Simon Michaux and the knowledge he brings through his tireless work at essential, fundamental studies that have not been previously done, is truly a gift to humanity and the planet. Thank you Simon Michaux for your profoundly significant and groundbreaking work. It has been badly needed, and until now, sorely missed.
Reducing dependence on hydrocarbons requires that we have a equally effective substitute. Dilute intermittents like wind and solar are far too resource intensive and chaotic to be capable of making a meaningful dent. If we're serious about reducing dependence on hydrocarbons we better get cracking building a buttload of nuclear power plants.
I noticed that in Simon's financial newshour discussion he points out that the behavior of the Chinese is similar to the strategy of the game of go . I've been thinking this same thing for a while . He's the first other person I've noticed that said this as well
I didn't see any industrial equipment included in the vehicle replacement list like farm tractors, road building equipment and mining to mention a few. How do they fit in? Also, I haven't anything about concrete yet, but I'm only 24 minutes into the video.
how is this discussion still being posed with a straight face? we are short on needed minerals by 4x existing resources on earth. no way to phase out fossil fuels without civilization collapse and an exponential reduction in consumption not that continued fossil fuel use will result in a different scenario.
I calculated the amount of water that would need to be pumped to safely overcome intermittency in the UK alone. My answer was about 28 cubic km. Just have a think about that! Edit: That's for a month. According to the video it might have to be 3-5 times that.
I would say that regarding micro sustainable energy used to power a single industrial company is happening now. The Amish in Ohio are doing this just now. They are restoring farm equipment with 100% renewable energy. This will probably be our path forward using these finite mineral materials most efficiently.
All these wars which are destroying thousands of buildings are accelerating the CO2 problem when all the cement buildings are rebuilt (if they ever are ). Is this offset at all by the communities where the wars are taking place shutting down their normal activities ?
Great piece of work. Here are some suggestions that came to mind. Have you looked at the potential for iron air batteries and molten salt battery storage? They may offer grid support with more abundant materials? It may be worth taking into account the rate of improvement of efficiency for solar/thermovoltaic over time and improvements in lifespan. As we expand further, it is likely there will be further improvements in both. Thermovoltaic seems likely to overtake photovoltaic as they have much higher efficiency. What impact would this have on the inputs? How about tidal as potential renewable baseload supply? The UK steel industry is moving away from coking coal towards hydrogen and electric. Solar PV manufacturing could potentially use the same technology.
@@ciriusp thermovoltaic is different from concentrated solar. It essentially adds heat pump tech to solar panels to remove heat from the panel surface and improve efficiency.
We are informed ad nauseum that climate is going to become much more variable. If we then base our electrical grid mostly on wind and solar it makes us HUGELY dependent on on a highly variable climate. That will surely end in disaster. The second aspect to address is how much would this whole change cost and is it affordable?
Geothermal is mostly bs except for the natural successes of Greenland and NZ etc, but it could be OK for heat batteries depending on the energy recovery system. How good is the MIT technology, and how developed is it?
The KEY to RE is fuel making. Nuclear = electrical load + fuel making. Fuel making balances the grid. Also, Solar thermal on houses with fuel making at home. Home fuel making can also balance the nuclear grid allowing people to make fuel from nuclear when grid demand is low and costs are low. A New Engine Type (NET) is under development that can capture the CO2 at the engine with a combined cycle. NET is also a combustion heat pump with COP4. The NET system runs on solar thermal or fuel. With such a system all people around the world will have plenty of energy and costs are lower than old. $1/gal (3 cents/kwh) for fuel and 1 cent/kwh for solar during day. Nothing to worry about. Just talk to the right people, like me, and this problem is not that difficult. NET does NOT need rare earths (computers) but can use if wanted. Nothing Tesla offers will work. All EV companies will go bankrupt, along with all wind/solar PV/battery companies. No coal, gas or oil needed for power. All nuclear or solar thermal. We must get rid of the batteries to get to CO2 neutral. Nuclear + battery will NOT work.
Everyone who believes nuclear energy will save us does not know what they are talking about. You need to consider: 1) types of energy, 2) scalability, 3) infrastructure, 4) the almost unlimited functions of fossil fuels that cannot be replaced by electricity. Nuclear fails in all of these points. We are slowly moving out of the denial stage, most people are in the anger stage ("You're a fossil fuel industry shill!"), and some people (like yourself, sir) are in the negotiation stage: "But maybe if we use nuclear energy." There is no replacement for fossil fuels. None.
@@the81kid So no one knows the future, and I don't think any trajectory for our civilisation is going to be easy. However, I do believe that it is at least plausible that advanced nuclear could be used to replace fossil fuels. A much more detailed analysis of this was done recently by TerraPraxis: who commissioned a report to study exactly what it would take to completely replace fossil fuels in all areas of use. Their conclusion was that, whilst none of this was easy, it did look possible in a reasonable timeframe if advanced high-temperature nuclear can be made successful. The key is that it would have to be high-temperature advanced nuclear, which can be built on a massive scale very quickly: conventional nuclear or renewables alone will never get us there.
@@the81kid Non sense. Nuclear can provide process heat needed for industrial use and you can make carbon neutral "fossil fuels" as long as you have the energy and your carbon is not coming out of sequestration. Look up syn fuels, synthetic diesel. It's already in production today. We just need to use more of the non PWR designs like EBR2 or BN-600. We've mostly used PWR designs until recently because it worked and fossil fuels have been cheap. Now that that is changing, there's tons of room for nuclear energy to flourish beyond the geriatric design of the 50's. We only burn up 2% of the energy in the fuel rods for god's sake. Thankfully we haven't done anything insane like bury that perfectly good fuel.
The problems with Nuclear are (A. It would take too long to expand the global nuclear fleet as new plants take decades to come online. (B. Those plants will eventually have to be decommissioned in a few decades. (C. Nuclear requires massive infrastructure investments in both time and money in order to store the waste properly deep underground. (D. Nuclear power plants need to consume a large amount of water and if the ongoing European Water Crisis is any indication then that is by no means a guarantee as the Climate continues to get weirder. (E. Even if we had an abundance of cheap renewable energy it wouldn't be useable for most industrial processes, electricity can't be used as a refinery feedstock and it doesn't give us access to the tens of thousands of byproducts that fossil fuels have, by far the most important being sulfur. (F. While the electricity generated by nuclear reactors may be renewable the Uranium that fuels them is not. (G. Nuclear reactors are prone to failures, malfunctions, and premature decommissioning because they require constant maintenance which is another added expense. I say all of this to say that geothermal may actually be better for renewable electricity and heat production.
Though I am not as qualified as Simon, since I have worked in the health care field. However I started out my University training as an engineer at a mineral-rich state University in the Rocky Mountain West. At the time, I had many close friends in the petroleum engineering department. They were talking about Peak Oil, which they estimated to be for about 2007 for conventional sources. They also told me about fracking and tar sands, but even they had dire warnings about using these methods. They were worried that it would require a YUGE increase in infrastructure, millions of tons of toxic chemicals, massive amounts of electricity and energy, and they thought it wouldn't be possible financially. And they were worried about the climate. At the time there was a camradery between the climate science department and the petroleum engineering department because of a silly game and beers. I feel my actions justified since I started writing to Swiss financial institutions over 20 years ago pleading with them to move to renewable energy. I question the naivety of Simon to ignore the real cause of that spike. My friends were correct, and Simon showed this clearly. 2005 is when the WW2-like approach to fracking, fossil fuels as well as the "maintenance" of older fields. The first fracking wells needed a loan with a 30 year ROI. After 2-5 years they were worthless, so they sold them to Hedge Funds. And so the financial crisis starts. Secondly, I question Simon for making calculations of our present system. Why do renewables have to produce as much electricity and energy as this artificially inflated world? It's almost like a child that killed his parents with an axe asking for leniency since he's an orphan. Thirdly, Simon is correct that our present system is untenable. Windyday Concept would have moved our society away from individual cars, and more towards electrifying buses, trucks, farm and construction equipment, as well as hydrogen for larger vehicles and ships. And no one asked to make a replacement on a one to one basis. We should have just transformed our society towards renewables. Researching batteries and electrical transmission could have saved us. But maybe Nicolas Tesla already did that but the well-oiled war machine stole his papers in 1943.
"Efficiency" is one of those very much abused terms of economic behavior, on the basis that an individual who can fend for themselves without social support is humanly efficient, it's a characteristic half-truth because the actual converse is the fact, that individual could be considered a drag on the civil societies organized for the most effective stabilization of human life.., which is why Simon has an impossible tast of explaining individual responsibilities, and the concept of social organizations (one label for which is democracy) is everyone's personal responsibility to learn and act cooperatively to maintain metastability. Think of the ancient world horoscope as an un-researched precursor of the real-time holographic time-timing presence, POV sync-duration positioning integration.
Remember: Alvin Weinberg developed (after he patented the reactor we use today) the molten salt thorium reactor during the 1960’s. Washington fired him, and built the plutonium reactors instead. Washington needed BOMBS, not energy.
Doing engineering vacation practice in Weipa at Comalco Aluminum Mine back when Darwin had just been scrubbed off the face of the Northern Territory, we had a discussion with the Chief Engineer about the bs around Nuclear Waste and the natural Reactors at Okolo. Conclusions being that "someone" was obviously opposing plain common sense acquisition of safe and reliable Power in preference to Privatisation and criminal looting of Australian resources. First Principle Observation.
Lmao, you’re insane. Do you understand security issues? How much would it cost to make sure no one messes with high level nuclear waste in the middle of the hood?
@@jakubkopak9954 there is basically no need for security, the so called danger of radiation from spent fuel is vastly overblown. The most important things to protect are the expensive equipment like turbines, reactor vessels and transformerstations.
@@bolzdk9032 Terminal case of capitalist brain. It doesn’t matter what costs how much. What matters is criminals who could get their hands on spent nuclear fuel. And shit that has enough energy to heat up homes IS dangerous.
I liked the presentation, but in the open discussion it became evident that the low level quality thinking of this MEER endeavour, if their ideas are implemented, will lead to actual poverty. They are also wrong about the climate change science. Worse, they are arrogant in thinking that we control and need to control the weather.
The colleges are cranking out Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) Commissars like that will save us from any of our predicaments. Enjoy the decline!
Humans may intuitively pick up things conducive to their own survival. The fact that left-leaning is correlated with youth is an interesting observation. Think about that.
Simon Michaux and the knowledge he brings through his tireless work at essential, fundamental studies that have not been previously done, is truly a gift to humanity and the planet.
Thank you Simon Michaux for your profoundly significant and groundbreaking work. It has been badly needed, and until now, sorely missed.
Thanks for spreading the reasoned and authoritative voice of Simon around! It's time those who make decisions about energy use , wake up.
Yes, Simon dispels all the popular myths coming from mostly well-intentioned people and brings reality into the conversation.
Reducing dependence on hydrocarbons requires that we have a equally effective substitute. Dilute intermittents like wind and solar are far too resource intensive and chaotic to be capable of making a meaningful dent. If we're serious about reducing dependence on hydrocarbons we better get cracking building a buttload of nuclear power plants.
So excellent
It's not going to happen folks. We're screwed.
I noticed that in Simon's financial newshour discussion he points out that the behavior of the Chinese is similar to the strategy of the game of go . I've been thinking this same thing for a while . He's the first other person I've noticed that said this as well
Hoping we can start focusing on a real plan, and phase out green slogans which have little basis in reality.
I comment therefore I boost!
I didn't see any industrial equipment included in the vehicle replacement list like farm tractors, road building equipment and mining to mention a few. How do they fit in? Also, I haven't anything about concrete yet, but I'm only 24 minutes into the video.
If a Tesla can weigh nearly 4 tons which is roughly double the weight of a typical car, just imagine that extra weight (50% more) in a tractor.
how is this discussion still being posed with a straight face? we are short on needed minerals by 4x existing resources on earth. no way to phase out fossil fuels without civilization collapse and an exponential reduction in consumption not that continued fossil fuel use will result in a different scenario.
I calculated the amount of water that would need to be pumped to safely overcome intermittency in the UK alone. My answer was about 28 cubic km. Just have a think about that!
Edit: That's for a month. According to the video it might have to be 3-5 times that.
I would say that regarding micro sustainable energy used to power a single industrial company is happening now. The Amish in Ohio are doing this just now. They are restoring farm equipment with 100% renewable energy. This will probably be our path forward using these finite mineral materials most efficiently.
All these wars which are destroying thousands of buildings are accelerating the CO2 problem when all the cement buildings are rebuilt (if they ever are ). Is this offset at all by the communities where the wars are taking place shutting down their normal activities ?
Amazing video!
Great piece of work. Here are some suggestions that came to mind.
Have you looked at the potential for iron air batteries and molten salt battery storage? They may offer grid support with more abundant materials?
It may be worth taking into account the rate of improvement of efficiency for solar/thermovoltaic over time and improvements in lifespan. As we expand further, it is likely there will be further improvements in both. Thermovoltaic seems likely to overtake photovoltaic as they have much higher efficiency. What impact would this have on the inputs?
How about tidal as potential renewable baseload supply?
The UK steel industry is moving away from coking coal towards hydrogen and electric. Solar PV manufacturing could potentially use the same technology.
check out Dr YeTao's question at 57:00 about the alternative batteries. There was also a question on concentrated solar just before that.
@@ciriusp thermovoltaic is different from concentrated solar. It essentially adds heat pump tech to solar panels to remove heat from the panel surface and improve efficiency.
We are informed ad nauseum that climate is going to become much more variable. If we then base our electrical grid mostly on wind and solar it makes us HUGELY dependent on on a highly variable climate. That will surely end in disaster. The second aspect to address is how much would this whole change cost and is it affordable?
Geothermal is mostly bs except for the natural successes of Greenland and NZ etc, but it could be OK for heat batteries depending on the energy recovery system. How good is the MIT technology, and how developed is it?
The KEY to RE is fuel making. Nuclear = electrical load + fuel making. Fuel making balances the grid.
Also, Solar thermal on houses with fuel making at home. Home fuel making can also balance the nuclear grid allowing people to make fuel from nuclear when grid demand is low and costs are low.
A New Engine Type (NET) is under development that can capture the CO2 at the engine with a combined cycle. NET is also a combustion heat pump with COP4. The NET system runs on solar thermal or fuel.
With such a system all people around the world will have plenty of energy and costs are lower than old. $1/gal (3 cents/kwh) for fuel and 1 cent/kwh for solar during day.
Nothing to worry about. Just talk to the right people, like me, and this problem is not that difficult. NET does NOT need rare earths (computers) but can use if wanted.
Nothing Tesla offers will work. All EV companies will go bankrupt, along with all wind/solar PV/battery companies. No coal, gas or oil needed for power. All nuclear or solar thermal. We must get rid of the batteries to get to CO2 neutral. Nuclear + battery will NOT work.
America is now reaping those grapes of wrath.
“Plant a demon seed, you raise a flower of fire”. U2-bullet the blue sky
Nuclear is by far the best option not us going back to the stone age
Everyone who believes nuclear energy will save us does not know what they are talking about. You need to consider: 1) types of energy, 2) scalability, 3) infrastructure, 4) the almost unlimited functions of fossil fuels that cannot be replaced by electricity. Nuclear fails in all of these points. We are slowly moving out of the denial stage, most people are in the anger stage ("You're a fossil fuel industry shill!"), and some people (like yourself, sir) are in the negotiation stage: "But maybe if we use nuclear energy." There is no replacement for fossil fuels. None.
@@the81kid So no one knows the future, and I don't think any trajectory for our civilisation is going to be easy. However, I do believe that it is at least plausible that advanced nuclear could be used to replace fossil fuels. A much more detailed analysis of this was done recently by TerraPraxis: who commissioned a report to study exactly what it would take to completely replace fossil fuels in all areas of use. Their conclusion was that, whilst none of this was easy, it did look possible in a reasonable timeframe if advanced high-temperature nuclear can be made successful. The key is that it would have to be high-temperature advanced nuclear, which can be built on a massive scale very quickly: conventional nuclear or renewables alone will never get us there.
@@the81kid Non sense. Nuclear can provide process heat needed for industrial use and you can make carbon neutral "fossil fuels" as long as you have the energy and your carbon is not coming out of sequestration. Look up syn fuels, synthetic diesel. It's already in production today. We just need to use more of the non PWR designs like EBR2 or BN-600. We've mostly used PWR designs until recently because it worked and fossil fuels have been cheap. Now that that is changing, there's tons of room for nuclear energy to flourish beyond the geriatric design of the 50's. We only burn up 2% of the energy in the fuel rods for god's sake. Thankfully we haven't done anything insane like bury that perfectly good fuel.
The problems with Nuclear are (A. It would take too long to expand the global nuclear fleet as new plants take decades to come online. (B. Those plants will eventually have to be decommissioned in a few decades. (C. Nuclear requires massive infrastructure investments in both time and money in order to store the waste properly deep underground. (D. Nuclear power plants need to consume a large amount of water and if the ongoing European Water Crisis is any indication then that is by no means a guarantee as the Climate continues to get weirder. (E. Even if we had an abundance of cheap renewable energy it wouldn't be useable for most industrial processes, electricity can't be used as a refinery feedstock and it doesn't give us access to the tens of thousands of byproducts that fossil fuels have, by far the most important being sulfur. (F. While the electricity generated by nuclear reactors may be renewable the Uranium that fuels them is not. (G. Nuclear reactors are prone to failures, malfunctions, and premature decommissioning because they require constant maintenance which is another added expense.
I say all of this to say that geothermal may actually be better for renewable electricity and heat production.
Though I am not as qualified as Simon, since I have worked in the health care field.
However I started out my University training as an engineer at a mineral-rich state University in the Rocky Mountain West. At the time, I had many close friends in the petroleum engineering department. They were talking about Peak Oil, which they estimated to be for about 2007 for conventional sources. They also told me about fracking and tar sands, but even they had dire warnings about using these methods. They were worried that it would require a YUGE increase in infrastructure, millions of tons of toxic chemicals, massive amounts of electricity and energy, and they thought it wouldn't be possible financially. And they were worried about the climate. At the time there was a camradery between the climate science department and the petroleum engineering department because of a silly game and beers.
I feel my actions justified since I started writing to Swiss financial institutions over 20 years ago pleading with them to move to renewable energy.
I question the naivety of Simon to ignore the real cause of that spike. My friends were correct, and Simon showed this clearly. 2005 is when the WW2-like approach to fracking, fossil fuels as well as the "maintenance" of older fields. The first fracking wells needed a loan with a 30 year ROI. After 2-5 years they were worthless, so they sold them to Hedge Funds. And so the financial crisis starts.
Secondly, I question Simon for making calculations of our present system. Why do renewables have to produce as much electricity and energy as this artificially inflated world? It's almost like a child that killed his parents with an axe asking for leniency since he's an orphan.
Thirdly, Simon is correct that our present system is untenable. Windyday Concept would have moved our society away from individual cars, and more towards electrifying buses, trucks, farm and construction equipment, as well as hydrogen for larger vehicles and ships. And no one asked to make a replacement on a one to one basis. We should have just transformed our society towards renewables. Researching batteries and electrical transmission could have saved us. But maybe Nicolas Tesla already did that but the well-oiled war machine stole his papers in 1943.
You’d be right but for the biggest fiscal collapse since the tulip mania. Great bit of alt history non fiction, but not in this time line.
"Efficiency" is one of those very much abused terms of economic behavior, on the basis that an individual who can fend for themselves without social support is humanly efficient, it's a characteristic half-truth because the actual converse is the fact, that individual could be considered a drag on the civil societies organized for the most effective stabilization of human life.., which is why Simon has an impossible tast of explaining individual responsibilities, and the concept of social organizations (one label for which is democracy) is everyone's personal responsibility to learn and act cooperatively to maintain metastability.
Think of the ancient world horoscope as an un-researched precursor of the real-time holographic time-timing presence, POV sync-duration positioning integration.
Remember: Alvin Weinberg developed (after he patented the reactor we use today) the molten salt thorium reactor during the 1960’s. Washington fired him, and built the plutonium reactors instead. Washington needed BOMBS, not energy.
Doing engineering vacation practice in Weipa at Comalco Aluminum Mine back when Darwin had just been scrubbed off the face of the Northern Territory, we had a discussion with the Chief Engineer about the bs around Nuclear Waste and the natural Reactors at Okolo. Conclusions being that "someone" was obviously opposing plain common sense acquisition of safe and reliable Power in preference to Privatisation and criminal looting of Australian resources.
First Principle Observation.
Spent nuclear fuel isn't a problem it's a resource.
The decay heat could for example be used for things like district heating.
Lmao, you’re insane. Do you understand security issues? How much would it cost to make sure no one messes with high level nuclear waste in the middle of the hood?
@@jakubkopak9954 there is basically no need for security, the so called danger of radiation from spent fuel is vastly overblown. The most important things to protect are the expensive equipment like turbines, reactor vessels and transformerstations.
@@bolzdk9032 Terminal case of capitalist brain. It doesn’t matter what costs how much. What matters is criminals who could get their hands on spent nuclear fuel. And shit that has enough energy to heat up homes IS dangerous.
Just imagine....al the geoengineering schemes the elite could concoct battling global warming caused by all those spent reactor rods....lol.
I liked the presentation, but in the open discussion it became evident that the low level quality thinking of this MEER endeavour, if their ideas are implemented, will lead to actual poverty. They are also wrong about the climate change science. Worse, they are arrogant in thinking that we control and need to control the weather.
When the stupidity stops, and buddy there is a massive amount of it, nuclear power will replace hydrocarbons. Why? It’s the only way.
Washington chose nuclear bombs over safe, cheap, limitless, carbon free thorium fuel cycle nuclear fission reactors.
Weinberg called it “burning the rocks”. Read, learn, and do something real.
The Laws of Thermodynamics will forever prevent your "clean energy" fantasy while your ignorance entertains yourselves with it.
Allen Dulles shot JFK’s head off. Why? He was choosing to disarm rather than the Cold War path.
Lol! The students asking the professor questions are just a bunch of leftists. Couldn't they find more impressive people?
I noticed some editing after each question think there may have been a bit of commentary we were not privy to
The colleges are cranking out Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) Commissars like that will save us from any of our predicaments. Enjoy the decline!
Humans may intuitively pick up things conducive to their own survival. The fact that left-leaning is correlated with youth is an interesting observation. Think about that.
@@yetao5801 It's just because universities are filled with leftist indoctrinators.
There's nothing more impressive than a young, intelligent leftist.