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[DWC]

Our relationship with China is symbiotic. I think it is ultimately a good thing, as economic MAD is preferable to nuclear MAD. We just need to curb our side of the abuses and convince/force/bribe China to do the same with its.

I actually want China to grow economically. Democracy movements have historically flowered upon the enrichment of a population.

The point I am trying to make is that this isn't like with the USSR. Nor can it be. The state of the world is far too interconnected for that situation to exist again.

I think I agree with your assessment, but I think globalism isn't something that will survive forever. It's a product of inexpensive oil, great disparities between labor costs/ exchange rates and free market economies, or at least free market economies exploiting disparities with more centralized nations with artificially depressed economies. None of those things are guarantees in the future.

The world is evolving, the USA is stalling in terms of economic and diplomatic importance while other nations are growing to parity. Especially China. Oil is basically at it's peak in terms as a natural resource and the whole of industrialized civilization is wholly dependent on it, it will only get more scarce and expensive from here on out as a whole. Wide spread information from the internet, social media has changed how politics work in the world. The status quo is less secure then it's ever been.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

Oil, political-bloc driven globalism is declining rapidly, yes. However, information-driven, personal globalism is filling the void. And this is good, because it will create the kind of scenario for planetwide cooperation that we will need in the future to tackle even greater challenges.

[Mrhappyface]

LNG....is the future. Not solar, wind, or god forbid, ethanol. Large scale renewable energy is still in its infantile stages, and in most cases, does not break even until many years.

[Nadaka]

LNG....is the future. Not solar, wind, or god forbid, ethanol. Large scale renewable energy is still in its infantile stages, and in most cases, does not break even until many years.

The future belongs to renewable energy, because it doesn't run out. The only non renewable form of energy that has the potential to significantly outlast the end of the century is nuclear, and that is only if we move to feeder breeder reactors. Even coal will fail when it has to go through liquefaction to run cars/planes or if electric cars become popular enough to dramatically increase demand for grid power.

 And no, ethanol is not a form of renewable energy either. Its cost in soil nutrients and draining of aquifers make it even more dangerous than fossil fuels.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

LNG....is the future. Not solar, wind, or god forbid, ethanol. Large scale renewable energy is still in its infantile stages, and in most cases, does not break even until many years.

Spoiler: No. (click to show/hide)

Afaik, solar power in particular is so inefficient that the production of a solar panel will have consumed more energy (not to mention rare materials like lanthanum and neodymium) to manufacture then it will ever hope to produce in it's expected service life.

So clean energy needs gov't subsidies in order to even be a thing, outside of a few specialist applications, clean energy industry is a net consumer of energy. Which is why you won't see any solar-powered solar panel factories in Arizona or anywhere else.

Please, for the love of god, stop making me debunk this. First of all, being a rare earth element doesn't actually make a substance rare. It's just a name.

Neodynium is more plentiful in Earth's crust than nitrogen, cobalt, lithium, lead, thorium, tin, iodine, silver, mercury, tungsten, platinum, and gold. I have neodynium in my earbuds.

As for massive growth, that ship has sailed:

Source ? It is improving, but a few percents of efficiency won't help. Other technologies are also improving (though their application needs more time to be effective).

Wind. Solar (look at the first two columns, would use the source but this is an assembled graph).

Sorry, but when people talk about "efficiency" and "more time" in regards to renewables, it is a clear sign that they do not know what they are talking about. Efficiency is a distracting factor. It is good, but what is important is actual power output. For example, the internal combustion engine is only 15% efficient and an incandescent lightbulb is somewhere in the order of (memory) 10% efficient. The latter is not a lightbulb, it is a heat bulb that produces a light byproduct. Nonetheless, both were vitally useful to us.

As for time, the time is now. As long as people still believe this "oh, just a few years" myth (which I personally suspect is disinformation) we will never transition to renewables. The numbers do not lie, both wind and solar are viable, now.

For USA, grid based, oil and coal produce approximatively 13 times the energy of the group geothermal, wind, solar, waste and wood. Which means for the same amount of money, a solar panel (took the whole group, but same) would come of with 15% more (if it was grid only).

Renweables were at 12.6% of US power in 2011 and have grown since then, making your approximation impossible. And this is about subsidization, which is not a purely mathematical problem. The value of subsidization is in its ability to force an increase in market access.

I will grant you only that Liquified Natural Gas is a step up from oil and coal, but it also needs to be eliminated long-term.

[Mrhappyface]

Yes, it's the next step. Logical increments after all. Maybe we'll eventually reach cold fusion reactors or develop some sort of material or technique that can safely contain a fusion reaction, but probably not in the next 20 years.

[Helgoland]

If I remember correctly, ITER will go live around 2020 - add some twenty years onto that to make it industrially viable, and we have ourselves the energy source of the future. This huge emphasis on decentrality is hogwash, much like Mao's famed steel production concept.
And it only gets more exciting when you remember that fusion produces fast neutrons, which can split U-238 and thus produce both energy and fuel for conventional reactors.

[Morrigi]

Maybe we'll eventually reach cold fusion reactors or develop some sort of material or technique that can safely contain a fusion reaction, but probably not in the next 20 years.

Cold fusion as we know it is a fraud, violating the known laws of physics and all that. And on the subject of reaction containment, magnetic fields are used. The most theoretically efficient shape of said field would be spherical but unfortunately magnets do not work that way, which means that the current line of thinking in fusion reactor design is shaping the containment vessel into a torus.

Oh, something else about cold fusion. If it produces little to no heat, then where is all the energy going?

And why would we want to use a system that produces virtually no heat and thus energy compared to a conventional fusion reactor? None of it makes any sense whatsoever.

[Chink]

Maybe we'll eventually reach cold fusion reactors or develop some sort of material or technique that can safely contain a fusion reaction, but probably not in the next 20 years.

Cold fusion as we know it is a fraud, violating the known laws of physics and all that. And on the subject of reaction containment, magnetic fields are used. The most theoretically efficient shape of said field would be spherical but unfortunately magnets do not work that way, which means that the current line of thinking in fusion reactor design is shaping the containment vessel into a torus.

Oh, something else about cold fusion. If it produces little to no heat, then where is all the energy going?

And why would we want to use a system that produces virtually no heat and thus energy compared to a conventional fusion reactor? None of it makes any sense whatsoever.

Cold fusion means that the reaction itself could be started at room temperatures, not that the reaction would produce no heat. It would still produce similar amounts of heat, and therefore energy, just starting at lower temperatures, which would make the reaction easier to both start and sustain.

[Max White]

Cold fusion as we know it is a fraud, violating the known laws of physics and all that. And on the subject of reaction containment, magnetic fields are used. The most theoretically efficient shape of said field would be spherical but unfortunately magnets do not work that way, which means that the current line of thinking in fusion reactor design is shaping the containment vessel into a torus.

Oh, something else about cold fusion. If it produces little to no heat, then where is all the energy going?

And why would we want to use a system that produces virtually no heat and thus energy compared to a conventional fusion reactor? None of it makes any sense whatsoever.

I want you to look at the sky during a cloudless day. You might notice a fucking huge ball of light that hurts to look at. That thing is a fusion engine, largest in the solar system. As it was initially 'sparked' not from incredible heat, but astronomical pressure, one could call it a cold fusion engine. It now provides the energy for a very complex chemical reaction we call life.

Humanity: Proudly sponsored by cold fusion for over 4.5 billion years, long before the earth even formed for humanity to begin on.

[10ebbor10]

Also, do note that heat is not the only way energy can be produced. That's the main benefit of second generation fusion after all. It emits electrons, which can be directly used for grid power. Sadly, we can't even get first gen fusion working. Btw, the sun is practically a cold fusion engine, temperatures in the core are very low when compared to human fusion installations.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

Yes, it's the next step. Logical increments after all. Maybe we'll eventually reach cold fusion reactors or develop some sort of material or technique that can safely contain a fusion reaction, but probably not in the next 20 years.

No, as the information in the spoiler demonstrates, renewables are the next step. LNG is just more acceptable filler for what fossil fuels can't be replaced yet.

I want you to look at the sky during a cloudless day. You might notice a fucking huge ball of light that hurts to look at. That thing is a fusion engine, largest in the solar system. As it was initially 'sparked' not from incredible heat, but astronomical pressure, one could call it a cold fusion engine. It now provides the energy for a very complex chemical reaction we call life.

Humanity: Proudly sponsored by cold fusion for over 4.5 billion years, long before the earth even formed for humanity to begin on.

The sun, while not at all close to the temperature needed for Earthbound fusion, also is under 28 times Earth's gravity. Unless we discover how to manipulate gravity, we are not likely to make much progress on any "cold" fusion front.

On the other hand, if we do discover how to manipulate gravity, humanity wins and the universe is fucked.

[Max White]

Well I think we are pretty far away from cold fusion at this point, to my understanding. All claims I have ever seen come down to chemistry. But the fact that something is implausible for human technology is far from impossible for physics.

Although we can still harvest the output from the fusion generator we already have, so no dire need to build a new one. Just put up a solar panel and BAM! You are drinking a fusion smoothy.

[10ebbor10]

You don't need to use gravity. Magnetical compression works too.

Though well, containing a fusing ball of plasma with a pressure similar to the core of the sun might be a bad idea. Especially if containment fails.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

All energy on Earth ultimately comes from the sun, Max. The question you should be asking yourself is whether you want to build a Dyson sphere or continue on the creation of Earthly fusion generators, because that would be the fair comparison.