then take a good look at the US. The following is a web-site that boils it down nicely as well as providing links to all the source material if you really feel like crunching the numbers yourself from the census bureau.

http://www.endgame.org/primer-wealth.html

(I hope this works, I really do not know how to set-up links)

Here are a couple of juicy tidbits from the web-site:

In the late 1970s, the top one percent of the US population held 13 percent of the wealth; in 1995 it held 38 percent. (Levy, Frank. The New Dollars and Dreams ).


The top one percent of Americans receive more income than the bottom 40 percent. (Korten, David. When Corporations Rule the World, p. 108).

Also, a couple of years ago I read an article, from The Economist, I think, stating that the top ten percent of the US population supply about fifty percent of US tax revenue, while the bottom fifty percent of the US pop. provide about ten percent of US tax revenue. That is sick, not because I think it is unfair for the rich to pay more in taxes, quite the contrary. I think it is sick because of the disparity in wealth that must exist for that to be true. Even accounting for the fact that the rich pay a higher percent in taxes than the poor, that alone could not account for that kind of rift.

anyways this is not exactly what this thread is supposed to be about....
maybe a new topic is called for....

back to the fossil fuels....

I personally believe from everything I have read and heard that while it is pretty much accepted that we will at some point run out of fossil fuels, it would not necessarily mean the end of our civilization. I guess it could if somebody panicked and started to attack everyone who still had fossil fuel, but fortunately Bush will not be able to be president again after this coming term and I do not think anyone expects this catastrophe to hit in the next four years.
The best we can do I think is just to watch what we do on a personal level and raise our children so that they will be aware of the subject, and smart enough to solve it.
 
I'm just saying that Canada has enough resources in it's own country to support it's own population for many years to come, fossil fuels included.

When oil starts running out and the huge influence the big oil companies have on the economy and government in the USA begins to wain, there will probably be a big rush to find an alternative source of power by dramatically boosting the research already taking place. While I think that it'll be a little rough during this transition period, the world and it's economy won't end.

The only thing that is going to fix the problem is a new type of car. End of story. This link shows just how overly dependant the problem is on cars alone.

Cars are big sources of air pollution - responsible for between 40-90% of the various pollutants in our air. (p.9)
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While the report is based on pollution, one can assume a direct relationship between pollution production and fossil fuel consumption.
 
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