World oil production

[Achilles]

I found this

and thought others here might find it interesting.

[swfan28]

Very interesting. This type of "solar concentrators" are already in use for solar heating in various locations, but this is going to be by far the biggest of them if it is built. Since this tower would serve such a large number of consumers, the load curve would actually be manageable. There is still the problem of intermittence however. The operators cannot control the amount of energy this produces to follow the load except by letting the hot air flow past some of the turbines. If more of these towers were built, there would be need for an efficient large scale medium term energy storage, which is currently not available. This technology also cannot be used everywhere. While the Australian desert is an ideal location for this tower, such locations don't exist everywhere. If this technology was used in much larger scale, the energy transmission costs would be enormous.

 

About fusion I would note that the JET reactor consumes about as much energy upon start up as it produces and it can only operate in pulses. Yet it is currently the most advanced reactor of its type though a new much larger one called ITER is under construction. I'm afraid that the 50 years may be an overly optimistic estimate of the time before fusion will be usable for power production.

[John Galt]

As an Appalachian I have something of a conflict of interest in the coal debate. Even though I'd like to see renewable resources used (I'm a big fan of hydroelectricity and solar power), coal is what drives the economy here, and I can honestly say that I probably wouldn't even own a computer if my dad hadn't been a coal operator for 40 years (well, on and off with the car companies). I haven't been in a mine in a long time, but I do know quite a bit about the process of coal mining, and the numbers involved. 1100 lbs of coal isn't much at all, the mine that my family used to run(not a particularly large one, definitely nowhere near the size of a corporate job) brought up over 1000 tons of the stuff every day.

 

Back in the '80's, when the price of coal was up, the town I live in had the highest per-capita population of millionaires anywhere in the country, but now that prices are down only large corporate mines can make it here, and Pike County is now one of the poorer counties(wouldn't be so bad if they'd give us coal severance back, but that's a different matter entirely), with the third highest AIDS rate in the state. If coal were completely phased out it would completely destroy this area's economy.