Thinking Outside The Box

...or maybe "Outside the Globe" would be more accurate.

Bret Cahil has recently posted three different thoughts/questi 1. What's the cheapest way to move Mississippi River water West across the great divide?

  1. The water Bret's drinking now is 15,000 year old ice melt - not exactly a renewable resource.
  2. The folks at NIAC/NASA want to find cheap ways to get stuff into space.

To answer such questions, or to address such concerns and needs, engineers (and the civilization that depends on engineering) tend to think in terms of new technologies, inventions, or methods, to solve the problems which are piled on our desks right now. What we DON'T seem to do often enough (in my personal opinion) is look deeply and carefully at WHY our problems and challenges exist, or whether they might not BE problems or challenges if we just looked at them from different perspectives.

Water ALREADY moves from the Mississippi to the West Coast - for free. It flows down the Mississippi into the Gulf of Mexico, then is evaporated into the air, and carried westward by the prevailing Easterly winds in the tropics. Then it falls as rain into the Pacific Ocean, or in other places whose rivers eventually drain into the Pacific. The Pacific, which is the largest body of water on Earth, literally rolls right up onto the shores of the Western-most US states. Those states already HAVE more water, right in their own back yards, than anybody in the Mississppi valley could ever hope for. The REAL problem is that the water gets mixed with salt during the delivery process.

Ice melt IS a renewable resource. We just need to be real patient about the renewal rate. Glaciers and ice-caps have come and gone countless times during Earth's history; and they'll very likely come and go countless times in the future.

NIAC/NASA doesn't really need a cheap way to get stuff into space. There's already stuff in space. Most of it, as a matter of fact. The real issue, if NIAC/NASA were to state it accurately, is to get some very specific kinds of stuff out of Earth's atmostphere and gravity well, so that it can be used for purposes that NIAC/NASA thinks are important at the moment, or in the near future.

We, as a species and a civilization, seem to think that if Mohomed won't go to the mountain, then we should figure out how to move the mountain to Mohamed. That's NEVER the cheapest, easiest, or most efficient way to do things.

Where I live, in Eastern Pennsylvania, most of our water comes from rivers, which are fed by plentiful and relatively constant rainfall - the ideal situation. But even here, I can't drink the river water. It has to be treated and cleaned and purified - at substantial cost, and with conisderable commitments of capital, energy, space, and long-term planning. Even the water needed for livestock, industrial processes, or to irrigate farmlands, often needs to be a lot cleaner than most of our major rivers, and to be free of certain kinds of crud and poisons. So water treatment is a fact of modern life. And even in places where human pollution isn't the problem, nature herself often needs some help (from a human perspective, anyway). Old-growth forests - which many people imagine to be perfect, pristine examples of Earth in it's best and most hospitable form, are often populated by hemlock trees, which poison rivers with tannic acid, and make it unfit for human consumption. Water treatment systems, even in "God's country", are pretty common.

If we're willing to spend money, energy, planning, real-estate, and more, to treat the water that falls on our heads, then maybe we should think carefully about doing the same kind of thing with the water that splashes over our feet when we walk on a beach. De-salting sea water might be a whole lot cheaper, and more reasonable, than trying to work directly and incessantly AGAINST nature's own plans for how and where water ought to travel.

Glaciers are going to melt anyway - at least till we get to the end of the current ice-age, and see the re-cooling that signals the beginning of another one. So, we might as well drink the water and consider ourselves lucky. What we probably SHOULDN'T be doing is spending non-renewable resources like oil to move water around unnecessarily, and to produce pollution that might screw up nature's normal cycles. We could cause more problems than we solve.

Getting stuff into space is a foolish idea. What we really need is to strap Mohamed to a rocket and send HIM into space, so he can use all the stuff that's already there. If we have to send some air and water and tools along with him - just to get things rolling - then that's ok; but we shouldn't confuse short-term expediency with real, serious, long-range plans for the exploration and exploitation of space.

Someone once said that pollution is just resources in the wrong place. There's wisdom in that, because it's an example of thinking about how and why things got like they are; before attempting to figure out the best way to change them. It's important, for engineers in particualr, to practice looking at things in ways that aren't driven only by short-term, near-sighted ideas about what we think we need at any particular instant. Sometimes - maybe even most of the time - we'd do a lot better to think about the big picture first, and THEN to engineer solutions that are truly efficient, and truly conistent with our overall needs and goals as a species.

KG __ I'm sick of spam. The 2 in my address doesn't belong there.

Reply to
Kirk Gordon
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Some think production of oil will peak out in the next year or so. After that the demand / supply curve goes crazy -- prices, the world economy, politics will all follow suit.

A coal fired moped might look like a pretty good ride in about 10 years.

Bret Cahill

Reply to
BretCahill

Dear BretCahill:

They were discussing that it would not be long before oil hits $100 per barrel. This is really some excellent news. Assuming civilization doesn't collapse and global populations decrease by a factor of ten, engineers will be called on to provide the next generation motive source, __________. Ways of getting hydrogen from fossil fuel we already know. Ways of getting it from other sources, like garbage or field waste, might be the next "oil strike".

David A. Smith

Reply to
N:dlzc D:aol T:com (dlzc)

It's sad, really. The US went from almost square one to a successful lunar landing in just 8 1/2 years; but in the 35 years since then, we've not done even the most rudimentary or small-scale attempts at developing orbital solar engery collectors. There's cheap and inexhaustible energy literally falling from the sky, and we're too short-sighted to figure out how to catch it.

If that attitude guides our responses to future crises, then the part about civilization collapsing is a whole lot more likely than any other scenario.

KG

Reply to
Kirk Gordon

Does anyone know for how long the planet's oil reserve will last?

-- Hasta Luego

Irshaad (Faster than Bruce Lee)

snipped-for-privacy@softhome.net (remove the X to reply)

Reply to
Irshaad

Politics isn't like engineering where you plan for the worst or every possible case. In politics predictions are often self fulfilling. If you plan for the worst case you are digging your grave.

Bret Cahill

"We have no right not to be optimistic."

-- Jefferson

Reply to
BretCahill

At some point coal gasification makes sense.

The futures trader's dream: a catastrophy big enough to rake in the big bucks without destroying the market itself.

That's a little too risky for my stomach. In fact, everyone needs to re evaluate his cost/benefit/ risk strategies. A 401K might not make much sense if Mad Max Cheney is going to blow up the planet.

Decrease? By dying young?

Oil will be gone in 100 years. In the meantime it will be Mad Max. Human populations will certainly decrease. The question is how.

Our leaders are mum on that matter.

When I consider most people don't have a clue about thermodynamics or how easy relative to everything else oil was to extract and use, and that the media isn't going to say a word about the impending economic/human disaster . . .

Even I get a little blue . . .

It took 60 - 100 tons of plants to yield one gallon of gas. Cycling makes a lot more sense.

Bret Cahill

Reply to
BretCahill

Politics (if you're in a real charitable mood) is a form of salesmanship. Rather than planning for the worst case (we're gonna die when we run out of oil), it ought to be possible to lead/cajole/attract people into looking at the best case possibilities (new sources of energy, cost savings for everybody, reduced polution, reduced or eliminated dependence on the Mid-East, etc.)

Sadly, there isn't enough actual leadership anywhere in the federal government, in my personal opinion, to make any of that happen. So, if we really do run out of oil, or if new developments can't be managed by private interests, then we're all gonna die.

KG

Reply to
Kirk Gordon

Reply to
Roger

Dear BretCahill:

Or garbage gassification, which is currently being used in some places to generate power.

He'll have help. There are vultures everywhere.

Actually, no likely dying old. West Nile kills the old, primarily (for example). I expect that we'll have a nice "readjustment" in median age. And those cultures that are dependent on civilization for food and water, are going to get a lot smaller.

Famine and disease. War between the haves and the have nots. The usual culprits.

We have the solutions. We just don't have the bucks. Europe has fat taxes, but they haven't come to the plate with solutions there either. I ust don't figure it, unless we are being set up. (Sinister music swells in the background.)

Not in Arridzona it doesn't. They don't make SPF from air either!

David A. Smith

Reply to
N:dlzc D:aol T:com (dlzc)

Dear Roger:

Control of demand? Telecommuting hasn't gone very far, and between my computer and my monitor I'm consuming nearly 1hp in fossil fuel/nuclear/hydroelectric power.

So would maglev moving walkways be any savings?

David A. Smith

Reply to
N:dlzc D:aol T:com (dlzc)

Reply to
Roger

Ummmm.

This is an opportunity. In fact, the power vacuum is so great, DC is like a giant black hole. An appellate court brief just got SUCKED right out of my fax machine. It must have cost me 80 cents in long distance charges.

That comes out to be two cheap beers.

More seriously, it's rare I even get a busy signal. One congressman even has an 800 fax number.

About 30% of the time they'll do what you tell them to do.

They'll think, "who is this new guy telling us what to do? He must be one of those computer billionaires we haven't heard about yet. We better do what he says . . ."

You won't have to elbow your way into power in the nat'l government of the U. S. Your problem will be keeping yourself from getting ripped apart by the gravity gradient.

Bret Cahill

Reply to
BretCahill

Just got this. Maybe learning to scrap for a potato will be smart energy planning.

Bret Cahill

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

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Reply to
BretCahill

It depends on the consumption rate. There seems to be a consensus that total stocks have been 50% depleted, at least.

That suggests that in 100 years, oil products will be reserved for high value added uses.

Brian W

Reply to
Brian Whatcott

That's certainly going up.

50% in 100 years at a much lower rate of consumption.

There will be a lot of big changes much earlier.

We are way out on a limb. A lot of people are still daydreaming it's somehow possible to go back to the good old days of $20/barrel.

Bret Cahill

Reply to
BretCahill

Dear BretCahill:

Sure could. As soon as the New Dollar is printed, just like the peso was handled. A 10 old for 1 new split.

David A. Smith

Reply to
N:dlzc D:aol T:com (dlzc)

Remember the movie "The Graduate" ? "I've got two words for you: Methane Hydrides":

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Of course, given that they may be a major moderator in the glacial cycle, what happens once we have harvested them all?

Jeff

Reply to
Jeff Lowe

The Mad Max thing will have to happen in australia first..

Reply to
Jeff Finlayson

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