[ExI] Serious topic

[Eugen Leitl]

On Tue, Mar 01, 2011 at 09:10:48AM -0700, Keith Henson wrote:

> The problem is liquid transportation fuel.  Even if we had penny a kWh
> electric power, building the plants to make liquid fuel takes
> time--decades of time.  And we don't have the low cost power.

For some reason this is poorly understood by the general public,
aka voters. City-sized 10-100 GUSD installations do not spring
into being on demand, should you even be able to find creditors 
with appropriate largesse. 

What is worse, is that Fischer-Tropsch is an old, energy-itensive
technology. Developing small-scale modular mild-condition technology
requires multiple decades of effort and talent that is no longer
present. 

So it's time, money, building large scale infrastructure and talent and R&D.
That's five factors that must happen for the party to continue.
 
> > Aside, any idea how fast we could build gigawatt reactors in a real
> > crunch? (That is, in a WW II grade focus, bypassing all current hurdles.)
> 
> Even bypassing the current hurdles, big engineering construction
> projects take time.  It's not entirely clear that we will be able to
> make power plants by the time they are seen as the appropriate
> response.

I hope you all have stocked up on popcorn. That's going to get 
one hell of an interesting movie.

-- 
Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a> http://leitl.org
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