Gel 1, Midterm 2
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- Pros/Cons of geothermal energy
- Good: it's free Bad: geographically limited
- Pros/Cons of wind power
- Good: free, renewable Bad: geographically limited, people complain about the view
- Pros/Cons of Tar sands and oil shale?
- Good:both a huge resource Bad:low energy yield, hard to extract
- Pros/Cons of
- Good: Bad:
- Pros/Cons of Nuclear Energy
- Good:Fuel is pretty cheap Bad: Uranium is limited, Very dangerous, what to do with the waste, terrorists
- Pos/Cons of Hydroelectric power
- Good: renewable until drought Bad: geographically limites, environmental impacts, messes up ecology
- Pros/Cons of Coal
- Good: very ambundant Bad: very dirt, very dangerous, very expensive to convert to enrgy
- The Law of Original Horizontality
- If it's all even, the sediment all came horizontally, making layers
- The Law of Superposition
- The bottom sediment is older than the top sediment
- How old is the Earth?
- 4.6 billion years old
- What do they use to find absolute times scales?
- Radioactive decay from uranium and potassium
- What methods do geologists use to determine the ages of geologic deposits?
- Fossils of plants, and the presence of potassium and uranium which have half lives of about 100mill-couple bill years
- What is the difference between a relative and an absolute time scale?
- Relative is found by plant fossils because certain plants were around at certain periods, and absolute time is found with the decay potassium and uranium
- How long did dinasaurs live?
- 180 million years
- How long have we lived?
- 2.5 million years
- How is oil formed?
- Plankton/organic material are buried quickly before they can decay. Then moderate temperatures break down the organic matter and convert it to hydrocarbon. If temperatures allow, it migrates from the source rock to the reservoir rock and gathers in traps or pockets.
- How is coal formed?
- Organic material from land plants is buried rapidly, then pressure and temperature convert it from peat, to soft coal, to hard coal
- If we didn't import, how long would we have if we just used our own oil reservoirs?
- 3-5 years
- What are the primary sources of energy in the United States?
- Coal and oil being 90%
- Why are fossil fuels called non-renewable resources?
- They are renewable but it takes way too long to be considered renewable. Too long as in hundreds of thousands of years.
- What are the consequences of our current rate of consumption of oil in the United States?
- With the help of import 60% of our oil, we only have about 6-8 years left before we run out of our own oil and will have to rely on importing foreign oil and the world supply is will end in about 50-100 years
- What is the Hubbert Curve and what does it tell us about global production of oil?
- The Hubbert curb was named after M. King Hubbert who figured out that oil production from any oil field will make a bell curve. This can be translated to global production which will also make a bell curve. After the peak, no matter what, it will go down.
- What are some of the environmental costs of associated with the burning of coal?
- -sulfur ash cause harm to vegetation and water quality -huge source of carbon dioxide
- We have vast reserves of coal. Why do we still have an energy crisis?
- -it is very unclean -it is very unsafe -very expensive to convert to energy