bin Laden is dead

[MarMan]

If oil were to disappear from the face of the earth in a week, the oil producers would end up hoarding whatever stock they had (they do have stocks!) and the prices of oil would skyrocket to such proportions there would be another world war before you could think of any alternative means.

A world war? Without fuel? Must be a small world after all.

[BlindSniper]

I think there probably will be a war if the oil is gone.

[MarMan]

A war, possibly. If you want a world war then you better start training dolphins.

[Lord Orwell]

come on. be reasonable. everyone is going to know in advance when it's about to run out. That's when the war will be. While there is still gas for it. And I suppose you all think that the nuclear ICBMs run off oil? Half the sub fleet in the US already is nuclear powered and so are some of the boats (all the carriers)

[Shaggy Hiker]

I just wanted to pinpoint a source of the disagreement. You assumed I wanted to use batteries. But that is not the case. That is only one way. There are many others. Yes if you limit yourself to one method, you will not get far. Thinking inside the box will also limit you. There are also other things in your post which are not accurate, but I do not have the time right now.

Do you have time yet?

I didn't assume that you wanted to use batteries, I assumed that you wanted to use stored energy rather than having an umbilical cord. A battery is just a name for energy storage. As far as I can see, there are only three options for powering something:

1) Generate the energy in place (internal combustion, wind, solar, nuclear, etc.)

2) Generate the energy elsewhere and provide continuous delivery to the motor, which would mean a long extension cord.

3) Generate the energy elsewhere and store it in some form of battery, which could be chemical, mechanical, or any other means that will store energy that can be subsequently tapped as needed.


We are currently using #1 with internal combustion for so many things. For something like a combine, there really isn't any other viable alternative solution if you are going to power the device using technique #1. Technique #2 seems totally impractical to me for large scale food production, but that may not be true, and you may not agree. Anything else would be Technique #3, which means a battery of some sort, and that is where our technological limitations prevent us.

[MarMan]

I like discussing things with you Shaggy, you do think well. I would like to continue this, but we are going live next week, so I do not have time yet. But while I am waiting here are some things for you to think about:

1) Redesign the combine and you have more choices.

4) Energy transmission without an extension cord, via a laser or something like that.

With a massive energy shortage there will likely be many idle humans. I can see humans taking over where machines were until technology catches up.

Mother is the necessity of invention, i.e. certain technologies will advance rapidly to the point we would be unable to accurately predict what would happen.

[BlindSniper]

Number 4 sounds fun, although It would probably have to be Microwaves, since I once read in a book that someone made a theoretical design of a solar panel in space that would beam the energy down onto a "receiver".

If you are gonna power any form of long range transport with this method, surely the "Sender" would have to be in space, and how much fun would that thing be if It missed it's target and hit a life form

[Shaggy Hiker]

I would like to continue this, but we are going live next week, so I do not have time yet.

Yeah, I totally know that. I've been traveling nearly continually for the last two weeks, which was why I didn't say anything. That one post that you just replied to was made in the hour that I was home between flying in from one place and flying out to another. Still, you mentioned in a different thread about taking a 5-10 minute 'mental break', and I fully agree with that. There have even been some recent studies that have shown that such things are important to us, as you are probably aware.

1) Redesign the combine and you have more choices.

Are you suggesting a recombinant combine combination? Any solution would have to involve this to some extent.

4) Energy transmission without an extension cord, via a laser or something like that.

I was thinking about that, but I think it can't work. The idea of beaming microwave radiation from space to a ground receiver, which BlindSniper mentioned, has the advantage that it could be located wherever necessary, and the receiver could be of any size necessary to convert the microwave radiation back into electicity. However, for a moving item, I think it can't work because the energy density would be so high that you'd effectively have a death ray that would cook birds in flight. The colateral damage would probably be unacceptable. Furthermore, you'd have to convert the radiation back to electricity with a device small enough and light enough such that it would fit on the chassis without requiring a significantly larger, heavier, and more costly, design. I have no idea whether that would be possible, but I suspect that it is not.

With a massive energy shortage there will likely be many idle humans.  I can see humans taking over where machines were until technology catches up.

That might work if there was a massive number of humans willing to work for free, or for food. The amount of land that one person can work is fairly well known, though I forget the actual value. It's around an acre. If those people are willing to contribute their labor in return for food, then all is well. If those people want to get anything monetary over and above the food, then you will have a problem, because the return on their labor won't be sufficient to pay them anything. Each one will be doing the full processing on whatever amount of land they can, which is about an acre, and that won't be worth all that much.

I would expect that the result would be massive starvation until the population dropped to where the food supply could support the population using the technology they had at hand. Frankly, I'm well on the pessimistic side when talking about that, so you can take it however you like, but I feel that the population would end up dropping by some 60-80% if we had to go back to manual labor to generate our food. And since people do not willingly starve, that would mean some massive riots, and even more widepread starvation resulting from the disruptions caused by the riots.

In case you haven't figured it out, I feel that we are out over the abyss without a net. I feel that our society is increasingly dependent on technology, such that we can tolerate a steady advance, or a steady change in technology, but our civilization will not survive an abrupt change of any magnitude. That's pessimistic, but that's me on this topic.

[BlindSniper]

There are Billions of Africans that do Nothing every day, We should put them to work

[zaza]

Mother is the necessity of invention

Parental problems? Or was that deliberate....?

[EntityX]

Isn't it supposed to be : Invention is the mother of necessity. There was this kid whose name was necessity. His mother's name was invention.

[Lord Orwell]

necessity sounds like a girl's name. But i agree with you, and for point of accuracy, Africa barely has one billion, let alone billions. I am sure at least some of them are working, unless you consider the egyptian protestors and the libyan protestors as out of work?

as for energy transmission, the most efficient method has always been superconducting wires. as for storage of energy, a lot of promising research has went into flywheels.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flywheel_energy_storage

[BlindSniper]

It just seems like Billions from where I live :P

[MarMan]

Parental problems? Or was that deliberate....?

LOL Not deliberate, an accident. But good for some funny posts.

Just some quick replies.

The space elevator design uses lasers to beam the energy to the motors that drive it. For harvesting you can have fields surrounding an energy source and beam the energy short distances.

Also you can redesign the combine (this is just a quick example, more thought could produce something viable) to a very small light weight piece that rides on a track. The track can be electromagnets, the combine (which would not be a combine at this point) would be attached to magnets, requiring very little power (compared to its replacement) and no power for locomotion.

Everyone could always grow their own garden.