Hey Bill Nye, "Are You For or Against Fracking?" | Big Think.
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- čas přidán 15. 06. 2015
- Hey Bill Nye, "Are You For or Against Fracking?"
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So let's talk about fracking. In today's edition of #tuesdayswithbill, the Science Guy answers Susan's question about hydraulic fracturing and green energy. Fracking isn't a bad idea in theory, says Nye, but it can't be allowed to go unregulated. The Science Guy runs through a personal anecdote about fracking before noting that new technological advances have opened the door to irresponsible practices with severe environmental and public health consequences. While it would be great to replace things like fracking with renewable energy, we're, at the moment, hampered in several ways, the most notable being battery limitations. That said, it doesn't mean our potential green energy future isn't one to get excited about.
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BILL NYE, THE SCIENCE GUY:
Bill Nye, scientist, engineer, comedian, author, and inventor, is a man with a mission: to help foster a scientifically literate society, to help people everywhere understand and appreciate the science that makes our world work. Making science entertaining and accessible is something Bill has been doing most of his life. In Seattle Nye began to combine his love of science with his flair for comedy, when he won the Steve Martin look-alike contest and developed dual careers as an engineer by day and a stand-up comic by night. Nye then quit his day engineering day job and made the transition to a night job as a comedy writer and performer on Seattle's home-grown ensemble comedy show “Almost Live." This is where “Bill Nye the Science Guy®" was born. The show appeared before Saturday Night Live and later on Comedy Central, originating at KING-TV, Seattle's NBC affiliate. While working on the Science Guy show, Nye won seven national Emmy Awards for writing, performing, and producing. The show won 18 Emmys in five years. In between creating the shows, he wrote five children's books about science, including his latest title, “Bill Nye's Great Big Book of Tiny Germs." Nye is the host of three currently-running television series. “The 100 Greatest Discoveries" airs on the Science Channel. “The Eyes of Nye" airs on PBS stations across the country. Bill's latest project is hosting a show on Planet Green called “Stuff Happens." It's about environmentally responsible choices that consumers can make as they go about their day and their shopping. Also, you'll see Nye in his good-natured rivalry with his neighbor Ed Begley. They compete to see who can save the most energy and produce the smallest carbon footprint. Nye has 4,000 watts of solar power and a solar-boosted hot water system. There's also the low water use garden and underground watering system. It's fun for him; he's an engineer with an energy conservation hobby. Nye is currently the Executive Director of The Planetary Society, the world's largest space interest organization.BILL NYE, THE SCIENCE GUY
Bill Nye, scientist, engineer, comedian, author, and inventor, is a man with a mission: to help foster a scientifically literate society, to help people everywhere understand and appreciate the science that makes our world work. Making science entertaining and accessible is something Bill has been doing most of his life......
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TRANSCRIPT:
Susan: Hi Bill. My name is Susan, aka primordial soup, and I have a question about fracking. Are you for it or against it and why? And on the subject of energies what’s the holdup with the green energies? Is it that there’s not enough investment money, not enough profits, not enough public interest, other, all of the above? Thank you for answering my question.
Bill Nye: Are you primal or primordial? If it’s a primordial soup I love you. So let’s talk about fracking. I left Boeing because they wanted me to work on the 767 airplane, which wasn’t going to fly for 15 years. And when you’re a young guy that just seems like a really long time. So I took a job as an engineer in a shipyard at the place where they skim oil slicks. They made, at that time, the best or the most popular oil slick skimming boat. And then that led to a job for me in the oil field. I worked in the oil patch for a while where they frack. Now my uncle, my beloved mother’s younger brother really was this guy. He was a geologist, graduated from Johns Hopkins and he got a job with - then he was in the Army during the Korean War as an engineer....
To read the transcript, please go to. bigthink.com/videos/views-on-...
I nearly died when he said "Soup Woman".
Headrock lmao...me too
I too nearly died at some point in the predetermined future.
This is how I answer questions when I'm stoned
Lmfaooooooo. ,🤣
I love getting my really smart, self educated neighbour stoned. He can talk for hours and I never get bored. He's always very apologetic the next day.
Well you're doing much better than me...I usually sit there with my mouth open looking like I'm catching flies.... 😂
🤣🤣🤣
"I have a question"
**Asks 8 questions**
"Thank you for answering my question"
he still didn't say if he is against fracking
Hi Hikikomori: he's against two things: irresponsible fracking (pushing the edges of the approved drilling area too far?) and lack of controls on environmental pollution and subsequent free release of greenhouse gasses. Nuanced answer, but still an answer.
@@jilliansmith7123 I don't care
Hi Hikikomori: odd. I thought when you wrote your post above that you "cared" at least one small iota. My mistake. (And the answer was in the video, so you're right, if you'd cared, you could have seen it there. Odd, though, that you then asked.) I promise, unless I have a stroke, if I remember your name on other video comments, I'll assume you post when you literally have nothing better to do, and I'll leave you alone. Perhaps you can return that courtesy.
@@jilliansmith7123 I'm just venting man
So basically the solution is to tax the crap out of anything that pollutes and then to use it to subsidize renewable energy?
Yup, that's what "green taxes" are supposed to be but they are just used and measured as extra profit. Makes the company or government sound good and gets them more money.
CasMullac I don`t get it.
Nebojsa Galic ah, well here in the UK I think about 70% of out petrol price is tax and some is supposed to go towards the environmental effects of using the fuel but not as much as would make a difference.
There are taxes on carbon heavy industries if they go above so many tons of carbon a year. Stupidly they are allowed (or at least they were) to trade away the unused carbon allocation to other companies so they can keep on polluting.
There are lots of problems like this where companies and governments are doing _just enough_ to help the environment to make themselves look good but not actually make a difference.
CasMullac Ah so all the measures so far have been on the right track, juts woefully inadequate?
Seems so. It looks more like it's seen as a fad, a way to get publicity, sell products, gain votes or increase profits.
We have a "Quarry Battery" here in the UK. It pumps water uphill into a high altitude lake at night when the electricity is cheaper and there is less demand - and during periods of high demand (Usually everyone making a cup of tea during the adverts of something popular on TV) it lets the water flow back down though a hydroelectric power station. It can go from 0 to full power output in 15 seconds and can power a large city. A very efficient way of storing a large amount of energy.
Alan Bacon yeah, practice known outside uk as well :) this is not "green" energy though (compared to the Bill's massive piston) but just an energy price manipulation... sadly
4ndR3w True but if the energy was tied directly to solar, wind or wave you can cut out the conventional energy sources to allow for full eco circuit for the system. As much as we have discussed wind and solar no one has discussed wave also that the fact that its always light somewhere in the world, just a shame that we cant work together as a species yet to make that viable.
Conductors and capacitors are what we need to improve now, while we look to better versions of solar and the future that hopefully Fusion will bring.
SangoProductions21 Are you sure that it is not? It doesn't really matter that it is mechanical, imo. It is a storage of energy which came from *sun light* -> converted to electricity to power water pumps -> potential energy of water then converted back into electricity by turbines -> electricity generators,.... There are losses of course and it would demand huge system for it to work. But then again we would need massive amounts of batteries as we know them today as well on another hand.... And both systems have their lifetime, piston or el. batteries.
This Bill's piston system is just a artificial dam/hydro-power-plant in disguise. :D
4ndR3w "it is a storage of energy which came from sun light " - it's not. It's a storage of energy, period. It doesn't matter where it comes from. As he said: Could be nuclear, or solar, or wind, but it also could come from coal powerplants. It makes zero difference. There's NOTHING more or less green in a piston idea than in what Quarry Battery Company is doing right now. Only difference is that piston could be more easily build on a large scale than Quarry Battery is.
SkywalkerWroc Energy absorbed/transformed from Sun light IS green energy, period. Can't get more greener than that.
Winds are consequences of Sun, water on higher altitudes is result of Sun, and so on...
You cannot create energy out of nothing, it had to "come" from somewhere and Sun is way to go.
I'm done here, peace.
I was a Petroleum engineer and at the start of my career, I worked as a production engineer that designed fracking jobs. Later I was a Reservoir engineer and did computer simulations. This was back in the early 1980's. Back then, we did have directional drilling, but didn't have the very short radius direction drilling, with extremely accurate ability to steer the drill bit. We did frack jobs that were sort of like stabs in the dark, as far as where the fracking was going. In the two shale formations we fracked California, we just did huge, giant, stupidly big frack jobs, millions of lbs of sand(and millions of dollars) and row after row of huge tanks full of gelled fracking water. We didn't know the directions the fracture were growing and the heights they were growing. Hydraulic fracture grow like two "D's" enlarging away from the well bore, the "D" getting both more bulged out but also growing in height. The directions were only guesses, and have to do with the regional tectonic stress conditions in the rock at the reservoir level. Ideally, the fractures would intersect the natural fracture system, but that's not how it works. The natural fractures almost always go the same as the induced fractures.
When short radius directional drilling was developed in the late 1980's(by Arco, where I worked), this allowed steering the well bore to go perpendicular to the direction of natural fractures(and what induced fractures will grow with huge hydraulic energy flogged at the well formations). The technology to steer the well drilling got better and better in the 1990s with microprocessor technology. With a directionally short radius well, it is possible to go into an old well, mill out the casing enough to kick off a new horizontal well bore exactly in the perfect direction to intersect natural fractures, and to make one giant, stab in the dark fracture job become a surgically precise directional horizontal well, that can be fractured in many many small frack jobs that all stay right exactly where we want them. That's why fracking is so big now. The technology, the blunt, stab in the dark technology goes back to the 1960's. It didn't work all that well. The new fracking is incredibly precise and mostly, high successful and lucrative, and old dead wells can get incredible new life, plus new wells are rapidly paid out. Hence the US is now almost energy independent, and we now have a 100+ year supply of natural gas from tight shales. And the fracking is so much safer than it used to be. This is part of why many oil people don't understand the hatred. We are doing it so much better now, or rather, it used to be so nasty, dirty and uncontrolled.
A well written post, sir. Sadly, too many people don't understand the advancements made in the exploration and drilling industry.
I have a frack going on next to my house & it’s freezing outside. Why in the heck would they wanna frack while everything is freezing. It seems like a good way to over complicate an already complicated job. Their water lines are freezing, they are having to thaw everything, & most of the workers are just standing around waiting for the lines to thaw out. Seems like a lot of wasted money to pay people to stand around. Why not just wait until the temp comes back up & frack it.
+Chuck Goecke I absolutely have no reason to doubt anything you said. However, burning natural gas still adds CO2 to the atmosphere. We still have this massive global fossil-fuel-burning (as opposed to turning FFs into materials) addiction problem that is causing catastrophic global warming /climate change. So, even with near-perfect fracking, the product - CH4 - is mainly consumed by being burned/oxidized, not turned into material goods.
Thanks for that explanation Chuck.
Why are so may people against it though. Apart from the Oil people?
@@theultimatereductionist7592 Drink fracking fluid and tell me you're worried about carbon dioxide.
When he gets a bit distracted on the subject and goes off on a small tangent explaining something, i just love it. He's so nerdy and charming.
Also, "soup woman" i died laughing.
so he never actually answered the question "Are You For or Against Fracking?" but he sounded pro if it was regulated
Exactly. We've been doing it for decades, it's just the unregulated, irresponsible aspect thats causing problems now.
That's the thing, it seems like a simple question, but it really is a lot more complicated. He didn't even hit on all of the issues, and some he only mentioned in an offhand way.
Can industry be meaningfully regulated? I would guess no... from my limited experience
+Critter Heyhey I guess my opinion is the industry will cut corners like crazy so better to just ban it all.
Bleh, now you are just being one of those rude people on the internet who is trying to get offended.
Every time I hear Bill say "Change the world" my faith in this world is restored.
ME TOO!
I'm glad there are other awesome, optimistic people out there :D
Mike Orr Until the next "This Week in Stupid" video. Yet another reason why we need to start cloning humans. Reason 1 is to preserve Morgan Freeman's voice.
Maybe I should make a compilation video of Bill saying it then >.
leerman22 You want to clone God? That's sacrilege!
Way to go for using metric.
-Love from Europe
***** its not perfect, there are qiantities based off water and such as well which doesnt translate to certain kinds of work like high temp and or high pressure, or when dealing with molecules it can be equally cumbersome because masses of elements are weird numbers anyway.
***** that argument doesn't really hold up when you are using a base 60 for time. Count that stuff, you go crazy.
***** it came from the Sumerians in ~2-3000 BC and it was passed down to the Babylonians and basically everyone else. it's just hard for us to change what we're used to. Time is usually harder than distance for most, but for some, it's the same difficulty.
***** Also, I'm not sure anyone definitely knows why they chose 60. Some people think it's because of certain stars, number of fingers plus palms times fingers, etc
***** yeah
I have always dreamed about writing a master thesis about how much energy we could generate from the millions of gym's in the world, who largely use friction or air as resistance, which just create wasted heat.
Imagine if every spinning bike in the world used a variable dynamo as resistance instead, and similar for the weight machines.
I'm not saying it would change the world, but I think it would at least make every gym on the planet net positive on the grid, basically making every gym a micro power plant. And all this with energy we are already generating, but currently wasting!
it's actually very expensive to do. I taught an intro engineering class recently, and one group of students studied the gym on campus. they found that it would take roughly 50 years of ideal conditions for their spin cycle energy harvesters to break even, as opposed to around 20 years for solar energy. Another problem is what Bill already mentioned, storing the energy. Using human produced energy is only really viable on the small scale, with things like flashlights.
Like in ep 2 of Black Mirror?
+teyxen yes, just like that, except the students accounted for free will of the average college student. they would only be using the bikes for an hour at a time, and not all at once.
We'd have decent power but just in January XD
I've had a similar idea, but instead of a gym a big disco or festival. Design the floor to stand on springs, the people dancing generate energy that get directed through the floor, which makes the floor slightly bounce up and down. Store all that wasted energy and it might actually be worth it in the long run.
0:30
I can't be the only American that went "Bill! Bill! Bill! Bill!"
Every time I see him...
Science rules
Naw, Im wit you bro. Got the song stuck in my head now. BILL NYE, THE SCIENCE GUY - BILL, BILL, BILL, BILL! (4 bills, not 8 ;-)
I much prefer to get my "science on" the old fashioned way. I LEARN it without the help of the guy who seeks to make "science" a liberal subject. I mean he takes the one thing that does not care the least about politics, and attempts to politicize it. Screw "Bill Nye" the non-science guy. He absolutely knows jack sh*t. People are too lazy for science, so they co-opt their science study to cheese heads like this d*mbazz leftist. Yeah it's sad all right.
@@waxer12g87 waxer 12G and his Nobel for research in Physics dropped a savage bomb on some liberal science guy. Love it
The percentage of fracking that is safe is the same as the percentage of oil executives who have their homes and offices right next to a fracking operation. 0%.
chrisose If it's so unsafe, why haven't there been much issue with it other than water contamination which is of varying mild levels of danger?
I am a oil and gas executive and I see a well which was frack right across the street from my house.
austi01101110 it has been established that the earth quakes are not a result of fracking which BTW has been going on in Oklahoma for 70 years. It is suspected that the cause is from high volume saltwater disposal wells in the lower part of the Arbuckle formation near fault lines in the granite base rock. The water is suspected to be lubing the faults and releasing the stress across them. That is an entirely different issue than fracking.
This high volume disposal wells only came into existence a few years ago with the advent of what is called dewatering wells that have a very low oil cut percentage and therefor have to move huge quantiles of salt water to make much oil.
The Oklahoma Corp Commission is taking steps to reduce the quantiles of water and plug back these wells to a shallower depth to prevent the earthquakes. It will take time to reverse the effects.
***** I live in Colorado. We have just as much fracking going on out here.
Your largest earthquake in 2014 was a 4.0. If you think a 4.0 earthquake is going to damage ANYTHING you're just wrong. Still failing to see how it's dangerous.
Also, fracking doesn't cause earthquakes. earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/map/#%7B%22feed%22%3A%2230day_m25%22%2C%22search%22%3Anull%2C%22listFormat%22%3A%22default%22%2C%22sort%22%3A%22newest%22%2C%22basemap%22%3A%22grayscale%22%2C%22autoUpdate%22%3Atrue%2C%22restrictListToMap%22%3Atrue%2C%22timeZone%22%3A%22utc%22%2C%22mapposition%22%3A%5B%5B26.78484736105119%2C-120.41015624999999%5D%2C%5B48.429200555568386%2C-85.2978515625%5D%5D%2C%22overlays%22%3A%7B%22plates%22%3Atrue%7D%2C%22viewModes%22%3A%7B%22map%22%3Atrue%2C%22list%22%3Atrue%2C%22settings%22%3Atrue%2C%22help%22%3Afalse%7D%7D
Oklahoma just has shit going down there. Look at Texas, Northern Alaska, Colorado or Pennsylvania. No earthquakes.
Wesley Medford
So would you buy water that was bottled at a fracking site? I am betting the answer is "no".
So if you wouldn't want to deal with the effects of fracking why should anyone else?
Out of context quoting
"stir it up, soup woman"
- Bill Nye
Question:Is fracking bad
Bill:gets into working at boeing
Irresponsible fracking is bad, was, I think, what he said. Seemed like that means drilling past the edges of the approved drill area, which would be really easy to do since no one can see where your drill head is going when it's underground...
@@jilliansmith7123 except for every inch of drill pipe being logged by about 4 people.
Bill Angell: Thanks, Good point. So drilling off-site is something they know darn well they're doing? I'm not exactly surprised that they do it anyway. DANG.
I love how he says "I mean I did it my whole life, I mean hey man."
I like Bill Nye because of his objective approach to issues, he seems more concerned with what works rather then kowtowing to an underlying liberal or conservative agenda.
In my opinion He doesn't care what either side thinks of him. all he want is what is best for the world and future generations.
***** As -science- we all should be.
***** Don't be hating on scientists because they have a bias towards the facts ;P
*****
Not by doctorate, but near enough as makes no difference. He can still kick your intellectual ass.
*****
Do you define a scientist by their doctorate, or as one who practices and applies the scientific method? I go for the latter, as it says much more about the person.
Bill, Bill, Bill, Bill, Bill, Bill, Bill, Bill, Bill, Bill, ...
***** science rules!!
Inertia is a property of matter
MKWIILuke4TW *property of mass
Aborysa proprdy uv masstter .
Daulton Baird :
We do have those energy storages here in Europe. We don't use a giant piston though, it's simply two giant pools filled with water and one of the pools (size of a lake) is at an higher altitude. So, during the day, we use green energy to pump up the water from the lower pool to the upper one to store kinetic energy and at night, we let the water flow back down going through the turbines to retransform it into electricity. There is some electric energy lost due to the pumps, but the whole principle is a safe and green energy storage. Plus, on rainy days (which happen often) the upper pool gets filled with completely free energy in form of rain drops we can also make flow down the turbines. So if you do the calculation, nature helps us regain some of the lost energy during the pumping process, the system is so efficient that it's profitable that it still generates money while it only sells electricity at night time prices (I don't know how about the US but here, electricity is cheaper at night due to less demand).
Well, the energy storage isn't a dam. We do have one of those here too but they work differently. Dams do have an impact on the region since they reduce living space for animals, but you can simply resettle as many as you can in a safe place. When we build buildings that require trees to be removed, we actually move them to an other place and we plant new trees on a surface equal of the building in an area that doesn't have trees yet. For the energy storage, it's just a giant pool that always contains the same amount of water, so it's surface can't increase with flooding not causing animals loosing their livingspace. Since it's a close system and not fueled on a river that humans eventually depend on downstream, it also has no political impact either. I guess, in the US, you have some open-cast mines that aren't used anymore. Layer them with cement so that the water can't go into the ground (important for environmental protection) and use them as storages with other pools than are situated in lower altitudes. The mines would get a new function and would be a perfect energy storage and if it rains often, even energy source that is quite cheap.
I think the primary perk of these pistons is that they are far cheaper to build but most importantly, are FAR easier to locate. Any location have a piston dumped in it. As bill said, you could even stick a forest on top of it.
Also, I think people have a very fixed idea of what a hydroelectric power station powered by a reservoir can look like. I would assume that most are dams but not all of these types of power stations use dams. One in Wales, Dinorwig, is just a hill. All the workings are underground so from the outside it just looks like a hill.
The major ecological drawbacks of dams (depending on where they are situated) is that they alter river flow and that alters habitats downstream, far from the immediate radius of the actual dam. Aswan dam is apparently ruining the river mouth of the nile because it's altered the way sediment flows down stream which is preventing it from being replenished. Look that up too get the accurate picture but that's the gist of it. Dams often do impact the immediate vicinity but that can be pretty much entirely mitigated with responsible planning and strong consideration to the wildlife. There are a few in Wales that just blend in to the point that nobody really questions it so it is very doable.
I'd say they are more expensive to build than what we use here. Simply because they work exactly the same as ours, only that they don't keep the dirt from building the pool to make a piston of it. So while ours are finished building, the other still needs to add crafting the piston out of the dirt (quite expensive since we don't have the technology yet) which costs even more. Our energy storage could work perfectly fine all underground, the reason they kept the upper pool outside is that it can collect rain water to generate more energy. The piston one can't since at some point, the piston is heavier than the water flowing in and it would have a maximum height it can rise before being too heavy.
Interesting stuff, but you'd have to make sure none of the animals were killed or harmed. From an ethical and moral standpoint, any harm on the environment, nature and animals for our convenience is terrible. From a practical standpoint, if we keep encroaching on nature and animals, even if we save most of them for each X we build, we'll slowly lose them over and over.
Another idea, especially for wind energy at coasts, is to build concrete spheres in depths of up to 700m below the surface. These hollow spheres have a diameter of 30m and a turbine which generates electricity when water rushes in at high pressure. Excess energy can be used to pump the water out and when energy is needed you just let the water back in. The advantage is that you need less volume of water compared to a lake... Quite similar to the idea with the piston actually ;)
forschung-energiespeicher.info/en/projektschau/gesamtliste/projekt-einzelansicht/95/Kugelpumpspeicher_unter_Wasser/
It's nice to see someone so passionate about education, he realizes that the millions of educated minds could do much more than he alone could possibly ever do. I think that's a very mature thing to understand
That pump idea is genius!
I think I'm becoming a fan of Bill Nye..... omg.. the nitroglycerin just froze over.. whoops.. I mean hell just froze over :)
Seriously though, good video... and you can tell he's not reading a script or being told what to say...
This is video gold !
dutchsinse I've found him to be a much more tolerable science enthusiast than Neil DeGrasse Tyson, especially when he keeps his The Science Guy persona to a minimum.
dutchsinse Bill Nye is the man, so awesome!
zshadows What's wrong with Tyson?
Bob Smith Too popsci.
I'm pretty sure he's not. :| Has he ever brought up the false 10% brain myth or the left/right brain myth? Or any of that bs? Is he just too mainstream for you? Hipster much?
I love Bill so much. Watching his show in school is probably what sparked my love of science. Or if I just had that spark inherently (if that's even possible...to love learning from birth, I mean), he turned that spark into a blazing inferno.
Hearing him speak just makes me happy; remembering how excited I'd get when we got to watch an episode. And the entire class singing the theme song, knowing the teachers usually wanted to fast forward through it, but wouldn't dare ruin our moment.
BILL NYE THE SCIENCE GUY
BILL BILL BILL BILL (science rules!!)
BILL BILL BILL BILL BILL NYE THE SCIENCE GUY
Cool topic, definitely agree with Bill. One of my organic chem professors told us that an early job of hers was synthesizing a fluid to be pumped into the Earth, to replace matter removed by fracking. As the fluid is pumped under pressure, it has low viscosity, then once stationary in the ground it becomes nearly solid -- always thought that was cool.
"I mean, hey man" lmao that line is officially stoner-approved 5:11
It is not
"Bill Nye
CEO, The planetary society"
It is
"Bill Nye The Science Guy"
He's a mechanical engineer and has worked a lot on things related to these issues.
i dont care. his name is legally bill nye the science guy
Growing up in the 90's was awesome! We had Bill Nye and all the good shows.
I didn't exactly _grow up_ in the nineties (born in '98 as you can tell from my name), but VHS tapes (lol VHS) of Bill's show were an awesome addition to my science classes throughout [probably] 3rd, 4th, and 5th grade. DVDs later on, but I think up until 8th grade (stupid high school taking Bill out of the curriculum...), we were still watching Bill Nye videos in science classes. Especially when doing units on physics.
Edited because I'm in my bed, and midway through writing this comment, I needed to reposition (ie flop from laying on my right side to my left), and in doing so, my fat thumb somehow hit the send button.
"GMOs are bad"
Bill Nye the Science Guy
"GMOs are great"
Bill Nye, Bill Nye CEO, The planetary society
He makes a lot of sense. A lot of electrical inefficiencies comes from energy conversions. One way to deal with that is to convert to electricity and keep it that way until you finally convert to mechanical, but an issue with this is how poor we are right now at storing large amounts of electricity. We could very well instead store energy mechanically instead, which we have centuries of experience doing.
Just a slight point to clarify, there is an initial explosive used to fracture the rock, but that is part one of two main sequences. The second is pumping fluid that is proven to be toxic and carcinogenic is pumped at up to 10,000psi using a series of pump trucks to inflate the fractured rock further. Then the gasses and liquid are retrieved and separated. The first problem lies in being unable to keep that toxic fluid from breaching aquifers and contaminating drinking water/soil. The second problem as seen in Oklahoma and elsewhere is that the once solid rock, after the fluid/gas is retrieved, is broken and slumps causing isolated earthquakes and depressions under the surface. Hopefully this helps to answer any additional questions you may have had and hopefully it wasn't too long of an explanation.
"Stir it up Soup Woman!" Love it!! 10:09
(assuming he is referring to the woman who asked the question, primal soup)
Primordial Soup
"We have a phenomenon, called night." Bill Nye - Sometime five years ago.
Another option, for house-level storage, is compressed air. It's similar to the piston approach - just convert energy into another form, then convert it back as needed. There are compressed air motors designed to power cars. They can easily power an entire house. It's not as efficient as batteries, but you just add a few more solar cells to the roof or another wind turbine. If you need more storage, just make a bigger tank.
Great energy storage idea bill!! Why not instead of blowing up a lot of rock, just use one of the many open pit mines that have been completely mined. Now you already have the pit built and a huge amount of tailings sitting beside for weight on the pistons.
All of the roads, power systems (infrastructure) would already be in place. Open pit mines are often in rural areas with lots of land nearby for a solar/wind farm.
It could even be part of the reclamation plan that mining companies are required to submit for land rehabilitation.
Out of all the alternative energy methods I've ever heard of, not one person, group, or conspiracy theorist has ever mentioned the piston idea.
it wasn't an alternative energy source, it's massive-scale power *storage*. and yes, proper power storage and transmission are definitely sorely needed; I love the sound of this idea. (another poster mentioned doing it with two water reservoirs instead of a block of concrete in water.)
Its all beyond me, but wouldnt lifting the piston up require a lot more energy than youd get back out of it later?
Quothcraft why? it won't be perfect, as any system, it will be less than 100% efficient, but it is a good way of storing energy, hypothetically. law of conservation of energy applies just as much to lifting objects as to other things.
Oh yea I get that, I just mean wouldnt the conversion rate be really wasteful?
I guess its not since hes suggesting it, but Im just surprised that its efficient
I think the biggest problem with that is the same reason we can't make a giant space array of solar to beam energy back down. It's 100% possible to do and get planetary energy needs met, but only one country has a receiver which means infinite debate over who gets to put their hand over the faucet.
I hadn't heard of the idea of using elevated water as an energy storage source. And it sounds fantastic! It would be much cheaper than buying and maintaining battery banks, and as he says we're already very good at drilling holes. Just use the clean power source that isn't capable of giving power all the time to lift water at the bottom of the hole to the top, control a massive valve according to current power demands of the grid, and as the water flows through the valve it powers a turbine that gives continuous and controllable power output. Why doesn't this idea have more buzz?
Good question.
It already is common a in a lot of countries. I don't think it was needed in america so far, since you have very reliable ways of generating electricity. EDIT: it actually is used in the US as well, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bath_County_Pumped_Storage_Station , this is the biggest one worldwide.
Pump storage power plants are located in many places in the U.S.A (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pumped-storage_hydroelectricity). However, this is a little different than what Bill Nye was describing. He described a large cylindrical water storage drilled into the earth with a heavy weighted piston on top. It works basically the same as pump storage but doesn't require an elevation differential to create hydraulic head. This pressure is used to spin a turbine that spins a generator. The generator is used as a motor to pump the water back into storage cylinder or reservoir.Since I work in the electrical utility industry, we face many challenges interconnecting wind generation to the grid. They are electrically noisy, constantly adding and removing reactive power, and intermittent. Using Wind energy to operate pump storage would be an better way to provide constant reliable electricity for our customers.
Oh it does it's just that you were asleep. So you woke now? LMAO
@@rickmorenojr Hey, 1970 Racoon Mountain, Tennessee. Construction began.
Bruh we need that renewable energy shit right quick
That idea of storing excess energy in the form of gravitational potential energy with water... so elegant. That's impressive.
one of the reasons i love Bill Nye is because of his sound effects!
i love that no matter how long he does this, he still explains things with examples like children's sandwiches.
He's great isn't he?
Much like Neil DeGrasse Tyson, Richard Dawkins - Bill Nye is a great communicator & while the "dirty work" may be carried out by other scientists, we need more people like these guys to show how important investing in science & technology is.
Bill Nye's grasp of science is not sufficient to be mentioned in the same breath as Dawkins. Frankly, he is an embarrassment to the science community. As a children's entertainer he was ok. But when he jumped the shark when he decided to go "full scientist". His video with Al Gore demonstrating his obvious lack of knowledge about what infrared light is, seals the deal for me. Glass blocks infrared Bill. That is how greenhouses work...which you are vociferous about.
Bill Nye is a hyped up scientific ignoramus.
sdkee Get over yourself man! Dawkins may be of greater intellect but why is that an issue? Nye does have a BA in mechanical engineering. Does that make him a scientist? No but hes not trying to be, he has assumed the role of a communicator of science. Does he make an occasional mistake? Yes, does he know more than the average american about science & technology? Absolutely. Should he continue to push science, engineering & technology as important subjects that we should invest more in? Of cooouuuuuurrrrrrsssssseeee!
Suppose an Apple-Store "genius" decided to be a "communicator of science". And suppose this Apple-store "genius" was correct 90% of the time and completely ass-backwards wrong the other 10% of the time. What does that do to science?
Bill Nye is this dude. wattsupwiththat.com/climate-fail-files/gore-and-bill-nye-fail-at-doing-a-simple-co2-experiment/
If you know anything about science, this vid is the coffin nail.
And as an engineer, I can check these results. And they work. They obviously work. Had you put a gun to my head and asked me if Nye's experiment was faulty I would have
stopped shitting my pants and calmly told you: "easy: glass is not the same as the atmosphere". To Bill Nye, they are both see-through, so same (I guess?).
He is a lightweight. In videos where he is challenged on something difficult he just slides away. Fine, for kids, but if he wants to play with the adults then he needs to realize that some of these adults way more background on things like this than he does and so he sounds like a fucking putz. And the places he's delving into, there a at least tens of millions of people more qualified than him. WAY MORE.
So I will say again: FUCK BILL NYE. Fuck him for being a poseur with no background (unless you count "Dancing with the Stars") pretending like knows shit, when he is just reading it off Wikipedia (or equivalent).
And fuck the networks for *not* finding somebody more suitable for explaining science.
sdkee Your engineering background taints your opinion though, doesn't it? I imagine you work with educated folks & probably socialise with educated folks. For people that have no STEM's background surely folks like Nye help? I do take your point about the 10% incorrect answers though, bad form.
Who would you select? They should already be liked by the general public & have a science background.
"Sometimes it comes out in somebody's sink." ... only from accidental ground spills and blowouts... not from the actual act of fracking itself. Felt clarification was in order since most fracking is done 1-2 miles underground whereas the water table rarely even goes more than a few hundred feet deep (usually MUCH less than that) and there's thousands of feet of rock between the fractured shale and the water table.
A fascinating exploration from Bill's experience and point of view. I was awestruck from A till Z :)
Thank you for asking this question and thank you Bill!
If you could somehow give the piston buoyancy when it is going into "up mode" and then decrease buoyancy when it was going down, it might take even less power have it go up. You could do it in a way similar to a submarine using water tanks perhaps.
visnevskiscom Yea it might take energy but it could take LESS energy then to actually have to PUSH that huge piston up
visnevskiscom I'm not proposing a perpetual motion machine. You'd have to do the math, but it could save energy. You can use gravity to drain the tanks too so that would help.
niqueth If you drain it when its at the bottom, yeah, that would make pushing it up more efficient, but it would make the pushing it down again less efficient. If you want to be able to push it down again with more force you would need to fill it at the top which means pumping the same volume of water, or whatever else you fill it with, up to the same height
niqueth Nice profile picture. :). I dig the reference.
StrykerTen But you wouldn't actually be pushing the piston down. Gravity takes care of that. So all you would need is the energy to lift the lighter, buoyant piston using either water pumping into the larger tank that the piston goes in or possibly some sort of other method or combination of methods. Then you'd need to pump the water back into all the tanks and just let gravity take over. IDK if it could be more efficient but it seems like pumping water back into it would require less energy then trying to lift the thing at full mass. I'm no physicist or engineer though so I could be wrong.
The UK Pays tax based on CO2 Emissions.
Must suck to own a computer
Holy shit an unbiased science based look at fracking. The main problem that Ive seen in the oilfield is that anyone who would know enough about the process to regulate it work for the oil companies making six figures rather than government wages. DEP "inspections" were a joke.
I worked 15 years as fracking engineer. The truth is, oil wells plug, production comes down, you need fracking and other stimulation jobs to restore the production or to increase it a little above normal. If you don’t do these maintenance jobs, oil production worldwide would come crashing down and you would be paying 10 or 15 dollars a gallon at the gas station. Plain and simple. Fracking is necessary while we transition to clean energy.
Thanks to battlestar Galactica I can not listen to this without laughing.
Darrell Owen So say we all.
I have also watched the show I didn't catch it?
Vaibhav Gupta You must be a fracking cylon then.
Darrell Owen ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)
Darrell Owen Starbuck, what do you hear?
It's like he's talking at a normal rate if you use 1.5x speed.
It’s amazing how much thought he puts into what he says.
6:45 Enourmous Energy Storage Capeabilities. There is a place in Denmark where we have a test of such enourmous energy storage. The energy created is used to lift tonnes of any material (I believe this test uses sand) with hydraulics and then locked into position. Then, when the energy is needed, the hydraulics are slowly lowered by gravity and thus recreates the energy used.
I know this is a RANDOM comment, but goodness, I feel Bill Nye would be a GREAT story teller and put up some really good, long, and interesting conversations. He's one of those people who just know plenty in every field within life and the world. Great overall man.
big think should get Elon Musk on
Elon Musk doesn't have time to be a talking head. He's too busy actually accomplishing stuff.
+Adam Wojtczak oh snap
+Adam Wojtczak shots fired
+Adam Wojtczak OHHHHH SHOTS FIRED SHOTS FIRED
+Adam Wojtczak true story. He's got the same vision. He's actually making a 'better battery' as we speak.
"Nobody pays for putting CO2 in the air anymore."
That may be true in US, but in EU about 60-70% (!!!) of the price of gas and diesel is tax. The tax is being put on the consumer, not on the corporations (that are mainly not based in EU and don't care about that), but still. In Europe the tax is very very high. In US it is nearly 0. For the price of 1 liter of gas in EU you get 3 liters of gas in USA.
Not Americas fault European politicians choose to overly tax the consumer. Also not Europes fault that life in America is so much better, perhaps look to Asia? Room fills with laughter.
No,you had tax before, it is not related to Carbon, still ,I wish we'd have higher gas taxes,Trump tried but Dems protested.
WAXER 12G Thousands of people dying because of guns every year, hundreds of school shootings, corrupt and greedy president, on the brink of war with Iran and over half a million families go bankrupt every year due to medical fees. Life in the U.S looks shit compared to Europe. 😂
Conclusion: I rather live in the US than any other government owned country.
As a society, it's time for us to start desalinating at the coast and pumping a reverse flowing river inland if we are going to expect to have enough irrigation water to feed ourselves. Although recent rains have replenished some of the colorado river, we are still overtaxing it, and Las Vegas and Las Angeles aren't going anywhere. Rising food prices this year directly reflect the water shortage.
Bill starts out by saying "I love you." What a cool guy.
0:25
Bill Nye would be a great President.
HOPKIRK I'd gladly vote a ticket with Bill Nye and Neil DeGrasse Tyson. In fact, I wouldn't even care who was in which position. DC could use some great scientific minds that aren't beholden to major economic special interests. Imagine a White House populated with people who care more about SOLVING problems than they do about placing blame.
OmniphonProductions Can't you just write him in? If enough people would do that on the ballot, he'd get presidency.
QVear He's now officially on my "short list". Hell, I've exercised the "write-in" option in the last two presidential elections. Unless, the two major parties introduce somebody with more concern for the Constitution than any of the current contenders, I'll have no choice but to do so again.
He'd be the fist president to wear a bow tie. Lol.
HOPKIRK He would be a terrible president. Bill Nye seems like an honest man, and in this world, an honest man would be eaten alive.
Does Bill prefer the metric system above the imperial system? Did I just pick that up correctly?
+Bert-Jan Weening Of course he does. He is an academic and prefers international standards that actually make some sense:-)
+God Nondedju yes but the metric system has no aesthetic quality. 3, 4, 12. All beautiful numbers. 10, not so much.
Travis Krick A system is not supposed to be aesthetically pleasing (which is highly subjective), it is supposed to make sense and be useful / practical.
The imperial system lacks any sense or usefulness.
+God Nondedju
The way I see it is there are 2 types of countries:
1. the ones who use the metric system, and
2. the ones that have been. to. the. fricking. MOON.
+beastcohea
While I see your point, I'm sorry to be a party pooper:
The British invented the system. And they still largely use it, though I'm pretty sure they're in a transitional phase where they use some of it for some things.
When it comes to energy storage, they have a very interesting solution happening right now in Toronto. They sank weather balloons with concrete weights under Lake Ontario. When power is cheap and plentiful they fill the massive balloons with compressed air and when power is needed they release the air through a turbine. They were saying that it costs 1/10th of what batteries cost and the efficiency is comparable.
Most cities are beside a large body of water. Air is non toxic last time I checked.
It is similar to the piston idea yet way way easier to do.
I'm definitely no expert on fracking, but everything I've read says that the methane-bearing layers are much deeper than the groundwater layers. Bill made it sound like the methane seeped directly from these layers into groundwater, but what actually happens is that it can leak into the groundwater from the drill hole where it passes through the groundwater layer, if the drill hole is improperly sealed. Also, it can leak out of old, leaky or unsealed drill holes on the same field. The reason that might be important is that it would mean that groundwater pollution is not inevitable, if the fracking is done properly.
Working in the O&G industries I can say for a fact his understanding of a fracking operation is limited at best. They don't just shove an explosive charge down hole, the torpedo as he called it is known as a perforation gun and the charge used to perforate the well bore is minimal. They don't want a cavern left down hole but more of a series of small holes in the casing for fluids and gas to pass through back into the well bore to be flowed up through the well head on the surface. When they go from vertical drilling to horizontal drilling it's called the kick off and it's usually done over a 1/4 mile distance, not in 10 feet. You still have to fish casing pipe and tools up and down hole. The turn must be loose enough so the solid steel pipe can bend gently instead of becoming trapped. Is it perfect? Probably not, your real concern should be radioactive materials brought up from down hole. NORM it's called.
vf12497439 This man pretty much nailed it. I used to be a deep water driller in the Gulf of Mexico. Now, I have no experience fracking on land but I’ve done it offshore many many times and I can tell you there is a lot of time, money, planning and engineering going into a frack job. There is no simple charge dropped down a 30,000’ well in a “brazed” tube lol! Anyway like the vf12497439 man said, the danger is not the detonation but rather radiation and on land the chemicals they pump during the next phase which in my sector was referred to as the gravel pack. The acids and benzenes and other chemicals can easily contaminate underground water supplies. I love Bill Nye but he was a bit off mark on this one.
But Bill said not that's how it works now, he said this is the story his uncle told him, from probably 50 to 60 years agi
@@steffenjensen422 Ah we have a "Bill Nye Defender" here! LMAO
@@waxer12g87 so what
@@steffenjensen422 Hahahahhaa yeah so what dude I'm too lazy to learn facts myself so I rely on a "surrogate" to learn for me. Ahahahahahha. Funny guy
can old missile silos be retrofitted in new ways to store energy? you already have giant holes in the ground.
+unknown cuyler There's so many abandoned cold war missile silos all over the US, it would be fantastic if they could be retrofitted into energy storage facilities. It could even be packaged (for congress) as a way to create new jobs. Excellent point!
+Justin Simmons They need to be near population dense areas, exactly where the missile silos are not. Also, compared with the amount of energy we need, those places aren't that huge, or holes so expensive that we need to get fancy.
+unknown cuyler They already are in some locations
Growing up watching Bill Nye the Science Dude.. and boy.. it is already refreshing to hear his thoughts on real world events
Bill Nye, you inspire me. Tuesdays with Bill is probably the best thing to happen to me.
Bill Nye for president.
Rex vermin supreme 2016
Politics has a way of ruining good people so I'm against this
Anthony Harvey Thats why I don't like Bill, Tyson or Kaku, they're celebrity scientists and pander to the public more that look at realistic scientific solutions. The three would spend decades and billions researching their "earth" piston when there is currently a free source that could produce the same result. Its called the ocean tides. Powered by gravity and occurring on 75% of the entire planet. Ralisticly what sould be done is use the energy sources we have now and concentrate on the best energy souce for replacing them and thats solar technology. Quit wasting effort with wind generator or ethanol and begin making the big advances in solar.
And by the way if sideways fracking is irresponsible but bottom hole fracking isn't you do realize for both types of fracking you would either be piercing the water table or destabilizing the strata around it in both methods.
Anthony Harvey No your assuming using it in the current method, small, inefficient stations using the tides to make steam. Im referring to using the tides in the manner Nye was discussing with his huge piston. Not to create steam from the tides but to convert the potential energy into kinetic energy that would spin the dynamos.
1. No fish would be harmed from a piston type structure moving up and down with the tides
2. The cost would need to be researched but then what would be the cost of his ginormous earth piston, the damage to the environment blasting away the rock, the cost to manually lift the piston.
3. Changes in the weather would not occur because you are not taking energy out of the ocean you are taking the energy from the gravity of the moon.
Another simple idea to generate energy.send blimps into the jet stream with propeller turned generator on them. Of course in areas where planes do not fly.The jet stream flows non stop so the generators flow nonstop.The blimp anchor lines are also the transmission lines to carry the electricity down to the transformer station.
Bing bang boom. 24/7 wind generated electricity. Capacity could be increased with farms of the blimps. Wings could be attached to the generators to gain lift from the jet stream prolonging the flight time and strain placed on the blimp, or balloon.
Simple solutions that could be explored and tested on small scale, but instead these celebrity scientists push some cool fad like windmills and the next thing you know were trashing our land with the damn things, killing birds and getting basically nothing out of them.
Still all of these are just suggestions. My wish is that they would seriously scale back research R/D in crap like wind and geo thermal and focus more on solar. Solar will be what ultimately replaces fossil fuels IMO. During that development use the fossil fuels we have to power our society and pay for the extra research.
Nuclear is great. Easy to dispose of radioactive waster if the public would get educated. Fossle fuel is geological, you're not suggesting its solar because the sun made the plants grow before they went subterranean. You want to be technical on everything being solar because the sun fine go ahead, but its that mentality holding us back. Lets argue nomenclature all day while the world spins away. A farm of dynamo balloons could turn more turbines 24/7 than a hydro electric dam, and would cost less and cause no damage to the environment. and waves may be solar but tides are lunar...so what??
I fracking hate fracking.
John Greer ='(
Dominic London Are you Fraking Kidding me? Lol
Eddie Mendez It's my gas that he was....... OK, I'll go home now.
John Greer oh dreer oh dreer
John Greer you lost the pint Jonny boiyo
When they use fracking in industry, it's because it's cheaper, more efficient, much more versatile, and allows you to access vast amounts of oil and natural gas that would otherwise be too deep to mine. In my country, we frack to access reserves that are KILOMITRES deep underground. You still may have problems from cracks in the pipe or accidentally fracking in to an old well (there are literally thousands of old abandoned wells in our oil fields). But fracking itself is very beneficial to us and the environment.
I worked in the oilfield for years as well. Learned a lot. We would still under balanced Wells where we would be literally drilling in the earth as the gas would be rising out. This gas was never captured ever. Simply burned off into the atmosphere for the whole life of the drilling process which would take sometimes months. The constant burning flame was the size of a port-a-John to the size of a truck depending on the amount of gas (which they measured in "units") the intensity of the flame from 300 ft away was greater than that felt by the sun. On cold nights it would warm the entire area. Mostly the heat was felt through not convection but through radiance! Then the company would dig a huge hole and bury hundreds of barrels of oil and simply cover it up as one last "f*** you" to the environment before we'd move on to the next site. We were drilling at the time in North East Texas near Woodville and Livingston.
Hmmm... What about all the chemicals added/used during the fracking process? I remember reading something about thousands of gallons of water combined with chemicals in order to complete a drilling process, and having that water be considered no longer useable after all is done. Why is there no mention of that?
Compared to other uses of water by other industries the amount is small. Also they now reprocess frack water so they can use it on multiple frack jobs. Eventually it is injected in waste water disposal wells along with the produced saltwater that comes from most oil wells. Many times these wells are oil wells that have been depleted so we are putting the saltwater back from where it came.
Water is a renewable resource and most of it comes from evaporation of the oceans and I don't think they are going dry anytime soon.
Hank Blackstock
2-8 million gallons are used to frack one well, with some wells consuming much more. Now, with water shortages everywhere and the statistics of how much fresh water is left, lets do a little math, 500,000 active gas wells x 8 million gallons of water per fracking well x the number of times a well can be fracked (18 ) combined with 360 billion gallons of added chemicals and we get a staggering amount of fresh water wasted. With statistcs showing only 30-50% of the chemical filled water being recovered. And while you claim this water is injected into the ground, this does not tend to be the case, a quick search reveals the majority of this waste water is stored in open air pits that are left to evaporate. The evaporated water carries such chemicals as: Lead, Mercury, Uranium, Radium, Hydrochloric acid, and formaldehyde.
This is a very irresponsible way to use fresh water. To compare it to other industries is apples to oranges.
First of all your math is based on incorrect data. The 500,000 active wells means wells that are still producing not wells drilled each year. Some of these we'll have been producing for 70 years. With very rare exceptions wells are only fracked when they are first drilled. Multiple fracks are used when a horizontal well is first drilled the different parts of the horizontal leg.
www.theenergycollective.com/jessejenkins/205481/friday-energy-facts-how-much-water-does-fracking-shale-gas-consume
Hank Blackstock
Your asking me to beleive a site which is run by Siemens AG, and oil an gas products, systems and consultations company. I believe their word like a believe Monsanto's word about GMO saftey; not at all. I know its not 500,000 each year, but these wells can be re-fracked depending on certain situations and there are thousands of ( approximately 35,000 ) new sites dug each year.
Your mind is made up so I will not confuse you further with facts but bottom line is 360 billion gallons (your calculations) is insignificant compared to the other uses of water. Also the chemicals used is a very small percentage of the frack job an most harmless.
Interesting that Mr Nye avoids taking an all out stand against fracking. That is what responsible scientific minds do. They do not jump on the band wagon for every environmental agenda that bounces down the road. He is a rational mind in a sea of emotional activists. He states he is against *unregulated* fracking. That is far from the inane chanting we hear from environmental activists.
Natural Ponds Lakes & Streams by Spring Creek Aquatic Concepts - Environmentalists mean well but most are not properly educated in the science, engineering, legal, financial, etc. impacts of things. But that's why you have both extreme views and the compromise of the two is the most reasonable.
People in this world are brainwashed to think that things are black or white. It's been institutionalize by parents, society, games, school, work, culture, almost every aspect of life. So it's very difficult for people to rethink their views on things.
That's why science is so important because it is so objective and neutral. BUT one must also think about ethics and morality with regards to science because being too objective without moral or ethical obligation in mind can be extremely dangerous. Ex. the hydrogen bomb. It's an amazing feat of science but giving governments that level of destructive force to use against people - not worth it.
Ironically I've done a 180 on mr nye. While I stand with his statement here, since then it has become quite apparent he has been bought. As far as the nukes go, it could be more a question of who would develop it first.
Natural Ponds Lakes & Streams by Spring Creek Aquatic Concepts - he doesn’t have degree in science
I definitely agree that mechanical energy storage is the way to go rather than battery farms. Flywheels, pistons, reservoirs. Plenty of options.
Another great idea I've heard is that as more people buy electric cars, then when those cars are plugged in for charging, their batteries become part of the grid and can help buffer any spikes in energy consumption. But that doesn't solve overnight storage for a solar powered grid, since people wouldn't want to wake up in the morning to find that their car has been drained instead of charged.
Near Ludington in Michigan, on the shores of Lake Michigan, is a giant reservoir that functions almost exactly as Bill describes. The Ludington "pumped storage facility" was recently upgraded to handle Wind power from all over Michigan, which helps fill reservoir, which can be drained back into the lake when the grid needs power. No reason we couldn't build these all over the Great Lakes and other water bodies!
I DRINK YOUR MILKSHAKE!
I DRINK IT UP!!!
LOL That's what I was thinking of the whole time too.
Don't bully me Daniel!
I'M THE THIRD REVELATION!
Frack chemicals pumped into the ground then ‘flow back’ hitting water table, yes, Bill, that is inherently bad.
barnaby ruhe the walls of the well are cemented. Chemicals don’t seep into the water tables. They pump it out & reuse it. When they can no longer reuse it. They dump it in old dry wells usually 15-30,000ft below the surface.
They don't do that ,you missed the video.
I like how he starts each of these with "I love you" haha
In northern Oreogn there are a lot of wind farms. The electric company installed high temp water heaters in residential residences. In off hours the excess energy is stored in the water. During the peak hours, they are able turn off the water heaters due to the high temp in the water heaters. Basically making water heaters batteries.
"...and his dream as a chemist was to stirr it up, soup woman."
I died XD
Bill's back!
I've seen the gravity battery done with tethers before I wonder which hydraulic or tether would be cheaper.
Great video.
I proposed this idea ten years ago to my conservative uncle (who was a na sayer about there being improvements in solar or batteries ever such that green energies would run the world), but I said to pump water itself into a tower then let it go at peak times. My uncle said that is a terrible idea because of the waste and inefficiency involved. I then reminded him that we aren't wasting fossil fuel energy, we would be wasting solar energy, which is already wasted every day as it hits the earth, and relatively speaking, is limitless, so it doesn't matter if it isn't efficient if it gets the job done. He left that conversation. He also hasn't revisited any topics on solar and battery technology because there have been large advancements since then.
Bill is awesome. I love how he pushes for Renewable energy - the energy we need.
How is the piston idea better than just pumping water up to higher dams then generating energy later by letting it run through a turbine? You know like we've been doing in Australia for decades.
Because a piston will actually store energy rather than create energy as it goes. A piston will also be much more efficient.
***** "Because a piston will actually store energy rather than create energy as it goes."
What do you mean? Pumping water uphill stores energy, that's the whole point.
***** " You'd store more energy using the piston even if the same amount of water was used. "
Water isn't scarce. Simply add more water and you get the same effect.
***** Space isn't scarce either. Denser materials require a seal, which is massively more complicated than a simple dam.
***** "A piston is just an object, sealed inside a cylinder, that moves. I don't think a piston is that complicated."
Do you have any idea of how much pressure the seals would have to contain?
"while using the same amount of space."
Again, why would that be critical?
I have never heard that piston idea before. But Instead of pumping a huge hole up with water during the the day by way of solar or wind. Try and construct the hole relatively near the ocean on a surface with little to no grade. So that when the tides come in a gate then opens allowing the seawater access to a aqueduct with a downhill gradient allowing gravity to fill up the massive cavity beneath the hydro piston. The piston itself would effectively be hollow at this point; and that buoyancy allows for the piston to float up to the top of the cylinder because that is actually seal level. Once that has been achieved the aqueduct closes and it begins its second phase. The at this point hollow piston is pumped full of a viscous solution capable of suspending a high ratio of very dense particles. Possibly lead or some sort of alloy. Once filled the piston is released from the top of its stroke, and now being far denser than seawater, it’s slowing slides downward displacing the water below. That now high pressure sea water is sent through a myriad of concentric or staggered hydroelectric generators thuse achieving the same result as Bill just laid out. But instead of using wind or the sun we would actually use the moon and gravity.
Idk just spitballing here.
"You're probably familiar with a phenomenon called 'night'." Thanks Bill.
1:54 me
Hahaha xD win
Dean Gulberry ayyyyy
Fracking has been around since 1947. The process is relatively safe and has greatly improved in the last twenty years. The issue is mostly political. Certainly, humans have some influence on the environment but the "crisis" is again mostly political. Bill is correct about battery technology, it is a generation or two away from being effective enough replace hydrocarbons. IMO the best course of action would be to develop thorium reactors for an electrical source and a better infrastructure for powering automobiles with natural gas. The technology already exists, it would lower carbon emissions and it would be cheap energy.
safe for the workers not the environment!
Obviously you do not have direct and personal knowledge of the process. Do not believe all the hype. Nothing is perfect, but it is the utilization of the earth's resources throughout history that has allowed mankind to attain an advanced civilization. Without a stable and affordable supply of energy people die. It is as simple as that. As technology continues to improves more refined forms of energy will become available.
I hope your water gets poisoned by a fracking well and your property looses all its value like has happened almost every time one goes down.
Ah, another emotional response without regard to fact. But thank you for taking the time to attack me and wish me harm.
@@davidtripp7477 sounds like someone needs a diaper changing. Goo goo gaga.
Bill explains ideas that seem ambitious at first but uses his own experience to show the practicality and applications of technology we already have. 10/10 Bill this was really cool
wtf? he is no different to flatearther or any delusional maniac in cult. That moron thinks methane and CO2 act as heat insulators and capacitors and he believes in some magic where you insulate house and you can heat the inside with the heatsource outside. LOL (last time I've checked Sun was 8 light mins away, there was miniscule amount of CO2 in the atmosphere and methane dissipates so fast there is practically none detectable except with super sensitive instruments. Same doomsday cult like the Y2K
We already store energy by pumping water into uphill reservoirs. Open a valve to let it flow back down through a turbine.
Bill ignores the issue of the leakage of industrial solvents into the water table with hydraulic fracturing, which is arguably THE main environmental issue with Hydraulic fracturing in particular.
+Thisold Hatte He touches on it in his newish book Unstoppable about Climate Change but doesn't provide a solution there either. He does acknowledge it though.
You should seriously think before you post nonsensical comments.
He vaguely said something about the need to regulate it.
what? no, he said fracking is bad for the enviroment, which it objectively is
not to mention the actual amount of precious water fracking consumes and poisons to the point it can not be treated for reuse (i.e., wasted) - all while places where fracking is prevalent (e.g., CA) are seeing their water tables decimated.
Seeing as gasoline has such a high energy density, why don't we just use electricity from our green sources to convert water and carbon dioxide into gasoline?
PajamaMan You know that they have already figured out how to do that. Just need to make it more economic than oil. Money makes the world go round.
PajamaMan Because it would take more energy to convert the green sources into gasoline than you get out of the gasoline itself. Lol
Redeemer216 No matter how you store the energy there are going to be losses. Gasoline is just a convenient storage option.
GoogleMinusSucks I don't know the exact inefficiencies, but converting electricity along with base elements into gasoline is highly inefficient and just would not be practical.
Redeemer216 I bet currently it is, but I doubt there is no way to make it more practical, especially if it becomes economical. Either that or hydrolysis, I don't know. The way I see it, batteries are inefficient, heavy, and expensive when compared to storing chemical fuel, so finding how to convert electricity to fuel and back to electricity with the least amount of loss sounds like a good idea. I am absolutely no expert on the topic though, so there may very well be a better solution I have no idea about.
Nye is a brilliant speaker, mixing scientific information with irony.
Consider what he says at 6.00:
"The sun doesn't shine all the time. We have - you're probably familiar with it - a phenomenon called night."
What’s so brilliant here?
1. He is so deadpan when he says it.
2. He says “you're probably [!] familiar with it” in parenthesis without batting an eye
3. The contrast between “phenomenon” (a sophisticated word) and “night” (a very common experience)
4. Climactic structure leading up to the last word “night”
5. He stresses “night” in a very subtle way, as if it was a term many people don't know, thus resolving the irony in "probably"
Harnessing potential energy as a battery, I like it. The windup girl had an interesting bit about this, except they used springs.
"What's the hold up on green energy?"
Republicans.
The gas can't escape to surface due to fracking...the reservoir rock traps everything inside except from one side where it recieves the fluids from the source rock
Also how can gas escapes through thousands feets of xground layers
That piston energy storage is actually a good idea, I also like what that one solar plant in Spain does where it heats up salt under the ground that stays hot enough long enough that it'll keep water boiling for quite a long time actually days at least, far longer then night would ever be a or even inclimate weather.
Reminds me of when NASA asked me back in the early 80's to come up with an energy storage device for mars. My response was a blanket spread out that could be filled with material and elevated using motors supplied by solar. During non-solar availability, the mass would be used to drive a generator.
So I still don't know if he's for or against Fracking??
+etmax1 He's not against it but he acknowledges that there are problems with the way it's been conducted negligently in the past.
+etmax1
He's for regulation of it.
Hearsay
It's already regulated, the problem is they get to write the regulations. If the frackers had to put the amount of cash in escrow that a major disaster would cost and they only get back at the end if nothing's happened most companies wouldn't do fracking. It's only because there's all win no loss that they do.
You don't have to be for or against something. You can be in the middle.
etmax1 They could still frack all win no loss even with an escrow because they can pay the escrow policy with investor capital which afaik often comes largely from government grants anyway.
so i always kinda wondered... why do we not use the earths heat to power... well power plants, instead of plutonium ? is it too much work ? would it be too dangerous ? is it just impossible with current tech ?
Efficiency of a power plant is proportional to the temperature difference between your heat source and the atmosphere. Ocean thermal gradient plants have been proposed, but they need to be about 50x bigger than a traditional power plant to make the same power, making the capital cost unaffordable
***** The biggest problem is the chemistry. There are only a few places on the planet (Iceland, Japan, e.g.) where the chemistry isn't so obnoxious and the heat is close enough to the surface for people to make a go of it. Most places that could be used have high sulfurous or other salts, that any machinery that would be used for extracting / converting the heat energy gets rusted and/or clogged in no time, necessitating replacement & fixes that make the whole enterprise not worth the cost.
***** believe it or not, we cant dig as much as a 1 km into this earth. way too hard, we cant even live under those conditions. search for it.
Geothermal energy is used in Island!
***** Cold fusion would be a good option as well. However it is all hypothetical. There is just no way we can reach the amount of energy it would take to supply power to an entire city, and would be impeding on perhaps complex ecosystems; if we were to use geothermal. And we just dont have the technology to run a strong current to cities that are otherwise hostile regions of the earth, if we were to use hydroelectrical.
she looks like a teacher that will now show this video to her students every year because shes so proud of herself
Fracking above the water table is always a bad idea, they might say "well we drilled a mile of hole, that's low enough to start fracking" but they might be a mile sideways and only a few hundred feet down
When she said fracking. I thought she meant... something else.
lets make bill the minister of energy for the while world, that way many more generations will enjoy the earth as previous generations have...
Also in Medecine Hat Alberta, they have recently installed a 2 acre concentrated solar energy plant (Think mirrors reflecting light onto a tube of very hot water or other fluid). The solar energy is used all day to power the turbines and natural gas is used to keep it going during the night.
Every natural gas plant in the world could do that. It would reduce gas costs significantly and also save on the CO2.
Bill just knows so much in breadth and depth. If he says we need to do something about the environment, we really should pay attention.