Spring RTS Engine

tombom wrote:

Forboding Angel wrote:

tombom wrote:even if global warming was a complete myth, energy and resource conservation would still be a massive deal

i'm pretty sure even a total idiot can understand use something a lot = it runs out

Well... duh. Are you insinuating that I'm a total idiot? That's nice, especially considering that I agree with you. So if I'm an "idjit" does that make you an "ignoramous"?

I wasn't insinuating you're an idiot (I realise it came out that way, sorry). Just saying.

I didn't figure you were, but I was trying to be funny (using southern "drawl" speaking and the southern form of english... if you can call it that)... obviously it didn't work.

Let's wait until oil gets marked as regenerative power source and we'll all be fine. That and a fantastic high temperature superconductor so we can pave the tropic deserts with solar plants for or daily energy needs and we're fine...

Or simply go for fusion (ITER ftw)...

Does somebody have calculations for those power saving bulbs btw? Do they really save power in the end besides containing highly toxic stuff?

Well that's about the actual power consumption itself but when also considering the energy needed for the actual construction of those bulbs does things still look good that way? When you consider the energy costs for construction for e.g. solar cells they often (depending on where you mount them) even unlikely will be able to produce the power needed for their construction in their entire averaged lifetime. That entire silicium stuff of course is an extreme power eater and I don't know how much effort has to be done to create all those inert gases or whatever is used in today's most modern power saving bulbs...

The real solution is to go nuclear to replace coal. Everywhere. Renewables really only give us a warm fuzzy feeling, they need huge scales to work properly and have an awful power density and materials-megawatts ratio. I'm not saying that we shouldn't pursue them, but they shouldn't be touted as the miracle sources of power that greenies think they are.

So, IMO Nuclear is the way to go, but fusion is a long way out. Fission is still rather good, and there are quite a few new good designs.
Existing LWR designs aren't too good, especially with a "once-through" fuel cycle. Nuclear waste is not hard to reprocess into new fuel rods, and this reduces waste. AFAIK the best proven design is the CANDU reactor, which burns natural uranium (I.E not enriched) and nuclear waste from LWRs.

The other option is to research and develop further the Thorium fuel cycle. The design promoted is the Liquid Flouride Thorium Reactor, which is passively safe and self-regulating (It maintains a constant temperature and due to it's high temperature liquid salt working fluid, simply freezes when it leaks.) Have a look at this thorium fuel cycle stuff, it's quite good. Funnily enough the US did some research into it in the 1960's and declined to develop it further because they couldn't make nuclear weapons from it.
Wired article on thorium

Nuclear power is a bit of a passion for me, if you have any fairly basic questions on it you can always ask me.

Nuclear fission(with uranium) power will only last the next 80 or so years, because of how much fuel is available for it on the planet.

well, the fact that the CFLs need to be replaced far less and the presence of tungsten in normal lights which has to be mined and is becoming rare...

Though if we are playing with rumors, I saw a thing on 16x9 about CFLs a while ago:
16:9 was the first to expose the toxic truth about Compact Fluorescent Light (CFL) bulbs. The eco-friendly lights have been linked to mysterious rashes, outbreaks and other illnesses.

Umbra wrote:Nuclear fission(with uranium) power will only last the next 80 or so years, because of how much fuel is available for it on the planet.

Rubbish. Australia has massive natural deposits, and is starting only now to construct a fourth mine. We haven't bothered to do much prospecting here because demand is fairly low. If there is demand, then we will probably find more. Uranium is fairly abundant in the earth's crust, but only has a few high-grade deposits. We can easily "burn the rocks" for their uranium content or extract uranium from seawater and still have a net surplus of energy.

And all of this is assuming that we keep on making reactor designs from the sixties and seventies that have a once-through fuel cycle. Once you get adequate investment in the field, we will have more efficient new designs developed. We haven't scratched the surface of uranium supply or nuclear technology yet.

+1 to master atmos and heavylancer's posts

I think it would be cool to have bioluminescent plants for night lights. Fungus and light bulbs that glow because they're hooked up to bacteria that gives off an electric charge doesn't count.



However, I don't see how plants like that would be able to really fit into the natural terrestrial environments, so I can't think of any other good uses for them.

For reference, that picture took 513 seconds of exposure.

SinbadEV wrote:well, the fact that the CFLs need to be replaced far less

I've been using CFLs for about 8 years now in several different homes and they are always dying and have to be replaced much sooner than incandescents. Something to do with the tiny little ballasts that don't take well to being switched on and off very often (unlike in the office or supermarket where you turn a light on and off once a day). I will still continue to use them to save money on the electric bill. And yes I've broken a couple here and there and now I'm poisoned. Sigh. LED lightbulbs ftw. They are selling them at Walmart now for $30 or $40 or so.

In response to OP, you forgot something for your list - wipe your ass with leaves.

HeavyLancer

It's a shame that Oz has such paralyzing fear of nuclear technology - they're the best-positioned country in the world for developing nuclear power. They've got a plentiful source and the world's best dumping site in their backyard. Who the hell would care if they plonked a Yucca Mountain project in the middle of the outback?

CFL bulbs have come along way, and the first and second generations are shite, the latest are about 10 generations further along

But yes, LED lightbulbs ftw

Interesting stuff on thorium

Das Bruce wrote:For reference, that picture took 513 seconds of exposure.

:D I was wondering about that but cba to check the exif

Pxtl wrote:HeavyLancer

It's a shame that Oz has such paralyzing fear of nuclear technology - they're the best-positioned country in the world for developing nuclear power. They've got a plentiful source and the world's best dumping site in their backyard. Who the hell would care if they plonked a Yucca Mountain project in the middle of the outback?

It's true. The current environment minister over here is funnily enough the former lead singer for Midnight Oil, who were strongly opposed to anything nuclear, the Prime Minister is anti-nuclear to get votes from the greens and to shore up his support from the coal industry, which is also huge. Nuclear power over here would decimate the coal industry. We could replace all of the coal power stations with 1.1 GW LWR units easily. Also, pic related. I've actually seen this ad in a newspaper a couple of years ago.


Also, if you have a well-managed reprocessing system you don't really need Yucca Mountain. Mind you, central Australia is a nice, geographically stable, low population area to put a waste storage facility.

Caydr wrote: 1) Save a few cents every month by unplugging crap and congratulate yourself because if you and all your neighbors do this every day for the next 10 years, you'll have saved enough electricity to power Kenya for a day.

I laughed so hard.

We gotta start tackling over-population.. Every problem facing humanity is linked to the huge population. I vote birth restrictions, but most people wont have the balls to go with that

I agree.kids are destroying the world.
Let's have less.

OP was part serious, part joke, but mostly my real thoughts on the matter. Meaning, I think people often tend to look to the wrong places for conservation, micromanaging small difficult things when there are much easier and more effective solutions that usually end up helping you instead of hurting you.

People like to suggest riding your bike to work for example - ok, I could do that. I'd have to get up an hour earlier and risk getting caught in the rain, getting hit by a car, etc, and I'd have to then ride all the way home after a ten hour day - and my day, by the way, ends at 3 PM so the sun is just at that point where you don't want to be anywhere underneath it. Arrive home, collapse from exhaustion, repeat. BUT ON THE PLUS SIDE I'D SAVE $50 A MONTH ON GAS! (Alternatively, I could just buy one less bottle of vodka a month, or eat out 2 less times, or order 2 less pizzas, etc)

Another example, a lot of people like to use these things called "torrents". Well, it necessitates leaving your computer on for long periods of time. Instead of your 300 watt behemoth, buy some tiny little netbook or something and use that for such "passive tasks" instead, and leave your computer in sleep mode so it's hardly using any power but can still start running at a moment's notice.

Buying more efficient stuff can be expensive if you upgrade for no other reason than to reduce your hydro bill, but if you're upgrading anyway, paying 50% extra cash for the PSU that wastes 50% less energy isn't such a huge deal.

Example: in December I was running an "Ultra" (generic China brand) 750 watt PSU, Radeon 4890, and C2D E8400 @ 3.6 ghz.

Now I'm using a Seasonic 750 watt PSU, Radeon 5850, and CPU is @ 3.45 ghz, but I was able to drop the voltage by 0.15v as a consequence and, as a happy coincidence, my RAM is now able to run 30% faster because of FSB sync issues I had previously. My room temperature has dropped 3 degrees and my CPU now idles at 39 degrees instead of 44. I also no longer need high airflow in my case so I switched my 4 case fans to silent ones and my room is jut altogether so much more pleasant to be in.

I haven't compared my electricity bills but I think at the very least, judging by the obvious reduction in waste heat, I've offset any increase caused by switching from my 22" monitor to a 32" TV for my main display.

Master-Athmos wrote:

2) Buy (and install) a newer graphics card which is energy-efficient. Cheap, used Radeon 4890s are beginning to flood the market and used very little power at idle especially.

Actually all of the 48xx cards were bad at idle power consumption. You still could do something about it by using software which makes them use even lower clocks but still the results weren't that good. That then was one of the improvements of the new 5000 series which does a great job at this...

4890 was a unique case IIRC since it was actually based on an improved architecture rather than just being a higher-clocked 4870. As such it did actually have reasonably good idle power usage if I remember right.