Dick Smith's Population Puzzle.

[random]

...and actually, we mostly "try" to use water we catch from the sky.

A 12 yearish-sort-of- drought dropped us back to probably 60% rainwater tank usage, 40% reliable on piped. Now we seem to be getting our average rain, we will be back into 100% using what we catch in tanks, off farmhouse roof, shedding around us, no roof is without a rainwater tank (or more) attached to it. We have also graded/land levelled the surrounding landscape to facilitate water run off into catchment dams, and this is all in the desert country.

Innovation and working with the conditions...the sand country is an allround provider, we never suffer the fate of the heavier country soil water logging, and in droughts (with no till farming methods) the sand is a sponge and holder of moisture to grow 20 bag crops...there "can be a perception" that some areas are unsuitable for food production, in many cases it's work with your environment/conditions and do things a little differently for productive outcomes.

Many folks don't realise that, that have set constructions of "what is" in their mind and it is not necessarily reflective of what is going down on the ground and being achieved.

The people on the land here are quite adapatable, innovative and resilient where needed....oh, and um, wealthy. Best of both worlds, the lifestyle and good at core business. And very nice people to boot.

Interesting stuff the way you talk about that country OO You wouldn't think that sufacely looking at it, I must get up that way again sometime and look around , it's been 20 yrs .

Cheers

 

[WinstonWolfe]

Perhaps if you could point me to the source of your info for the question I may be able to trace down the point of confusion?

I was under the impression permanent magnet direct drive (PMDD) are the most efficient and proven cutting edge technology, and included in latest models at Vesta, Goldwind, Siemens, and GE

Vesta 3 and 6 MW grid streamer generators.
Wind Turbines Shed Their Gears
GE 2.5MW see accompanying pdf brochure
Siemens 3MW video.

Journal of Energy Security 12/1/10
The Battle Over Rare Earth Metals
snip...........For example, China has announced that over the life of the next two five-year plans, 2010-2020, it will construct some 133 gigawatts of wind turbine generated electricity. This is likely to dramatically impact the supply of the rare earth metal neodymium. (it could take up to half a ton of neodymium to make a permanent magnet for a very large wind turbine) If China chooses to go with the wind turbine generator design that uses a rare earth permanent magnet based on neodymium, praseodymium, dysprosium, and terbium, (the last two of which are among the rarest of the rare earth metals) then this will require that China increase its current production levels in order to meet additional demand. The alternative is that China substantially reduce its exports of the required metals under the terms of present production levels. Modern, smaller, high performance and high efficiency electric motors and generators are also increasingly dependent on the unique properties of these metals.........

n.b. last week, China increased restrictions on REE exports

 

[.toe]

Whereas a carbon tax says "It all depends on how much it costs and we are saying as a society that $x/tonne is a reasonable price to pay for emission reduction". If x doesn't do enough and we can afford to do more then we can increase it but at least everyone has a target to work towards - the amount of emissions varies rather than the cost - and it's the cost everyone is worried about.

HE that makes plenty sense to me. I'm sure either system could be managed in that way, but a tax might be easier to sell. What doesn't make sense to me though is the idea of the governmant simply taking resposibility and telling individual companies what their carbon limits are.

 

[Bill.L]

Hi all,

Interesting how the debate has turned to energy supply. Perhaps reading some of the stuff from "The Oil Drum" website, like this....

http://netenergy.theoildrum.com/node/4678

... that talks about the energy returned on energy invested concept.

random...

A 1000 watt panel I believe can be concentrated down to a size of 20 or 30 sq cm panel in time with maybe a 1000 times the intensity of present technology, maybe a lot more .

This defies the laws of physics, from the wiki.......

Over the course of a year the average solar radiation arriving at the top of the Earth's atmosphere is roughly 1,366 watts per square meter[1][2] (see solar constant). The radiant power is distributed across the entire electromagnetic spectrum, although most of the power is in the visible light portion of the spectrum. The Sun's rays are attenuated as they pass though the atmosphere, thus reducing the insolation at the Earth's surface to approximately 1,000 watts per square meter for a surface perpendicular to the Sun's rays at sea level on a clear day.

In other words the maximum power of a solar panel is going to be ~1000w/sqm at 100% efficiency, unless of course you take the panels closer to the sun.

On the whole topic of renewable energy, there is so much of what is possible, but as a percentage of what is needed, the sums are extremely low, and we are running out of time before peak oil to get things organised.

bye

 

[HiEquity]

I was under the impression permanent magnet direct drive (PMDD) are the most efficient and proven cutting edge technology, and included in latest models at Vesta, Goldwind, Siemens, and GE

Right, I'm with you now. I should point out that Vestas has only just sold its first windstreamer design in the world to the Macarthur wind farm. All it's other designs and current production are DFIG (doubly fed induction generator) designs sans permanent magnets (and REEs). One could point out here that AGL seem to like taking the first of a turbine production run - they did it with the Suzlon S-88 and now with the Vestas V112. In the industry that's like buying the first Prius - yet AGL seem to like to pride themselves on their "no risk taking" conservative reputation. Hmmmmm....

Anyway, back to the point. The Vestas and Goldwind designs use low speed PMG (permanent magnet generators) which require a largish amount of REE. Goldwind still sell mostly induction generator designs (in their smaller sizes) but are now selling a lot of PMGs but only really in China, apart from a couple of US / Europe projects. The vast majority of Chinese turbines are still DFIG. Siemens have sold a few of their medium speed PMG designs but because of their gearbox and higher speeds the amount of REEs is considerably reduced. Others are looking into it.

So current production has <10% PMGs still globally but a few manufacturers are moving this way now with their newer models. It has to be said that the gains in going this way may be in the order of 5% or so at most - they're not earth shattering. If there was ever a problem with availability of REEs then switching back to a DFIG or synchronous generator design (a la ENERCON) would be quick and easy. Given that the largest Chinese manufacturer is backing PMGs heavily (mind you no-one else in China really is yet, being too busy just shoving turbines out their factories) says to me they're not particularly concerned about the availability of REEs in their homeland - their sales guys certainly gave me some confidence they were on top of the issue. I've never met more switched on people. Given they pretty much own the supply of the REE market, getting good info on the resource availability is pretty much impossible.

In short, this issue presents little to no risk to the wind industry. Manufacturers are going this way in the future for the incremental technical gains (it's a fairly mature technology already) and can switch back again easily if necessary. As others have pointed out, the issues with gearboxes have been overblown, particularly now all the lessons have been learnt the hard way. Having said all that the PMG designs are certainly elegant and have an attractive simplicity for us engineers...

 

[joycenmat]

In a country like Australia I have absolutely no idea what the problem is with cars , heavier vehicles yes but cars no.
They have out flexible solar panels already - focus on those , get them more concentrated , embed into car roofs, bonnet and boot surfaces .
Once the motor's moving , it should be able to generate most of it's own energy anyway. If something spins you can generate from it, it just needs the right gearing , better storage technology. This plugging into home and power up servo's only defeats the purpose anyway and more and more power is still being used and needed just a different type .
Lawn mowers and little tractors the same , especially the stuff that doesn't get used much , just bloody park it outside - wow that's hard !
Heavy vehicles , dunno , it gets tougher but I reckon some of our Somersoft minds alone could have ideas on that area?
Trains , people anyway, 100s off mtrs in roof area , lighten up the construction and why couldn't it basically self power just like the car .
Houses , why are they building wind farms , sea generators and solar stations everywhere when a house can power itself from it's own rooftop and have been doing for 30 yrs or ore all over Australia and the world ?
An English teacher mate of mine of the physically useless type , he even laughed about that one himself , built his own mud brick house and solar system 20 yrs ago. His families lived of it ever since it's nothing . There's 1000's of them all over the country has been for years.
Even in Germany's climate a guy invented just a small wind turbine that easily runs his house , it looks a lot like those spinning roof vents we buy at Bunnings and about the same size .
Industry , again it gets tough but they do have miles of factory roof. Lightings easy , all they need is higher powered versions of a solar garden light and they can have as many as they like on all day long. Free and clear environmentally and in cost .
Their machinery , well many factories only actually use quite light machinery & equipment anyway easily solar and wind powered from their roof areas . It wouldn't even be visible .
The heavier machinery and industries , again a lot tougher but their machinery itself could be trimmed right down for a start just as computers can be the size of a phone now .
Street lights , again easily self powered in led lighting .

I mean population energy use is the first thing they moan about yet considering these areas would probably concern more than 2/3 of the worlds population have just everyday living needs , they'd be 1/2 way there with no real problems at all .

Cheers
ps , oops I've rambled again. Ahwell, I'm pretty passionate about this stuff, just delete me.

Yeah which Dumb HEAD decided we couldnt ride our horses to town. Beats a car and if i take two i can ride the groceries home.

And they do not pollute besides the poo? But it is biodegradable!

 

[andrew_de_a]

Could you imagine the smell of our cities/suburbs if we all had horses instead of cars.

 

[random]

Hi all,

Interesting how the debate has turned to energy supply. Perhaps reading some of the stuff from "The Oil Drum" website, like this....

http://netenergy.theoildrum.com/node/4678

... that talks about the energy returned on energy invested concept.

random...



This defies the laws of physics, from the wiki.......



In other words the maximum power of a solar panel is going to be ~1000w/sqm at 100% efficiency, unless of course you take the panels closer to the sun.

On the whole topic of renewable energy, there is so much of what is possible, but as a percentage of what is needed, the sums are extremely low, and we are running out of time before peak oil to get things organised.

bye

Maybe for now it does !

Cheers

 

[Dazz]

Interesting how the debate has turned to energy supply.

Indeed, it was supposed to be a population discussion....but of course it's a little close to the bone talking about which of your children you're prepared to sacrifice.....so we whistle along as per normal talking about all the other fluffy stuff.


I also note, absolutely no-one on the "imperative we must do something" side of the coin hasn't volunteered to reduce their family size as yet.


As TC said - "you go first" - and as has been noted - absolutely no-one is prepared to go first.


Wind farms and solar cells don't reduce population. What a red herring.

 

[.toe]

Wind farms and solar cells don't reduce population. What a red herring.

Hi Dazz, I'm afraid I'm on the other side of that arguement.

To me it's a matter of accounting. Our old economic model doesn't account for the true cost of productivity. It assumes the planet's resources are infinite and that growing the population to create economic growth would be without cost.

If we change our accounting to recognise the cost of productivity to the environmemt then it will change the way we look at productivity. Economic activity would no longer be simply about producing more. It'd be about producing enough and doing it efficiently. So it would no longer be efficient to grow the population in order to increase productivity. Growing the population would be too expensive. Throwing more capital at a problem would make it bigger, not more efficient. We would be paid for creating efficiency, and we would be more motivated towards a smaller, smarter, more efficient population.

A price or a tax on carbon emissions of $50 a tonne wont reverse population growth, but it's a start. Per capita GDP in Australia is $47k. A price of $50/tonne of carbon would lower the benefit of importing labour by nearly $1000 a year. Which not only motivates for less population growth, it simultaneously increases the benefit of creating more efficient forms of productivity (and exporting them).

 

[random]

Hi Dazz

Although I know what you mean as in some threads and questions do get very frustrating but mate there's nothing fluffy about any this stuff , it's all connected with population sustainability .
Real life conversation goes to where ever it goes , that could be anywhere but for some reason in an Internet club we call normality on topic or off topic .

Although there is one point to that I know with Internet conversation involving so much reading and storage space .

Cheers

 

[random]

Hi Dazz, I'm afraid I'm on the other side of that arguement.

To me it's a matter of accounting. Our old economic model doesn't account for the true cost of productivity. It assumes the planet's resources are infinite and that growing the population to create economic growth would be without cost.

If we change our accounting to recognise the cost of productivity to the environmemt then it will change the way we look at productivity. Economic activity would no longer be simply about producing more. It'd be about producing enough and doing it efficiently. So it would no longer be efficient to grow the population in order to increase productivity. Growing the population would be too expensive. Throwing more capital at a problem would make it bigger, not more efficient. We would be paid for creating efficiency, and we would be more motivated towards a smaller, smarter, more efficient population.

A price or a tax on carbon emissions of $50 a tonne wont reverse population growth, but it's a start. Per capita GDP in Australia is $47k. A price of $50/tonne of carbon would lower the benefit of importing labour by nearly $1000 a year. Which not only motivates for less population growth, it simultaneously increases the benefit of creating more efficient forms of productivity (and exporting them).

Yeah your exactly right toe in our world being so obsessed with growth. That is all wrong , totally illogical and totally unsustainable and the very reason we have the problems we have arising now and unfortunately that's all just the beginning .
Even 3% growth p/a is 60% in only 20 yrs, far too much for anything like long term sustainability and why we're so screwed in really only 100yrs , already !
Yet the Aborigines managed 60,000 and were still cruising and - with a completely unmarked planet - until we came along . But could you imagine trying to get 60,000 years out of our management though , we aren't even going to make 200 from this last 100 ?

Personally I think this carbon tax stuff is a start atleast but again just focusing business on the wrong area and again becomes about money .
Which I suppose hitting em where it hurts is as good a motivational strategy as any with big business and it will at least in the end force them to reinvent themselves but it's the countries and business with the guts to 'truly' strive with new ways and technologies , to be different , will be the real winners here and the rest of us will be knocking on their door like sheep.

Cheers

 

[random]

I thought of one problem last night in Australia , trying to preserve it's farm land while still expanding .
Most of our cities are pretty well surrounded by very fertile soils reaching out to a 3 or 400k radius anyway . So avoiding one patch could just mean sacrificing another anyway !

Cheers

 

[BayView]

And we are the most Obese nation in the world - perhaps we should eat less?

It's not so much the quantity, but the content.

I watched Jamie Oliver's food revolution the other night (sorry to hi-jack) and he was showing simple raw veges to a class of US kids around 7 years old.

Not one of them knew what a pototo was, or a tomato, or a piece of broccoli

The sad thing is; the school canteens can pump out the junk food for the kid's meals cheaper than the freshly cooked stuff. Chicken nuggs, chips (sorry; fries ) etc.

What hope have they got?

 

[topcropper]

Yet the Aborigines managed 60,000 and were still cruising and - with a completely unmarked planet - until we came along . But could you imagine trying to get 60,000 years out of our management though , we aren't even going to make 200 from this last 100 ?

Aborigines did last for tens of thousands of years in relative harmony with the landscape. But they still did cause some dieoffs of plenty of animals while they were here. And without developing agriculture or having oil or machinery, their method of burning off the landscape to generate new plant growth was also highly distructive.

Aborigines would have quickly got to the carrying capacity of the land, and stayed at that for tens of thousands of years. What was that figure? I've seen some estimates of say 200,000? But it was all a guess.

It took the entire land mass of Australia to support 200,000 aborigines, just 1% of todays population, and that still caused some environmental problems. I would argue that if there were just 200,000 people living a western lifestyle, eating western food, then it would take just a tiny fraction of the land to feed them using todays modern oil based farming systems. It would take way less than 1% of todays agricultural area to feed these 200,000 people, and so the other 99% of the farm land that is used now could have been left as forest, rainforest, native grassland and whatever else it was in it's natural state.

Using modern agriculture to feed so little people, you wouldn't need fertilizer or irrigation. Land could be rotated with legumes and spelled. Organic farming systems while far less productive could be used. Westerners could last for 60 thousand years, and have almost no effect of the landscape except for the tiny fraction of the land that was being used for farming, so long as the population was low enough.



The worlds population was mostly just crusing along at the full carrying capacity since the day dot. But then oil came along and and suddenly the carrying capacity increased by many multiples, so humans quickly took up the new capacity and we are about to find out what the limit is, and Africa will find out in the next few decades, however since Africa can't even feed itself now, I'd say they have already passed the carrying capacity of the land....

See ya's.

 

[WinstonWolfe]

In short, this issue presents little to no risk to the wind industry. Manufacturers are going this way in the future for the incremental technical gains (it's a fairly mature technology already) and can switch back again easily if necessary. As others have pointed out, the issues with gearboxes have been overblown, particularly now all the lessons have been learnt the hard way. Having said all that the PMG designs are certainly elegant and have an attractive simplicity for us engineers...

Thanks for the very informative post HE. I understood PMDDs were not revolutionary in efficiency, but I thought there was significant savings in maintenance costs due to the gear box issues and additional weight of alternative designs. Will have to read into it more as I was serious about putting 3-5% of the SMSF into long term holds in HREE and lithium producers.

 

[Peter Parker]

I also note, absolutely no-one on the "imperative we must do something" side of the coin hasn't volunteered to reduce their family size as yet.

Although if your more passionate 'must do somethings' all vote Green this may not be correct.

By and large Greens voters are athiest wealthy cosmopolitans who don't have kids.

"overwhelmingly childless"

"if women have two or more children they are lost to the Greens"

http://www.abc.net.au/rn/counterpoint/stories/2010/2932279.htm

Transcript: http://www.quadrant.org.au/blogs/doomed-planet/2010/06/the-green-dollar

 

[BayView]

By and large Greens voters are athiest wealthy cosmopolitans who don't have kids.

I always thought green voters were over-educated Uni students with BO and beards, never had a job and live in houses in groups and pool their dole to cover expenses.

And are professional protesters.

Was I close?

A lot of yer never-living-in-reality A-list celebs are greenies too.

 

[Peter Parker]

I always thought green voters were over-educated Uni students with BO and beards, never had a job and live in houses in groups and pool their dole to cover expenses.

And are professional protesters.

Was I close?

Except for the 'educated' bit (arts/humanities only), no.

Their economic interests are apparently more aligned with the Libs (though more Turnbull than Abbott) than Labor.

 

[random]

Aborigines did last for tens of thousands of years in relative harmony with the landscape. But they still did cause some dieoffs of plenty of animals while they were here. And without developing agriculture or having oil or machinery, their method of burning off the landscape to generate new plant growth was also highly distructive.

Aborigines would have quickly got to the carrying capacity of the land, and stayed at that for tens of thousands of years. What was that figure? I've seen some estimates of say 200,000? But it was all a guess.

It took the entire land mass of Australia to support 200,000 aborigines, just 1% of todays population, and that still caused some environmental problems. I would argue that if there were just 200,000 people living a western lifestyle, eating western food, then it would take just a tiny fraction of the land to feed them using todays modern oil based farming systems. It would take way less than 1% of todays agricultural area to feed these 200,000 people, and so the other 99% of the farm land that is used now could have been left as forest, rainforest, native grassland and whatever else it was in it's natural state.

Using modern agriculture to feed so little people, you wouldn't need fertilizer or irrigation. Land could be rotated with legumes and spelled. Organic farming systems while far less productive could be used. Westerners could last for 60 thousand years, and have almost no effect of the landscape except for the tiny fraction of the land that was being used for farming, so long as the population was low enough.



The worlds population was mostly just crusing along at the full carrying capacity since the day dot. But then oil came along and and suddenly the carrying capacity increased by many multiples, so humans quickly took up the new capacity and we are about to find out what the limit is, and Africa will find out in the next few decades, however since Africa can't even feed itself now, I'd say they have already passed the carrying capacity of the land....

See ya's.

I don't even know where to start with this one TC , especially with the last 500yrs of that charts growth ,which is bacically where my 3%p/a thing comes from in saying it is just too much .
There's another interesting thing about Aboriginal management that maybe you are aware of but I know many Australians aren't .
The outback use to actually be rainforest and where their burning off did encourage some growth & , not least of all forced their pray out into the open so that they could clobber it, it also eventually killed off the rain forests by destroying the very under growth, canopies and micro worlds that feed them . And then it went even further because lower rainforests meant attracting less and less rain, and then further still until we ended up with desert - so they say !

Cheers