Suppose you could produce gasoline for far less than you could today? Would that be good news or bad news? Wired has a story describing a process which purports to cut the cost of coal to liquid. And scientists say this is terrible news because it is bad for the environment.
Scientists have devised a new way to transform coal into gas for your car using far less energy than the current process. The advance makes scaling up the environmentally unfriendly fuel more economical than greener alternatives.
If oil prices rise again, adoption of the new coal-to-liquid technology, reported this week in Science, could undercut adoption of electric vehicles or next-generation biofuels. And that’s bad news for the fight against climate change.
AdvertisementThe new process could cut the energy cost of producing the fuel by 20 percent just by rejiggering the intermediate chemical steps, said co-author Ben Glasser of the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, South Africa. But coal-derived fuel could produce as much as twice as much CO2 as traditional petroleum fuels and at best will emit at least as much of the greenhouse gas.
“The bottom line is that there’s one fatal flaw in their proposed process from a climate protection standpoint,” Pushker Karecha of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies wrote in an e-mail to Wired.com. “It would allow liquid fuel CO2 emissions to continue increasing indefinitely.”
The story is told, perhaps apocryphally, of Lenin scolding his sister for giving soup to the poor on the grounds that it would delay the revolution. So, if carbon emissions are bad — then doesn’t it make sense to prevent any more fossil fuel sources from being developed? If you suddenly discovered a process that would make gasoline from seawater, wouldn’t that put you in the same league as a person who managed to transmute rocks into crack cocaine? You shouldn’t receive the Nobel Prize for Chemistry. You should be put up against the wall and shot. Without the traditional last cigarette of course, because it’s bad for your health. And if you object, then why? Where’s the logical flaw. Open thread.
It depends on where the carbon comes from. If you could take CO2 right from the air and turn it into gasoline cheaply (this is the idea behind algae-derived biodiesel, except it’s not cheap yet) you would have a “carbon neutral” gasoline. That would be a Good Thing for the world I think.
If there were a formula for transmuting rocks into cocaine, I could think of quite of few people who would like the recipe.
As opposed to some at the Belmont Club, I strongly favor adopting electric cars and renewable energy. I also take the view that if there’s some new way to turn coal into gasoline very cheaply, let’s hop to it! I am not so fixated upon getting a long term solution that I can’t see the prudence of solving short term problems when it’s feasible. For the time being, we may wish to consider constructing giant mirrors on the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets to keep them from melting into the ocean.
The most important goal is the get the world economy off Persian Gulf petroleum. If the coal and oil industries can synthesize it more cheaply than the Saudis can lift it, fine. If not, let’s put government subsidies to work fostering progressively cheaper solar, tidal, wind, and geothermal energy. (Please note that the coal and petroleum industries have gotten de facto subsidies through America’s subsidy of railroads and its construction of the national highway system.)
Rising carbon dioxide partial pressure increases crop yields, let’s not forget that.
It is also absorbed by the oceans in such quantities that it takes ten centuries to load them up.
The percentage of temperature change due to our existence is still trivial against the impact of nature. Volcanoes even now completely dominate the emission of sulfur dioxide.
Plan 1
It’s easy to imagine coal to liquids based on injecting hot methane into a fluidized bed of coal particulates. Such a process would take two abundant fuels and transmute them into middle distillates.
Heating the methane would be accomplished by a stabilized DC electric arc powered by a monster homo-polar generator.
——–
Plan 2
It’s easy to imagine converting the AEP combined cycle plant into a CTL facility that kicks out baseline AC power.
Whereas the current approach is to gasify the coal and burn all of it — the revised method would be to extract such liquids as we may by steam at 800 degrees and moderate pressure. The vapors would be condensed and refined; the char would be gasified and burned in the combined cycle plant.
Since the typical coal is going to generate about a barrel of oil (42 US gallons) per ton any major power plant would be able to throw off 10,000 bbls per day. The very act of stripping the liquids extracts the bulk of the nasties in a sealed process stream.
I’m not a super fan of coal, but if using it breaks the back of the oil ticks then it wins my vote.
Strategically, with H boy’s gambits we need to cut loose from OPEC. It’s better to rig prices high enough to stimulate alternate energy — as long as you don’t over do it. Right now $50 to $65 per barrel seems workable. The Bakken formation and the Canadian tar sands can pencil out in that range. It’s against the larger interest to let the oil ticks financially ruin our domestic competitors when they are right at the edge of exponential expansion of a cost effective energy reserve.
Israeli Science Breakthrough Extracts Fuel from Water by (photodialysis)
israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/130806
Start buying up ruthenium, not gold!
Every method of doing work has its flaws. Whether those flaws are of sufficient magnitude to alter the particular method is a call to be made by those charged with obtaining the results. When building pyramids in the desert using solely manual labor, it’s terribly inefficient unless you happen to have large numbers of very cheap labor.
Powering vehicles with coal may be a cheap method, unless you’re in the oil business or an environmental wacko. Powering vehicles with oil is cheap if you’re in the oil business but bad if you’re an envirnmental wacko. Building, purchasing, driving vehicles can be a very cost-effective method to accomplish your goals – unless you’re an environmental wacko.
Anybody else see a common thread in all this?
I think the key to solving this problem will be to find some way to reflect the market cost of carbon emissions, not simply the calculated or estimated costs. In 2007 McKinsey and Company constructed what it called the “Carbon Abatement Cost Curve” (see page 4) But this only reflects the cost of reducing carbon emissions. It doesn’t reflect the cost of emitting carbon, which I think depends on models which are contentious. What effect one more cow fart or car on the road has can’t be priced on the current market, unless I’m mistaken. Cap and Trade is only a method of trading around regulatory limits. But where do those limits come from, analytically? I’m happy for someone to correct my ignorance in this respect.
So if we could suddenly find a very cheap source of gasoline tomorrow, the net cost very roughly of a gallon of that gasoline would be (Current cost of gas – New Cost of Gas) + Cost of additional carbon emissions arising from the price elasticity of cheaper gasoline. At the limit, if the cost of additional carbon emissions from cheaper gas is zero, then we should produce away according to the new methods. But, notice that even if additional carbon emissions inflicted a cost, then for so long as the delta carbon costs were less than the delta gasoline savings, we’d be better off producing the new gas.
The illogical argument of this is that the earth is somehow harmed by Co2. Even in enormous quantities.
We are basically a closed environment.
We get a net rise in energy due to our proximity to the sun. But the net is a wash due to radiation through the atmosphere. There is energy conversion but not destruction. Unless we start to jettison massive amounts of the planet out into space there is zero chance of any permanent imbalance of the ecosystem. And even then I am not sure that would work.
But to believe that we as a human race could have more than a minuscule effect upon the environment. Runs against the absolute fact that there are ruins all over this planet from our past. Pure fantasy on the part of the “environmentalist Church”.
Jim
powering plug-in vehicles during off peak hours where the electricity is generated predominantly by coal and nukes effectively does this anyway.
although i agree with most of what blert wrote above as well.
Most people don’t get it. If scientists invented a way for cars to run on tap water, it would be a disaster for greens. They want to repeal the industrial revolution. Technological fixes are anathema to green theology.
Oh no, he said, quite horrified
You can’t make gas that way
When all us whacks are starry-eyed
About the coming day
That we will all be carbon free
And people thus secure
From danger from the rising sea
And air is clear and pure
So who needs carbon anyhow
It’s surely been a curse
I see a tree of many bough
And say it could be worse
‘Cause trees and things eat up the stuff
That’s why it’s all around
I say with trees we’ve had enough
Let’s burn’em to the ground
That way there’d be no need to have
The CO2 at all
And then our conscience we can salve
And pridefully stand tall
What’s that you say, the trees and things
Turn carbon into air?
The stuff we breathe, we human beings
That God made oh so fair?
But don’t you see, that’s just the point
When we’ve no atmosphere
The planet’s then a gorgeous joint
Because we won’t be here
@ 9. Jeff Burton
True. They’ll “discover” that water vapor is the most potent greenhouse gas, several orders of magnitude than CO2.
Screw greens then! We can tell them that because they exhale water vapor beside CO2, they should provide an example and voluntarily exit their harmful existence so all of us non-greens can live in greenpeace.
And where did the coal come from? Fossil plants, which means that once there was Far More carbon dioxide in the atmosphere in the atmosphere than we have now. Where did it go? Said plants removed it from the atmosphere, incorporating it into more complex carbon compounds, i.e. plant parts. When we burn the coal, the carbon dioxide goes back into the atmosphere whence it originally came.
I don’t think many of us would like a return to the climate of the Carboniferous or Pennsylvanian periods, but they were teaming hotbeds of life, admittedly none of it us.
Some years ago I read that a new process for testing for AIDS infection had been developed. Unlike previous processes, it could be done with a portable test kit and did not require a laboratory.
And according to certain activists this was terrible news.
Why? Because the easier test would mean that many more people could be tested. And the results would, the activists said, result in more discrimination against those infected with the disease.
Also, I read that a new initiative to supply improved prenatal care to pregnant women was being opposed by certain kinds of activists. Feminist activists.
Why? Because they thought such care would reduce the demand for abortions and thus reduce their popularity.
So you have homosexual activists opposing improvements in AIDS testing and feminist activists opposing improved health care for women. Forbidden knowledge makes strange bedfellows.
Soon I predict we will have people opposing the use of high strength light weight carbon fibers to build efficient hybrid and electric vehicles because to do so would make carbon more popular and people might cease to regard it as Public Enemy Element #1.
I view with great suspicion anyone who asserts that greater knowledge is inherently bad.
The problem with getting fuel by breaking water down into it’s constituent diatomic oxygen and diatomic hydrogen is that the hydrogen oxygen bond is one of the more stable bonds. This means that the energy it takes to break it is considerably more than you get from allowing it to reform (by burning or in a fuel cell).
The only way around this adverse energy equation is to find scenarios where electricity is cheap and the resultant hydrogen and oyxgen are valuable. Cheap electricity is almost by definition nuclear generated. Oil is too valuable in the long run to burn.
Well, the only question is if the photolysis scales up well. If it does, the ticks will be ticked off, whether Russian, Soddy or Iranian.
I don’t think they would be happy with $5/bl.
“Granpah, so what was the WWIII about, some say it was about water, is it true”?
“Yes, sweetie, it was about water”.
@ 14. erc rodson
I presume that you did not read the article, did you?
And yes, there will be always use for oil, but instead of burning it, it can be made beside plastics into fertilizer. medicine, and it may be instrumental as a basic commodity for nanotech production and biotech.
CO2 is not a “green house” gas. Something that has been proven by every core sample taken. It is the _result_ of a global warming period. It’s grade-school cause-and-effect. Planet heats up due to sun heating up; warmer weather means longer growing seasons; more food is produced for animals; animals eat more and spend less time finding food; animals spend extra-time getting busy; more animals survive longer due to the extra food; more carbon dioxide.
No, Jeff Burton above has it right. I’ve been saying the same thing for years.
Michael
It is refreshing to read the optimism given the array of immediate problems humanity faces that could well be cataclysmic and preempt the effects of any damage being done to the atmosphere.
Bioweapons are particularly nasty and easily manufactured. They will be weaponized and distributed worldwide within the decade.
Unleash the right one and billions could die. That would certainly solve the emissions problem. Perhaps Greenpeace is working up a batch to kill humans and save whales and knock down CO2 levels. What do we do about the belching cows and cow flatulence? Perhaps some dedicated biologist are discovering an endangered species at this very moment that lives only on streets and highways. Hey the snali darter stopped a pretty big project, why not asvaultus vulgaris?
The two largest countries, population wise, have already stated that as they begin to hit their stride they have no intention of slowing down emissions prior to reaching the level of autarchy the US has, or at least had. So why do we give up the field and watch our economy collaspe and power drain away while watching others gain hegemony over us? That’s suicide and an Rx for a long stay at Club Gulag. Ah, no thanks.
Now I am all for research into solving the problem but as we see in this country the government begins to set goals that are unreasonable and drain resources from other equally important areas such as national defense.
There is also the problem of correctly defining the scientific problem, which has not been done yet. There are more than a few thousand scientists that think Algore is an airhead and snake oil salesman.
Before writing this I looked up some USGS info about the Antarctic melting. Seems the latest theory is that sub arctic volcanoes are melting it from beneath. More data is required but it’s plausibility is hard to deny as a sound theory.
We have a smorgasbord of challenges. We need cheap oil now to find the solutions. The chances of mankind continuing ad infinitum is a guess anyway. We are always just a tick away from some cosmic event that we never saw coming and couldn’t do anything about if we did.
But by all means let’s keep up the optimism and the research but let’s not lose sight of reason along the way.
I returned, and saw under the sun, that the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favour to men of skill; but time and chance happeneth to them all.
Ecclesiastes 9:11
@ 17. Michael
Of course CO2 is not a greenhouse gas. But try to convey that fact to a greenbot.
I can see already an argument forming in the mind of a greenie: “… but then we’ll run out of water instead of oil”!
Reminds me when I had a discussion with a yound librul lady [sic] and when I outlined ba scenario of food shortages because of some policies impact on farmers and asked her wwhere she would get her food then.
“In the supermarket”!
There you have it.
9. Jeff Burton
“If scientists invented a way for cars to run on tap water….”
I’ve got a friend who occasionally runs his car while on hydro-codone. He seems happy.
Habu
The race may not always be to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, but, as Damon Runyan reminded us many years ago, that’s the way to bet.
There may be something to global warming but I don’t see the Chinese or Indians wrecking their economy so so that gullible wealthy yuppies can feel good about themselves over a problem that maynot even exist.
Actually, I got nothing against electric cars and renewable energy. I got everything against the government forcing it down our throats or so heavily subsidizing it (while working to destroy the cheaper, conventional sources) that we have to use it. If it costs ordinary people thousands of dollars more for the basics, they will have much less available to spend on everything else. You don’t need a fancy econometric model to figure that out: arithmetic will do.
When people say “I’m for renewable energy” they mean they are for heavy subsidies to these forms of energy and they are for destroying the competition. The subsidies will be much greater than the railroads received and for “railroad subsidies” we actually got railroads. We’ve subsidized alternatives for tens of billions of dollars and hardly use them for anything. And the railroads were a huge improvement over the horse and wagon. If that were true of alternatives I would support them whole heartedly — and they would not need much support to be adapted if they were practical.
The problem I have with the whole global warming shtick is that it has much more to do with power grabbing than power generating. It is thinly disguised socialist gruel — low salt, low fat, low sugar and high fiber and they say it’s good for you. In fact the movement seems allergic to practical solutions because they will not require a huge bureaucracy to implement. So nukes get nuked.
Habu,
Sure thing, our main focus is to prevent and reverse the totalitarian/commie creep (whether am talking of a person or a trend is not that relevant).
But usually the auxiliary topics we hash here have a political dimension of one sort or another, too. And on this thread, the fuel and energy, their impact.. are the topic.
Obama Names Pope-Basher to Faith-Based Initiative Board
(CNSNews.com) – President Barack Obama has named to the federal government’s faith-based initiative a gay-rights activist who, last month, described Pope Benedict XVI and certain Catholic bishops as “discredited leaders” because of their opposition to same-sex marriage.
Harry Knox, who is a newly appointed member of Obama’s Advisory Council on Faith-based and Neighborhood Partnerships, is the director of the religion and faith program at the Human Rights Campaign, a homosexual activist group.
In addition to his remarks about the Pope, Knox also criticized the Catholic Knights of Columbus as being “foot soldiers of a discredited army of oppression” because of the Knights’ support of Proposition 8. The latter was a ballot initiative that amended California’s state constitution to define marriage as being between a man and a woman, and passed in November 2008.
both DOI secretary Salazar and DOE secretary Chu hate coal. So its not likely that more coal plants will be built. However, the currrent coal infrastructure is gettomg two get two significant add ons in the next couple years which will make it neutral. The first is algae plants. There will be a congressional meeting on algae in the next couple weeks. I think at that time there will be a shift from carbon sequestration–ie getting rid of carbon dioxide by pumping it underground–to government policies which favor piping carbon dioxide into acres of algae production facilities that make oil and convert the carbon dioxide to oil. The director of the National Algae Association has said he’s receiving business proposals that suggest algae oil could be produced as low as 1.50@gallon. The National Algae Association is holding their conference in May in Houston.
The other add on for coal plants beside the ocean or above brackish aquifers is a new desalination process that — useing the waste heat of coal plants– will bring down the cost of desalinized water to 450-550@acre foot.
imho the real story of the 21st century on power will be that salt water will be made into a power source–as well as a source of drinking water. But I’m only just starting to get my arms around this one. I only mention salt water power in passing in my latest blog on the matter.
24. twobyfour
“And on this thread, the fuel and energy, their impact.. are the topic
Two by,
I fully appreciate your keen focus on the topic and understand your enthusiasm for focuing on that alone. However a re-reading of the original thread will disclose that politics are everywhere present. Topics do not exists in a vacuum, and I assure you energy and emissions are ripe with politics.
Our host even quoted a story about Lenin and the revolution.
The story is told, perhaps apocryphally, of Lenin scolding his sister for giving soup to the poor on the grounds that it would delay the revolution
In your comment #15 you mention two of the same countries I did to make a point and a re=read of the other comments will uncover a political component. However, I apologize if crossed a line somewhere. However I would have thought by now one would realise that everything is political, even science.
Just chill dude.
Let me see if I can expand on W’s post and put it in a way that is easier to understand.
The fundamental question is whether CO2 emissions create negative externalities, i.e. whether they impose a cost on non-consumers that is not captured in the price.
The shorthand version of this question is: “Is CO2 a pollutant?”
If you sit alone in a room and fart, your gastrointestinal emission is not pollution; the costs are imposed on you, and only you (that is if you consider it a cost; some folks get entertainment value from their flatulence).
If you sit in a crowded theater and cut the cheese, you are a polluter – you are creating a negative externality. Thus there would appear to be little doubt that tush ticklers impose a cost on others.
But does the benefit from a backwards burp outweigh its total cost (personal cost plus all externalities)? Speaking from personal experience, I have to say that the benefit of a good pocket frog is significant, especially after a meal of chili and sauerkraut. And the cost imposed on others is just temporary – we all know that even the most noxious paint peeler dissipates in a short time, but the relief is long-term.
However, there are a few folks who worry that lots of SBDs can create such a high concentration of methane that, with even the smallest spark, could create a massive conflagration. These folks worry that if we reach a tipping point, catastrophe would result. (Those who refuse to believe this are often referred to as “Duck Call Deniers.”)
These windy pop worriers urge us to curtail our anal trumpeting, using the precautionary principle. Better to hold in that toot than take the chance that we could be burned alive in a cabbage-induced auto da fe. But the causal links that would lead to such a disaster are weak at best; the non-linearity and negative feedback loops of the air tulip emission process make it unlikely in the extreme. For instance, before methane concentration levels reached the flammable threshold, it is likely that people would leave the theater – they couldn’t stand the stink, so they would adapt.
There is also the historical argument: flabbergaster levels were much higher during the Medieval Wind Period, and there is little evidence that things were so bad then (although to be fair, modern diets are much higher in fiber).
But what if modern science was able to develop a really cheap source of lentils; should we worry or rejoice?
I suppose it’s a matter of where you sit on the issue.
L3
I’ve been hearing the point of Walt’s poem from several directions lately. On a political level I think its a sign the carbon cultists sense a momentum shift. Certainly there are stories now in the papers that there won’t be carbon tax in the US. Too many of the democrats come from coal states fear the extra taxes will kill the livilihood of their states and kill their chances of re election.
The interesting thing about the environmental axiom that in the end the world would be better off with out us — is that it maps over very well onto a Christian Heresy called Gnosticism.
(The big Christian heresy of the modern era has been Arianism–that holds that Jesus is fully man but not really God. This heresy originated in the 3rd century by an Alexandrian Egyptian named Arius. The question resulted in the ruling of the Council of Nicea from which the Nicean creed comes.
Gnosticism was around when St Paul was writing. According to this heresy Jesus was Fully God but not really a man. According to this heresy all flesh is evil.
The one thing never recognized is that all the petroleum products attainable will be burned or used as lubricants until something cheaper arrives. Does anyone with more than 3 grey cells think India and Taiwan will eschew hydrocarbons as long as they are the cheapest alternative? I didn’t think so…
All will be pursued, and used. Until someone somewhere artificially creates long chain HCs cheaper and better … or an alternative..
tom
Habu,
Did not mean to ruffle any of your feather.
And yes, I did say that the topics discussed here have always some sort of a political dimension, so I do appreciate you echo-ing my words back to me.
Scientists have devised a new way to transform coal into gas for your car using far less energy than the current process.
Those wretched scientists, don’t they know when to quit? When they’re predicting skyrocketing temperatures and water levels, they’re heroes to the ‘leaders’ seeking control of industry and economies. Now they’re announcing a breakthrough in personal mobility, they’ve shot those ‘leaders’ in the foot.
Maybe the predictors of the skyrocketing are a different bunch than the Promethean gang who appear to have enabled economical travel for the masses. But ve haff a fine old tradition for such folks who get off the correct line… tie a rock on ‘em and the iggles will eat their livers.
30. twobyfour
A-OK no harm no foul
BTW..Tomorrow’s Wall Street Journal is breaking a story about the Chinese and Russians invading our electric grid and having already installed programs to kill the systems.
@ 31. Insufficiently Sensitive
Actually, there was another, more recent method, tar and yes, feathers. Let them be ruffled!
Some noteworthy methods in earlier times… If you were in a prediction biz (AGW prophets certainly are) and you missed (way too many misses to be able to weasel out of), you may have become suddenly several inches shorter. Needless to say you chances of further predictions, whether hits or misses, were severely diminished after that point.
27. Leo Linbeck III
LMAO …one of the truly brilliant pieces I have ever read on the internet.
Bravo! FIVE STARS !
Habu,
Wouldn’t that be no harm no fowl?
OK I admit that avian references seem to be creeping into my posts tonight in somewhat more than usual volume.
If not, let’s put government subsidies to work fostering progressively cheaper solar, tidal, wind, and geothermal energy. (Please note that the coal and petroleum industries have gotten de facto subsidies through America’s subsidy of railroads and its construction of the national highway system.)
Bah! Paper rejected, do over. Please include in the revised version the opposing quantities in your first sentence. For clarity: what’s the current magnitude of energy costs of the hydrocarbon system in use, and what would be the magnitude of energy costs (capital items included, please) of all those cool and groovy new energy sources AND distribution systems.
Assume the subsidies would stop once such systems were in place. Also include the costs of decommissioning the hydrocarbon infrastructure. Hint: former oil pipelines of sufficient minimum diameter could form the backbone of a new public transportation system, with climate-controlled capsules containing happy citizens floating serenely through subterranean channels while memorizing the speeches of the elite opinion leaders who know what’s best for us.
Second sentence: the ‘subsidies’ of the railroads and highway system have been repaid thousands of times over due to the economic value of the mobility provided to travellers and freight. The tax receipts (you may try to calculate them, too) are astronomical compared to said subsidies. Just try to go anywhere without railroads and highways.
The ‘subsidies’ proposed for conversion away from economical hydrocarbon energy do not add one jot or tittle of mobility for human benefit. They will provide fortunes for the politically connected purveyors of those non-economically-proven ‘alternate’ energy systems, at the expense of everyone else who shall be deprived of the utility of the current systems by means of greatly increased costs.
Of course, if what’s really desired is the compression of human activity into great beehives of urban density, separated by vast tracts of unpopulated ‘environment’ made difficult of access to folks who are limited to walking, maybe the suppression of economical energy is really a plus.
Habu,
Re the infiltration of Rus/Chin killgrames… There is sure a reason for some concern, but I think the story is a bit overblown.
One thing.. if someone knows accurately the degree of infiltration and where, then from that follows that it can be neutralized.
My servers do get hacked from time to time, but because I have a good tripwires set up, I am informed rather promptly and close the holes quickly including a complete removal of any dormant leftover.
The affected sectors need to do a good audit, not run around like headless chickens. After all, I presume that NSA guys (or other relevant outfits) do not spend time jerking off and do try to poke into adversaries’ defences too.
Never eat lentils before you go hiking.
Habu @ 32:
Since Texas has its own separate electric grid, y’all come on down!
But about CO2 as a threat – how can the public still keep buying that? And how can the Greenies keep gaining power with that? The facts are all against them.
CO2 is only about 5% of all warming gases, with man-made CO2 an infintesimal fraction of that. It cannot possibly warm the climate. (Actually CO2 is a lagging phenomena. First the sun warms the oceans, then they release more of the atmospheric CO2.)
Instead of warming, the climate has been cooling for the last 11 years anyhow. And so on and on. There is just no factual basis for targeting CO2 for any reason.
CO2 is not a polluting gas. (Polluting gases actually cool the climate. The particles in dirty air reflect sunlight back into space. CO2 is a “clean” gas.)
Plants cannot live without CO2. We cannot live without the oxygen produced by plants. Or without the plant food on which all life is based.
It’s an open and shut case. How can so much of the population be this dense? This may turn out to be the greatest mass delusion in history.
@ 38. bob1
Explain.
@ 39. GerryP
In PT Barnum’s times, there was a sucker born every minute. Due to the expansion of population afterward, the rate of generation of suckers increased as well. In short, there is a lot of suckers out there. Combined with the level of literacy (meaning the whole bandoogle, not just R’s) you can bamboozle a lot of people a lot of times. It is simple economic law that states that it is not necessary to bamboozle all the people all the time, if the bamboozled lot represents even a slight majority.
Now, unbamboozling at least a segment of the bamboozlees … how… that is the question.
I gotta add my plaudits to 27. L III for this one. He always astounds and keeps finding new ways to do it.
14. erc rodson:
The problem with getting fuel by breaking water down into it’s constituent diatomic oxygen and diatomic hydrogen is that the hydrogen oxygen bond is one of the more stable bonds. This means that the energy it takes to break it is considerably more than you get from allowing it to reform (by burning or in a fuel cell).
————————————–
Not to mention that storing hydrogen in it’s diatomic form is not very efficient. This is why nature uses hydrocarbons, more hydrogen per unit volume. And it won’t stay in my gas tank for very long, either.
Maybe they should remarket the coal to liquid technology as a method for recycling scrap tires, then change to coal when they run out of scrap tires. The greens might go for that. Probably not, only mousepad makers are allowed to recycle scrap tires.
@ 38. bob1
Thinking about it more and still unsure why you would want to avoid lentils before hiking.
…
Oh! I get it! Lifting your leg higher than usual may result in a release of a valuable substance that makes not only your specific weight lighter, but also expands your surface a bit so you push out more air and that makes hiking an enjoyable experience, especially if you are not the type that likes punishing yourself. It is, in fact, a state that affords you a slight antigrav properties, if you can keep the charge contained.
I think that you are going about it entirely wrong way. Instead of figuring out how to get even the released substance working to your advantage, you’ll have none of it.
Why, pray tell?
CTL is a very expensive process. Even if this improvement did work (remember, it’s just a theory, now) I doubt it would make a lot of difference.
32. Habu:
BTW..Tomorrow’s Wall Street Journal is breaking a story about the Chinese and Russians invading our electric grid and having already installed programs to kill the systems.
=================================
They had better hurry. The utilities have a habit of buying new stuff with features that don’t match their old stuff. New computer controlled stuff would be at the load dispatcher level.
Most of their job is buying/selling at directing peakers to come on and off the line. Sure some new stuff may automatically do fancy things, but when it breaks, they won’t fix it, they’ll just put it in manual, like ALL of the other stuff they own.
Let me say that again.
When auto doesn’t work, they’ll put it in manual.
For the grid, that means call the substation operators to go to the substations and close the appropriate breakers by hand.
In 2003, the grid went down in the Midwest due to poor management of grid load. This has improved. The manual systems have improved also. The people at the generation facilities have been trained to do some of the substation operator tasks in the event of an emergency.
They might be able to take it down once, they will not get a second opportunity. The grid will recover faster this time because they now have a recovery plan to follow.(Written on paper!)
Not to diminish the h4x0r sk1llz, but the utilities have been playing this auto/manual game for a very long time.
Personally, I’m more worried about my government restricting access to BC than the Russians taking out the grid.
GerryP, CO2 is a pollutant because a few weeks ago the EPA classified it as such. And that’s that. It’s a pollutant by law. so shut up and drink
The EPA can classify whatever it likes. If enough jobs move to China, people will be in a very unhappy, populist mood.
Enough to overturn most of Washington and pretty much ANY environmental regulation at all.
An angry, desperate populace and many manufacturers and agribusinesses threatened? Not to mention mining and so on? Please.
Obama made plenty of enemies. All who want him gone, and they’re not going to just roll over because some SWPL Yuppie says it’s bad for the planet. Every populist rebellion needs a funding mechanism. Obama just created his.
Nicea reduced pursuit of the truth to a show of hands. Most wouldn’t credit such a procedure today, yet many defer to a result obtained in such a manner centuries ago. It is true that the orthodox won out over time over the gnostics, at least one reason being that gnostics, for the most part, tended to be loner types, and not gifted at building the kind of support systems for the folks that the orthodox tended to do, and resulting in a greater harvest of souls to their ways.
“If you sit in a crowded theater and cut the cheese, you are a polluter -”
…or a revolutionary employing Cloward-Piven tactics.
Some additional points to consider;
The reduction in human slavery can be directly correlated to the invention and development of the steam engine and the replacement of muscle power with machines.
When Green Luddites rule, who is (re)enslaved?
When horse drawn transportation re-emeges who will shovel the shit? What will PETA say about it?
Where will the animal waste be deposited/ disposed? Treatment plants?
Luddites notwithstanding, there are no “good old days”. As my old granny used to say, the grocery store beats twelve hours in the fields/ garden and indoor plumbing sure is nice.
The suggested liquifaction process is just the first step. Once on line, it will be tinkered with with a view for every more improvement, as defined by public desires.
Jobs, jobs, jobs, jobs.
Defund Islam.
“In the long run we are all dead”
It will be years before anything is online. Gotta start now.
Paralysis by analysis.
At the minimum, we need enough national facilities to ensure fuel for US Armed Forces.
Am I getting boring? Am I making a point?
As for the thought experiment, I recall that John Galt back in 1958, invented an engine that used “air” as fuel, ending up facing exactly the same political forces that Wretchard describes.
Gasoline from seawater is actually being done. You grow algae in seawater & then pulp the algae to get oil. It is now cheaper than traditional sources so we will see more http://alfin2100.blogspot.com/2009/04/when-will-algal-fuels-be-plentiful-and.html
If you believe in catastrophic warming it has the advantage that it gets C from CO2 in water rather than the buried stuff.
Personally i don’t & would require there to be some actual scientific evidence rather than a lot of hype first. Even if it were true there are a number of methods of artificial cooling, including growing algae in seawater & letting it fall to the ocean floor, which would likely be much less than the foregone costs of not developing new technology.
I’m with RWE #13 here.
The problem is the Eco weenies not coal, other carbon fuels or CO2. So the real answer is to compost the GREENIES and burn them in our power plants. At some point we exhaust the supply of GREENIES and then we have solved the problem They are an extreme example of luddism.
Gentlemen,
Use of an alternate fuel for automobiles will not decrease our petroleum consumption. There are more than 10,000 products that have petroleum distillates in them. Some of these are diesel, aviation fuel, plastics, asphalt, cosmetics, pharmaceutical, lubricants and heating oil.
In order to reduce petroleum consumption we would have to reduce consumption of all of these products. They would be more expensive because the gasoline grade distillates would just be burned off. In an environmentally safe way of course.
Regards,
Roy
#13 RWE… I read something once about this garden, an apple and greater knowledge and the story didn’t end that well
Habu: Clancy based one of his books on eco-nutz weaponizing a virus and unleashing it to bring about a sans-sapians utopia. Doesn’t seem so far fetched considering in another book he had an airliner take out the House of Representatives. What’s next, his story about the fizzle in Mile High Stadium?
They’re a suicide cult, determined to take as many with them as they can. Did the Romans have political leeches like this, too? I think my last hope is that all this is somehow the beginnings of a civilization that Heinlein described in Starship Troopers. Surely the sensible will unite, if even at the last out of a sense of self-preservation?
In the last 100 years the atmosphere has gone from being 99.997% CO2 free to 99.996% CO2 free. How can such a minute change possibly be a problem?
Funny how so many folks who long for the 17th century have never lived that life nor understand exactly how to live that life even when forced.
Living to the ripe old age of 30 should make for a greener earth fer shure!
50. bob1:
All the Arians in North Africa and the middle east rolled over and died when the moslem armies came for them in 7th century. Arian Bishops invited the Moslems into spain.
All of Europes protestant denominations adopted arianism before they went dead in the last century. Its no coincidence that Nietzche’s father was a German pastor at the time the German churches were shifting over to arianism in the 19th century. The old lutheran churches in Germany today are bleached bones.
In the last year the Church of England’s head has said that sharia law is ok. He doesn’t have any doctrinal disputes with Islam as far as the person of Christ is concerned. He thinks Jesus is just a man–just like the moslems.
The same process– while not so far advanced–is at work today in American liberal episcopal, presbyterian, lutheran and methodist churches.
Why does arianism simply murder its adherents faith in God. The reason is–if Jesus is just a man–the church has no power except what power can be ginned up by by its adherants. There is a second, more gruesome reason. If Jesus is just a man then what you have at the center of Christianity is human sacrifice. People remain stone dead in their sin.
There are living churches in Europe today but they are small and unrepresentative of the population. They are charismatic or evangelical. They are all trinitarian.
While Arianism leaves you with a God without power. Gnosticism leaves you with a powerful God but no access to Him.
Just as the end of philosophy is the personality and character of a man–the end of theology is the personality and character of God. If your theology holds that you are cut off from God –that you have no access to God–but only to a kind of secret Gnosis or knowledge–(and that Gnosis or knowledge is controlled & doled out by the priests) — then its likely the adherents of Gnosticism are going “to be loner types,”
People tend immitate the personality and character of the boss.
There is no worse tyranny than to force a man to pay for what he does not want merely because you think it would be good for him.
-Professor Bernardo de la Paz, The Moon is a Harsh Mistress
It is a truism that almost any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed into law if it acquires the political power to do so, and will follow it by suppressing opposition, subverting all education to seize early the minds of the young, and by killing, locking up, or driving underground all heretics.
-Lazarus Long, Time Enough for Love
Let me add one more thing in regards to “forbidden knowledge.”
I was thinking the other day that we have entered a period where new knowledge and innovation will be viewed negatively by the country’s “leadership.” The USSR was such a place. Although it billed itself as an advanced, forward looking technocracy constantly pushing back the frontiers of science, in reality the Soviets lived in fear of discovery, in terror of innovation, and in perplexed exasperation over the fact the rest of the world did not possess the same attitude.
The arms control negotiations with the Soviets inevitably focused not on numbers of missiles each side had deployed but in stopping American innovation. As one Soviet diplomat said in the mid-70’s “We keep thinking we have it all figured out and you people keep coming up with things that change everything.” At that time he was referring to small cruise missiles. The USSR got good at building big ICBMs and suddenly the USA introduces the AGM-86 and the Tomahawk. Similarly, SDI got them terribly upset because it threatened not just their missile inventory but was so broad-based in nature it threatened them everywhere.
With the Obama Admin we have moved into an era in which getting inside the other guy’s decision loop is no longer possible. Obama, like the Soviets and to some extent the Europeans, does not have a decision loop. He has a reaction loop, and the first step in that loop is trying to make the new innovation go away by talking about it. The last step is finally embracing it and bureaucratizing it so that it never produces anything that threatens the status quo.
Charles @ 59. It is possible to apply a sort of Heisenburg principle to the Nature of Christ.
If your focus is Jesus the man, as is currently popular in both theological and archealogical circles, the less you see of Jesus the Christ, Logos, God. And the converse.
In fact, much biblical archeology, while in many cases verifying the history, is removing the mystery.
The ever present human problem is having a broad enough view to see both, the man and the God.
Let the market decide.
“Engineering” great economic decisions is foolish and frequently wasteful. We don’t know what answers science is going to bring us.
Let the market decide at each fork in the road. Frequently the market will pursue several forks and will be more likely to come up with a practical solution. The government will always want to take us down just one most popular fork and we may find us at a dead end.
Buddy Larsen @ 47 said:
“GerryP, CO2 is a pollutant because a few weeks ago the EPA classified it as such. And that’s that. It’s a pollutant by law. so shut up and drink.”
Buddy, help me. Before this, I was exhaling a healthy substance. But now I’m polluting the air every time I breathe. What should I do? Suicide? Oh, wait. Maybe I should let the Greenies go first. Ya think?
Pardon a question from the ignorant, but what is going on at NASA? Apparently this CO2 hysteria originates there – first Hansen, now this guy. What’s their stake in all this?
first Hansen, now this guy. What’s their stake in all this?
For Hansen, anyway, what’s in it is the usual for his type: becoming a Liberal hero. Getting your name and face plastered everywhere.
Hansen, after all, is the twerp who claimed the Bush administration was shutting him up, a claim which got him — naturally — reams of media coverage. And then he later had to admit that while “stiffled” he had given over 1,400 interviews to the press.
So do 1400 press interviews — 99.996% of which are fawning and laudatory — make it “worth it” to be a big, fat liar? You betcha.
It also doesn’t hurt too bad when you win the $250,000 Heinz Award and the $1,000,000 Dan David Prize (which he did). And hell, he can probably get a date with Darryl Hannah if he wants, or some other eco-freak celebrity.
The short version of “what’s in it for them”: fame and fortune.
Any technological breakthrough which enables the capitalist system to thrive will be opposed by the Greens. They are actually best described as watermelons: green on the outside, but red on the inside.
They’ve seized hold of the energy issue like a pit bull and are not likely to let go. They have always known that the Achilles Heel of the modern, capitalist economy is energy. Attack it, and you destroy the system. By now it should be obvious to all that the CO2-as-pollution fiction has been exposed sufficiently. But they are not going to let go of the way they have found to destroy our economy. This is a fight to the death.
If the pit bull has a vise grip on your leg and won’t let go, perhaps you need to pull out your pistol and shoot the dog.
Has NASA’s mission changed or am I just confused as usual. I agree with Jeff#9 and in response to Blert#3; we dont need better ways to raise crops as the greens are promoting population reduction.
Global Warming my ass, they can visit me here in Detroit and watch me shovel the snow that fell yesterday, snow in the middle of April? You betcha.
The whole GW thing is a scam, we need to start generating more co2 to stop the next Ice Age.
46. markb
In this area I believe that having two powers such as Russia and China working around the clock and gaming our possible fixes they have the very distinct advantage.
Our people are good but go home ot to the mall at 5PM.
If they succeed, which is the belief of the JCS then we are (all together now) in deep deep trouble.
Your other concern about our government preventing you from getting to BC, I fully share that concern. So we have in just a brief colloquy two huge reasons to never give up your pistola.
63. michael hoskins:
Not just the Heisenberg principle. Also, Schrodinger’s Cat.
Yes, Jeff Burton way back at #9 is correct. “Saving the environment” is simply a liberal catchphrase for an agenda that really seeks to strike at the heart order in human societies. It is a bludgeon wherewith to smash the world of the sound and stable; a world to which liberals invariably do not belong. Addled by their own dysfunctions, with a burning spirit of revenge and a boundless lust for power, the fourth-estate rabble of the world (Barack Obama and his cronies chief among them) set out to destroy those institutions and power structures which funnel prosperity to the other estates; and which, due to their natural exclusion of all that is degenerate and unfit for reality, seem to them self-evidently unfair and illegitimate.
Liberalism is a thief in the night, a liar and a murderer from the beginning. The last thing the greenies really want is better sources of energy. The rubric of “cheap, clean, and abundant” is only there to put a human face on a much more sinister proposition. Let us just imagine for moment what would happen if some technological innovation rendered solar power virtually free, and if all the fishing trawlers, tree-harvesters, strip-mining machines, and smelting plants of the world ran off this limitless energy source. Capitalism and prosperity would see an unparalleled acceleration, but would the greenies be satisfied then?
Since this is an open thread let me add this.
With 700 Trillion in toxic debt still floating around we will be dealing with is for the remainder of our lifetimes
So says Hernando De Soto:
Attempts by the G20 leaders to halt the global recession are doomed unless they get to grips with the “toxic” debt hidden in the shadow economy, warned to Hernando De Soto, the prize-winning Peruvian economist.
Mr De Soto said: “This toxic debt is the elephant in the room and solving the problem is the missing link to getting the world economy moving again. Until we know what proportion of the estimated $600trn [£400trn] of derivative contracts is toxic, then credit markets will remain in a state of chronic paralysis.” (comment..two years into the problem and it still has not been defined, yet we’ve spent trillions and are bankrupt)
He added: “No amount of fiscal stimulus or new international regulation will get the banking system fixed until we know how much poisonous paper there is on the balance sheets of the banks. The G20 leaders have given the world economy a blood transfusion but now they need to get on with the operation if they are to save the patient’s life.”
Mr De Soto welcomed the efforts of the US Treasury Secretary, Tim Geithner, to put pressure on institutions to establish how much toxic debt they hold. “But there must be more focus on forcing all the financial institutions and banks to face up to the bad debt hidden away in the shadow economy. Lawyers and bankers must now work on bringing these contracts out of the shadows so they can be given a value and be traded.”
The economist also claimed that it was fear which forced Mr Geithner’s predecessor, Hank Paulson, not to go ahead with his original $780bn rescue plan to ring-fence toxic paper: “I’m told that the bankers told him they didn’t know where it was hiding.” Mr Paulson’s U-turn over toxic debt – switching instead to recapitalising the banks – was never fully explained. “My sources told me they were terrified that they couldn’t find out where all the contracts were lodged and that’s why Paulson dropped the plan,” he said.
An adviser to presidents around the world, Mr De Soto runs the Institute of Liberty and Democracy in Lima, and advises emerging economies on how to alleviate poverty by giving the poor property and other legal rights. “The problems are similar,” he said. “US and European authorities find it difficult to believe that the fundamental cause of a recession could be a badly documented legal system. But this is what this crisis comes down to and will only be alleviated when that paper is documented, has a value and can be traded.”
Mr De Soto reckons there are only a few hundred billion dollars of toxic paper: “Until we acknowledge this toxic debt then this crisis could get even worse. Let’s learn the lessons of Iraq and find out if these derivatives are the financial equivalent of weapons of mass destruction or not, and if so, get them documented.”
Charles @ 28,
The big Christian heresy of the modern era has been Arianism–that holds that Jesus is fully man but not really God. … Gnosticism was around when St Paul was writing. According to this heresy Jesus was Fully God but not really a man. According to this heresy all flesh is evil.
Very interesting points you make here. There is at least an intellectual ressonance between Arianism and Islam, the former holding that Jesus had a divine nature separate from the human and the later simply dispensing with his divinity. Mohammed was influenced by the widespread presence of Nestorian Christians in the Arabian peninsula. Nestorianism is a distinct heretical movement concerning the nature of the Christ that was more influential in the East, as Arianism was in the West.
Gnosticism can be seen as leading to the Albegensian Cathars and to other mystical rejections of orthodox Jewish or Christian doctrines. Eventually this can lead to Neopaganism and Gaia worship or even Satanism. Gnostic movements, such as Manichaeism were explicitly opposed to Jewish theology and practice and by stressing a division between God and the material world they set the stage for Islam’s abstract and arbitrary deity.
70. Habu:
Our people are good but go home ot to the mall at 5PM.
==================================
Electricity is a twenty four hour per day job. With the exception of management,who go home at 5. Which explains why more work gets done on the backshift.
There is a high percentage of folks with prior military experience, mostly Navy working in this industry. The expectation that you can go home when you get done is not uncommon.
The union contract even specifies a concept known as “earned rest” which would be thought of as “featherbedding” by the 9 to 5 crowd, but actually allows you to get some rest (after 24+ hours) even though they won’t let you go home.
Attendance is mandatory. The industry views itself as a vital safety service.
I have pulled up to more than one closed road, had the policeman walk up to the car to turn me around, see my hardhat, and then say “go ahead, but be careful”.
More grist for the mill that will crush us all.
The Swiss are now delationary. China is deflationary.
The Swiss National Bank, the keeper of the international flame in banking is considering devaluing the swiss franc, thus exporting the deflation.
The SNB’s hard men have thrown away the rule book, taking emergency action to force down the exchange rate of the Swiss franc.
Here lies the danger. If other countries try to export deflation by this means, we will face a second phase of the global crisis. Taiwan is already devaluing. Korea, Singapore, and Sweden all seem tempted to follow. Japan is chomping at the bit.
Watch for falling objects.
Charles @ 59, Well put.
GerryP, DocBill and Matt Beck, My furry friend loves Greenies.
75. markb:
Somehow knowing that we have people manning the ramparts 24/7 doesn’t alleve my concern that if there are embedded system failures in the computers that manage our systems, and they are activated that a national grid down situation could be managed within a reasonable time. Immediately, people in hospitals and those who require electricity to sustain life are in peril. All public utilities will cease operation,sanitation ,clean water, gasoline pumping etc. So far our track record for regional outages has shown a good deal of area for improvement.
I believe we are far more vulnerable to catastrophy than we are to managing any catastrophy.
Mark, tell me more so I can moderate my position..you have knowledge in this area. Thx.
I think that its helpful to recall the whole “limits to growth” “limits to population” began in the 1960′s just as US oil production was peaking and the rate of scientific and technological innovation was slowing down.
We have entered into an age of very fast track technological innovation and scientific discovery. This change is accelerating. What’s more imho we’re only a 1-3 years away from a couple alternative energy technologies breaking through the price points in scale of coal and oil.
On top of that imho there are some big bang energy discoveries out there that will just bury current technologies. I don’t know if water cracking will be it. but salt water cracking may do it. Here is a high school teacher dropping a pellet of pure sodium into a bucket of water. Notice the big bang. That looks exothermic (you get more energy out than you put in.)whereas water splitting is endothermic (you get less energy out than you put in.) Sodium is stable in salt water because its in ion form. Ion means, I think — that its missing an electron as in Na+. If you could efficiently add an electron to Na+ while Na+ is in a water solution — you might be able to get a controllable combustion as Na reacts fast and hard with H2O.
I think the CERN game is a waste of money –if they’re thinking they can net energy out of that any time soon. Heck its better and cheaper to work on water cracking.
i had a conversation at a party with a young lady who was raving about all the evil people destroying the earth, etc.
I asked her “what are trees made of?” It took some prompting before i got her answer “dirt”.
I told her that they are actually made out of an amazing polymer (mostly) called cellulose. She’d heard of it somewhere before. I went on and explained that cellulose is a carbohydrate polymer; that is a long chain polysaccharide. I then went on and mentioned that every single carbon, in every single tree, all over the world is made out of carbon dioxide!
I even pointed out that the byproduct of healthy trees is the fresh air (O2) that we get to breath!
Since I’m a research biochemist people who know me sometimes listen to my answers when they have chemistry questions. Sometimes.
She turned around and punched her boyfriend in the stomach. Not sure why. Maybe I violated her intellect with incongruent information and she needed someone to bash.
Maybe this is a tack that could be turned into an attack on the “green” sensibilities. Just ask them why they hate trees!
Thermodynamics presents more rational explanations, but these arguments are beyond the “feelings” used as a substitute for thought by many folks. You need a gut wrenching argument, with a little shame and blame, to make them “feel” like they’ve been mislead. You can’t just helpfully point out the errors of their arguement.
whiskey: what is SWPL? I don’t undersatnd all your MLA’s (multi letter acronyms)
14 erc rodson: I saw a totally appropriate clever use of hydrolysed water on a farm. The farmer had a Jacobs windmill and ran the juice to a hydrolytic cell. He collected the seperated hydrogen and oxygen in tanks and stored it for later use. He used it as fuel for his cutting torch in his machine shop. Elegant. Simple. Appropriate.
I doubt any one of the Eco guys is really prepared to live a
preindustrial revolution life. Just think, no serious drugs, no mechanized ag., lots of flies from all the animal waste on the streets, no ai. con. anywhere, no internet or electrical conveinces. Ie. Afganistan without bombers.
Are they really interested? I doubt it. They are only interested if everyone else does it.
I’ve had a long post blocked four times so let’s see if this short one gets through.
Richard, delete this if you see it. I may have to email the long one to you.
Richard,
This new means of creating liquid fuel from coal, if true, will be revolutionary. It would put a cap on the cost of oil. My rough calculation, based on an electricity cost of $0.06 per kilowatt hour, is that vehicle fuel (diesel, gasoline, etc.) produced from coal by this new process would cost about $4 a gallon, as opposed to about $11.50 a gallon with the existing process.
There is no way that enviro-loonies in the US and Europe could keep China from using this new process. Japan and South Korea would significantly fund the construction of immense numbers of such coal liquifaction plants in China just to save their own countries from the horrible particulate pollution produced by Chinese coal-fired electric power plants. That pollution is having terrible effects in Japan and Korea right now, and it is projected to grow worse by almost an order of magnitude in the next 20 years.
Plus China’s production of most of its liquid fuel from its immense coal reserves via this process would be a major, major financial and strategic advantage for China. They wouldn’t have to pay hard currency for oil & natural gas imports, and this would also protect them from a blockade of their fuel by the U.S. Navy.
So the greenies can’t stop this new process from widespread use abroad, and that means they can’t stop it from being used in the U.S. and Europe, both of whom have staggering coal reserves.
The Arabs just lost their control of most of the world’s liquid fuel.
And the price of liquid fuel just had a cap of about $4 a gallon put on it for the next hundred years. Assuming this process works as described.
This is incredibly good news.
SWPL = Stuff White People Like
It’s a website you might visit.
Humorous, if you like an elitist snob ridiculing yuppie pop norms.
It’s the responding posters that is to Whiskey’s point. Read and weep.
We need a bridge to the time when we will have greener fuels. I don’t like smog and polluted rivers, but why cripple our economy by not drilling, cap and trade and the like when we need energy now until the new sources are available and reasonably priced. Some will yell, “but we have global warming.” I say prove it in a scientific manner, not an emotional one, and prove that man is a contributor. It wasn’t proven that we were entering an Ice Age as was cast about in the 1970′s so we did nothing; but now, we have the climate religionists who are in an uproar over global warming/climate change. And our politicians have bought into the fantasy. Yet these same people cry about our dependence on foreign energy supplies. Just simply unbelievable.
OT –
Apparently Keith Olbermann has started criticizing Obama and the DOJ’s legal positions in regards to state secrets/immunity defenses. I just have to say that I am completely astounded. I never thought a bootlicker like Keith would openly go after Obama, but the Left is really pushing back on the issue.
http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2009/04/08/criticism/
How does that saying go? “If I’ve lost Keith Olbermann, I’ve lost the country.”
This being an open thread…
NORAD needs to re-activate WWII era prop fighters ASAP. ( P-51, Spad, Corsair )
F-16/15/18/22 are mis-matched against the Cessna flight performance.
If that can’t work, then the Army is going to have to provide some Apaches.
The reason should be obvious:Yavuz Berke (Adam Leon) has exposed a crack in NORAD’s thinking.
BTW it seems likely that he fueled the Cessna up immediately before his probing recce.
It is high time that muslims be excluded from flight schools for the duration of the war.
#84
Tom Holsinger
Good insights. I would like to see the long post.
This post is very interesting- Thanks Richard for the read
Charles said:
“Sodium is stable in salt water because its in ion form. ”
Sodium is stable in salt water because it’s salt, i.e. Sodium Chloride, NaCl. A way to make to make salt water is to combine Sodium Hydroxide (lye) and Hydrochloric acid, i.e.
NaOH + HCl -> H2O + NaCl + heat
Note that the reaction is exothermic (heat produced).
You can produce sodium from salt (NaCl) through electrolysis. Put pure salt in a glass basin and heat the basin with bunsen burners until the salt melts. Then put two iron electrodes in the salt and run DC current through the molten salt via the elctrodes. Sodium will accumulate around one electrode and hot chlorine gas (very nasty) will evolve from the other electode. There is no energy source here. You have to add significant energy via electricity to produce the sodium and chlorine. If you take the pure sodium and throw it in water, the sodium will grab an OH radical from the water molecule (H20) and liberate hydrogen gas (the electrical energy from the electrolyisis process that originally produced the sodium is liberated as heat).
H20 + Na -> NaOH + H + heat
This reaction is exothermic and can cause the liberated hydrogen gas to burn in the surrounding air.
I agree with 84 that cheaper coal-to-liquids is good news. I would like to see a discussion here of the concept of peak oil and peak energy. I have found a lot of information that supports the theory that we have already reached the maximum production of available hydrocarbon fuel and face an imminent, inevitable production decline of unpredictable slope. I have not found much to counter the arguments. The usual response of those who don’t agree is simply “We have lots and lots of oil and coal in the ground”.
Alvin,
Most areas with significant potential for further discoveries of oil reserves cannot be adequately investigated for political reasons. This includes Saudi Arabia.
It isn’t merely a question of local governments not allowing oil exploration by groups they don’t control. Oil exploration is expensive, and foreign companies simply will not check out areas subject to significant hazards, which include political instability and violence as well as greedy rulers who can’t be trusted to let oil companies earn returns on their investments in oil exploration.
“Saving the environment” is simply a liberal catchphrase for an agenda that really seeks to strike at the heart order in human societies.
In the Foundation-funded conservation racket, ‘saving’ a piece of property means seizing effective control of it, and then ensuring that it shall not be economically productive for human benefit. Oh, sure, the owners will still be allowed to live there, but in ever-more-controlled circumstances.
The number of properties thus economically nullified in the US is astronomical, and growing. There’s an industry of trust-fund babies devoting their lives to restoring the 18th century to ‘the land’ – and many of them succeed in becoming residents themselves of the controlled acres, living in bucolic idylls that their urban counterparts can just dream of.
Nice work if you can get it. And the supply of products from that land shrinks in inverse ratio to the hyperbolic self-esteem of the resident ‘saviors’.
I would like to see a discussion here of the concept of peak oil and peak energy. I have found a lot of information that supports the theory that we have already reached the maximum production of available hydrocarbon fuel and face an imminent, inevitable production decline of unpredictable slope.
‘Peak oil’ is a buzzword of the greenies, and serves more as a political slogan than as a description of anything. Perhaps some explicit citations could be provided, rather than just the empty ‘a lot of information’.
Also, if the coal-to-liquid process proves a breakthrough, the concept sort of demolishes the debating weapon of ‘peak oil’, due to the enormous reserves of coal in the US. Oil would be far less a necessity, if coal-based fuels were made plentiful and cheap.
Alvin,
The best place for Peak Oil information is “The Oil Drum” (google that phrase and follow the link). I would provide the link here but it would attract automatic moderation.
A caveat about “The Oil Drum”. The people providing articles and commenting there are a mixed bag of petroleum engineers, nuclear engineers, professional actuaries, business men, doomers, lunatics, idiots, and common moonbats. You have to sift through a fair amount of noise to find any real pearls of wisdom. The doomers are the more interesting ones to read and tend to have issues with mental illness. A “doomer” believes that all is lost and we’re doomed to revert back to the 18th century after most of our existing population dies off horribly. What’s interesting/disturbing about the more intelligent doomers is they can sometimes create coherent arguments. A very entertaining doomer website can be found by googling “Life After the Oil Crash”.
80. aaron
“that is a long chain polysaccharide”
Aaron, that kinda talk can get you arrested in Kentucky, especially if she is a minor. I’d be careful.
CO2′s a problem? I’ll take all you can give me — selzer’s selling at a buck fifty for a 2-liter bottle!
As you all may know: the rainfall hitting the eastern slopes of the Peruvian Andes has enough hydro-potential to power the ENTIRE western hemisphere — all forms.
It’s rather simple you see…
The sun vaporizes immense amounts of water over the Amazonian watershed which is driven west to rise and rain upon the Andes. It’s the world’s biggest solar collector.
Using entirely conventional methods hydropower consistently underprices all other sources. Juice at such a price point would permit the Hydro-Hydrogen Economy.
Undersea plastic hoses (mega-scale garden hoses) could snake across the oceans, resting on the continental shelf transporting either methane or hydrogen. Operating at internal pressure matched to the ocean depth these isobaric pipes would last and last. Their huge cross-section would produce low drag loses and mitigate the need for recompression.
Isobaric tank farms would buffer production and demand — all below the seas. Zero fire risk, no eye pollution and plopped in place, these bladders would augment current practice.
Hydropower might be conducted over the Andes to the Atacoma Desert. There a globally scaled electro-chemical industry would be built. Everything from Aluminum, Magnesium, Sodium reduction to Sodium Hydroxide/ Chlorine to Hydrogen/ Iron Oxide reduction to electro-refining… This is where to do it. The common theme for all of the above is that they are capital intensive, energy intensive and generally not wanted in anyone’s backyard. The Atacoma Desert has virtually no population — so no locals could object.
Ultra cheap hydrogen would first be vectored to the oil refineries in as much as product yields would go up. Other buyers: ammonia plants, coal to liquid you name it.
So we already have a permanent solution to the oil ticks.
Of course, you’d want to mass produce the hydro-power plants around the principle of modest scale and high-head high velocity turbines. The Swiss are particularly adept at such designs.
The water impoundment would be of modest scale high upon the mountainside. They would not look like Hoover Dam. Rather, a run of the river scheme that has irregular performance is the way to go. Electrolysis would buffer swings in output. Really heavy flows would be shunted on by as the design would be aimed at harvesting only the reliable fraction of the total flow.
Throw in your own improvements…
Regards.
By the way, I believe in Peak Oil. The solution for Peak Oil is nuclear energy (nuclear fusion if possible otherwise nuclear fission with fuel reprocessing) and synthetic petroleum from coal and/or biological sources.
Please note that in the last 150 years, there has not been a truly free market in energy. Energy is a strategic resource, and as such, it attracts government attention.
In the 1800′s, the federal government subsidized railroads mightily; this was classic corporate welfare (or crony capitalism). Most of the subsidy was in the form of land.
In the late 1800′s, Standard Oil became the monopoly power of petroleum. Although Shell Oil (and later, the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company) challenged its power, the federal government forced Standard to split into several pieces. However, America’s anti-trust laws were suspended so the majors could cooperate to exploit foreign oil fields. Texas was a major producer in the twentieth century, but that was principally because the Texas Railroad Commission regulated the industry to such an extent that it functioned as a de facto government-run monopoly. In the 1970′s, OPEC came into its own with a wave of nationalization and political extortion. Ever since, the price of oil has been a major issue of international politics.
The national highway grid has been good for the economy. It has also been a de facto subsidy for automobiles, especially ones driven by internal combustion.
If there were some “magic bullet” that could turn coal into gasoline at a cheap price, I could live with that. If the technology exists, what’s keeping industrialists from making it happen now?
Getting off fossil fuels is important for a number of reasons, not the least of which is strangling the economies of regimes that fund terrorists. Unfortunately, this issue has been ideologically driven by folks such as Albert Gore Jr., who have used a “Chicken Little Strategy” to induce as many people as possible to run around like a bunch of chickens with their heads cut off. Alarmism is not a good idea. If wrapping Greenland and Antarctica in sheets of polished reflective metal is more cost effective than stopping pumping more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, I suppose that is what we’ll have to live with.
Not only do I oppose any policy to bankrupt energy companies, my proposals would encourage coal companies to derive geothermal energy from their existing mines and petroleum companies to derive geothermal energy from their existing oil fields. Our energy companies must be part of the solution to any energy crisis, whether that crisis is driven by international politics, economics, the opening of the Artic Ocean, or any documented rise in the sea level.
The answer to your question depends on one’s perspective regarding the relation between human progress and the environment. A person who views the environment as an essential requirement for continued human progress should view this development somewhere in the range of neutral to positive. A person who views continued human progress as a determinant to the environment would regard this as a very negative development. Basically, do you care about the environment for the sake of humanity? Or do you care about the environment for the sake of the environment? The latter group will clearly see this development as a problem. It lowers the aggregate cost of energy. Lower energy costs means more human development. More human development and the more the environment must change to suit our needs. Carbon is really only one symptom of a much larger disease to these folks. They therefore lose on not only a hot-button issue (CO2) but also on a much broader scale. An environmentalist who ultimately roots his philosophy in the betterment of humanity would have a slightly different view. They might approach this situation with the idea that cheaper gas provides an opportunity to invest more in technologies (carbon sequesteration?) with potential benefit to the environment and therefore humanity as a whole, while at the same time achieving a net decrease in energy costs.
If the original story is accurate (Anyone have a link to the Science article?), and this is really just a process change vs. some fancy new tech, then discussion is irrelevant because it will happen whether opinion is for or against it. The government could try to tax or restrict the use of the process. But, that could de difficult if the process itself does not provide some unique foothold – like the requirement of some unusual component – for the government to latch on to. And even then, plants could simply open in Mexico.
I love when stories like this emerge. It really helps to separate the honest environmentalists, whom I respect, from those who are just opposed to all things human.
I.S., I grew up in western Marin County, California, where the agricultural land trust concept was invented. The ranchers and farmers who put their property into such trusts remain there, or their kids do, and they all work pretty damn hard.
Admittedly the land and scenery there are gorgeous – it’s like living on an American West-style cattle ranch in a Irish landscape. Out on Point Reyes, though, there are white caps in the stock tanks at this time of year, and you can wind-surf in the stock ponds.
Alvin seems a bit unclear on the concept of “hydrocarbon”, though. It appears he does not realize that all coal liquifaction processes, not merely the one mentioned in the Wired article, produce liquid hydrocarbons from coal and water.
And that it means the concept of “peak oil” just died – $4 a gallon for the next hundred years or more isn’t much of a peak.
blert:
You refer to the Andes. Now, how exactly do you propose to get access to such resources? Admittedly, Chile is reasonably friendly. Bolivia isn’t. Bolivians are still upset that the United States tried to spray their coca crops back during the Clinton administration. Bolivia is sitting on the world’s biggest supply of lithium, much of the world’s hydroelectric potential, huge amounts of natural gas, et cetera. And it’s all off-limits right now.
Sure, I’d love to exchange the world economy’s present dependency on the Persian Gulf for a massive dependency on the Andes instead. (It would be like going from the fire into the frying pan…) However, that would require diplomacy, something that is in short supply in the halls of power, at least in the United States.
99: That’s “Arctic Ocean”.
There is so much quasi-oil that Peak Oil is going to go the way of the Club of Rome.
Canadian Tar Sands — staggering.
Bakken Formation — huge, light, sweet but thin.
Venezuela’s Orinoco Ultra-heavy Crude — staggering.
Caspian Sea Deep Crude — staggering.
Mexican North Gulf prospects — huge.
We are so far from Peak Oil it’s a joke.
Tom Holsinger said:
“.. coal liquifaction processes, not merely the one mentioned in the Wired article, produce liquid hydrocarbons from coal and water. And that it means the concept of “peak oil” just died – $4 a gallon for the next hundred years or more isn’t much of a peak.”
Maybe. What Peak Oil is really about is “Energy return on investment” (EROI). If it costs 101 kilowatt-hours of energy to get a quantity of petroleum out of the ground but this same quantity of petroleum only contains 100 kilowatt-hours then the petroleum will stay in the ground even if petroleum sells for $1000/barrel. People who dismiss Peak Oil typically mention how we can make petroleum from shale, biological sources, etc. but they miss the point. We are in no danger of running out of expensive energy. In fact there is still more petroleum in the ground than we have already pumped out. What Peak Oil is about is that we are running out a ***CHEAP*** energy sources, i.e. cheap in the EROI context.
Well you’ve got me there. The Obama-Clinton crew is not externally competent.
BTW my scheme is focused on Peru, Columbia and Chile.
Bolivia and Venezuela are politically pointless.
BTW, the rain falls so heavy on the eastern slopes of the Andes that practically no one can live there. It’s like Noah’s flood of 40,000,000,000,000 days. It’s the monsoon that never stops. It’s so bad/ good that there is little study or exploration there.
David Attenborough, PLANET EARTH, did shoot some footage there. He found the water flow at the season peak to be beyond imagination.
Eggplant,
The Wired article states: “Glasser’s new production method allows them to set a lower limit on the amount of energy that would be needed to transform solid coal into fuel. The very best possible CTL process would require 350 megawatts of input to make 80,000 gallons of fuel; the current process uses more than 1,000 megawatts.”
At $0.06 per kilowatt hour, the current coal liquidfaction process produces liquid fuel at a cost of @ $11.50 a gallon, while the “very best possible CTL process” produces liquid fuel at a cost of @ $4 a gallon.
The world has one hell of a lot of known coal reserves – hundreds of years worth given present projections of fuel use. Disproportionate amounts of those reserves are in the U.S. and Europe because that is where most exploration has been done. I.e., real coal reserves are probably far greater.
So, if this process works as advertised, “peak oil” in the EROI context means $4 a gallon for vehicle fuel. That’s some peak.
Current technique in the Bakken indicate total life flows of 700,000 bbls for a single bore over it’s life. The EROI is way high. The reserve is huge. It’s just that only now have we advanced the art of whip-stocking so that the drill head can stay in the pay zone.
Since the Bakken is approximately equal to KSA’s admitted/ propagated reserves and the quality his very, very good I can’t buy into Peak Oil Panic.
What I do see is that the muslim middle east is about to suffer from peak islam. Now THAT’s going to make for interesting times.
Peak islam is due to the coming revolution in Electric Vehicles in islam’s major markets: Japan, Europe and India.
Oil demand has been driven by transportation demand. When this is increasingly met by EVs the oil ticks will be squeezed. On the one hand, their populations continue to explode and so need ever more food… On the other hand, oil exports will flatten out for a whole slew of reasons. Within one generation, KSA will enter the same dynamic as Mexico suffers with Cantarell. The muslim middle east has an unpleasant destiny.
Oh, well.
Oh, good, I have some interested in the Peak Oil issue! Eggplant is correct that it’s the energy return on energy invested that is the problem. If it costs too much to get the energy out it isn’t worth getting. Blert mentions the staggering amounts of hydrocarbon deposits in various sites. The problem is getting them out and to market for costs we can bear. re: 101, I am not at all unclear about what is a hydrocarbon and am familiar with the Fischer-Tropsch coal-to-liquids process. This does not creat energy, it just changes it’s form. Insufficiently Sensitive is correct that Peak Oil is a greenie buzzword but that does not mean that the concept is incorrect. I only know what I read on the internet and in books regarding these issues but have read many posts at Theoildrum.com that are very worrisome. Tom Holsinger is correct that much is unknown and guesswork but Matthew Simmons has examined the Saudi issue in great detail in his book “Twilight in the Desert”. Worth reading and alarming, actually.
Any thoughts (experts) on research into ‘anti-proton’ (CERN)?
Is that a plausible way for the next breakthrough (in civilain energy)?
@92 and 101. If I remember correctly, Henry VIII had more than one argument with Rome. Beyond his marital problems he was constrained in that over the centuries large parts of England (I have read numbers as large as one third) were deeded to the church by the pious, for what ever reason. By becoming a Protestant, Henry took the land, doled it out to his supporters, and returned it to production for England, rather than Rome.
This was true in large parts of Catholic Europe and has, from time to time, been cited as a reason that many of the Southern European Catholic countries lagged so far behind Northern Protestants lands…the means of production, in highly agricultural times, was restricted.
Greenies were not the first.
90. Eggplant:
Charles said:
“Sodium is stable in salt water because its in ion form. ”
Sodium is stable in salt water because it’s salt, i.e. Sodium Chloride, NaCl.
My understanding is that in salt water NaCl breaks up into Na+ and Cl- ions. The two atoms are no longer bonded to form a molecule. But I could be wrong.
H20 + Na -> NaOH + H + heat
This reaction is exothermic and can cause the liberated hydrogen gas to burn in the surrounding air.
What I found interesting about the Kanzius effect was that radio wave frequency used to crack the H20 was 13.56 MHz RF. That’s also the Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR) for Oxygen. (The suggestion here is that they created an artificial catalyst.) While the process is endothermic in its raw form–the process has not been optimized. Further, No experiment has been done to test as to whether the radio frequency of the NMR of sodium — which is 26.451– would shift a sodium ion from Na+ to Na while in solution.
Which philosopher said “Give me three premises and I can ‘prove’ anything”?
There is no “logical” flaw in your argument; the flaw is in your premise, that being, “Carbon (in the form of CO2) in the atmosphere will result in temperature rises that will cause major problems for large numbers of people.”
In a word: bullshit. All of the horrendous consequences predicted are built on flawed computer modeling, and the last 9 years of temperature data has put “paid” to those predictions, not without caterwauling from the high priests of Global Warming who have built careers upon that sand. The “real” effect of the doubling of CO2 (~1degree F warming over this century) is neglible compared to the “normal” variation caused by solar impingement and geophysical events- like big volcanic eruptions.
Let’s do what we need to to restrict the funding of the Islamic nutcases that want to destroy us – bring on the coal to gas technologies!
Alvin,
The whole energy thing including Peak Oil is like a Matryoshka doll (issues within issues within issues). There are technological solutions to Peak Oil via nuclear energy and various forms of the Fischer-Tropsch process. However these technological solutions are capital intensive. If the economy has been hosed due to Peak Oil then the money won’t be there to do the research, development and implementation of the technological solutions. Add to this the issue of “demand destruction”. The price of raw crude oil has dropped significantly over the past few months because the world’s economy is in the toilet (energy demand has been significantly reduced). The huge energy deposits in the Athabasca tar sands in Alberta are no longer economical (I believe the break even requires petroleum to be over $50/barrel). The people who invested in the Athabasca tar sands have had their pants pulled down (will they invest again?). There is a scenario where demand drops as fast due economic decline as the drop in supply due to the destruction of a nonrenewable resource (death spiral). Consequently the petroleum price remains stable as the world’s economy reverts back to the 18th century. I don’t see this happening because eventually a strong leader says: “National security trumps economics! We’re going over to nukes and coal, end of discussion!”. At that point it becomes purely political. Of course there are alternative political agendas. A “water mellon green” or a Gramscian windup robot sees resource depletion as the means towards the abolition of capitalism and bringing about a socialist’s paradise (a hell actually). The water mellon green anticipates that we could solve the energy crisis with nukes and coal so he preemptively shifts the political narrative to prohibit the use of those technologies, e.g. global warming, carbon cap and trade, nuclear weapon’s proliferation, etc. We should have been going over to nukes and coal 30 years ago but the various competing political agendas obfuscated the basic economic and technical facts.
Charles,
As you said, Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR) involves radio waves (typically microwave radiation). Radio waves are a form of energy. Where does the energy come from? Your microwave oven is based upon irradiating food with microwave radiation that is resonant with the natural vibration frequency of water molecules. Where does the energy come from for your microwave oven? Answer: The 20 amp electrical socket in your kitchen wall. Where did that energy come from? Probably from burning coal at your local power plant.
Nature is a mother: No free lunches.
We should have been going over to nukes and coal 30 years ago but the various competing political agendas obfuscated the basic economic and technical facts.
Right you are.
Peak Oil is sexy the same way the Club of Rome was sexy.
Remember when we were supposed to run out of copper by 1994?
The whole Limits to Growth nostrum is STILL with us.
Their problem is that like Jehovah’s Witnesses the conclusion is preordained as a matter of faith. When the end of the world refuses to arrive on schedule the faithful pencil in a new terminus.
Rationalization is mistaken for reason.
Of the essence: Peak Oilers do not understand the micro-economics of mineral exploration, why NO ONE attempts to establish reserves beyond a ten year horizon. Put another way, every time any E&P oil company discovers too much oil they slash their budget.
Greg Croft, Inc. is a true believer in Peak Oil. In their opinion, circa 2006, that no significant reserves are out there.
Against such certitude Iraq announced a clean doubling of their national oil reserves after having the first modern search in decades. Now Iraq considers themselves to have more reserves than KSA.
Oh, well.
Then there is the consistent omission of the deep Caspian Sea discoveries of Chevron, et. al. Chevron rates them as super-giants.
Oh, well.
Then there is the omission of the long known Bakken which has been only recently transformed into a super-giant by technological breakthroughs.
Oh, well.
Just how many times does a theory have to fail before you loose the faith?
There are vast, vast areas that are off limits to modern prospecting. These areas would have classic EROIs. It’s just the politics! Mexico is a classic in this regard. She has a law on the books prohibiting oil exports beyond a set level to the evil el-norte.
To see a nation like Iraq double its reserves so quickly and so easily should alert all that the Peak Oil nostrum can’t hold.
BTW, peak extractions from many of the OPEC tribes is due entirely to political events such as:
Nationalization
Zero re-investment policys
Ejection of western management in favor of cronies
War
Sabotage during War
Obviously destroying surface equipment does not make the oil go away. It will however cause the production level to ‘peak’ , reduced by non-reservoir effects. Then these production numbers are bandied about to the ignorant as if they signified the end of reservoir life. Hubble would cry foul.
Tom Holsinger,
You are so right about the beauty of West Marin, and the Marin Agricultural Land Trust (MALT), a magnificent organization.
For many years I have been involved in the Napa Valley version of that group, which has also been quite successful, the Land Trust of Napa County. I live adjacent to one of their first permanent preserves.
Jamie Irons
blert,
Don’t I recall a recent massive discovery off the Florida coast, which we are precluded from extracting; but China is drilling for, with Cuban rights?
Here in Idaho I’ve been watching with great displeasure all the obstacles a group is going through to try to get a nuclear plant going out in God’s forgotten acres out in the wilds of the southern part of our state. Whether they will succeed I don’t know but if you can’t build one there you can’t build one anywhere. The amount of disinformation circulated is amazing, the tactics disgusting, the lawsuits are acoming, and folks like the Snake River Alliance are doing a great disservice to us all. This particular design has incorporated in it a capacity to make ethanol also providing a market for some local crops.
bob1 said:
“The amount of disinformation circulated is amazing, the tactics disgusting, the lawsuits are acoming, and folks like the Snake River Alliance are doing a great disservice to us all.”
There is this wonderful irony that environmentalists litigate like mad to drive up the costs for building a nuclear power plant and then triumpantly announce that nuclear power is impractical because it is too expensive.
In the long run they’ll fail.
The environmentalists will have no political traction after we’ve been reduced to frequent power blackouts and our families freezing in the winter. Why we need to go through that learning process is another question…
JGreer @ 100
“Basically, do you care about the environment for the sake of humanity? Or do you care about the environment for the sake of the environment?”
Although a given course of action might not be incompatible with either concern, it might well be incompatible with one or the other of them. Therefore, I found your apposition of these questions very thought-provoking.
A question to those who see nuclear power as a major replacement for oil and coal as a source of energy: As one who has long been in favor of that approach, I have recently become increasingly concerned about the idea of nuclear reactors in more and more countries, including those with weak security or those unfriendly to the United States. Should the enthusiasm for that solution be dampened?
Not if you use blert’s genie in a bottle approach:
Build your nukes for maritime emplacement such that they both float and sit upon off shore pads built as mega-buckets. They’d scale towards the kind of monsters used in North Sea oil extraction. With most of the works well below sea level in the event of a complete disaster the plant would be scuttled.
Standing in deep water every plant would be moated.
The power would flow by undersea cables, a well established method. (ASEA)
Water cooling to the sea means big savings on cooling towers. Bringing up Deep Ocean Cold would give you a 3% bump in thermal efficiency.
Mass production in Puget Sound would feed the Pacific. Mass production in Norway/ Scotland would feed the Atlantic.
The financial structure would be long term block power sales much in the style of the James Bay project.
The owner would be a Federal GSE.
No real attempt would be made to place nukes on shore.
Bucket nukes could be placed adjacent to Nigeria, Brazil, et. al. by treaty with the US Government.
Their security would be provided by the USMC & USN.
This method ends all the nasty issues that have plagued exporting the atom. Since the bulk of electric power is consumed near the coasts and transmission losses to 500 miles are not that bad everything is solved.
The same design can be punched out over and over.
Earthquakes and tsunamis are not a problem. At sea the tsunami just flows by! Semi-floating on the bottom earthquakes are no problem. Built as a ‘keep’ ( google castles and keeps ) they’d be impossible to storm. At the last moment the operators can flood the bucket, but generally the keep would be too much.
They’d be scaled rather large, say 3GW to 5 GW.
Not so far down the road 10 GW breeders would be the norm.
BTW the Bakken is now thought to be 2 to 4 times the size of the Ghawar field! The only hang-up is that it figures to have a very flat production curve and that each bore is touchy and expensive and long. Still, all in all, a triple Ghawar sitting in North Dakota flowing sweet light crude for seventy years works fine.
blert said:
“Build your nukes for maritime emplacement such that they both float and sit upon off shore pads built as mega-buckets.”
Great minds work alike. That’s my favorite nuclear power plant concept.
Some added bonuses:
The nuclear power plants can be built at a single site that enables economy of scale and strict safety control. The power plant could then be towed unfueled to the customer’s site.
The power plant at end-of-life and after de-fueling can be transported to a remote location for decommisioning.
In the event of a major accident (loss of coolant accident with radiation leakage), the whole plant could be towed over the deep ocean abyss and dumped there. This is less desireable than proper decommisioning but better than leaving a radioactive corpse near a major city, e.g. Chernobyl.
The power plant is easily upgradeable should the city’s power requirements grow or sold to another city.
The concept is such an obvious winner. I don’t know why it hasn’t been done already.
Glad you brought up those points Eggplant.
The key thing is to make the financing VERY attractive to the 3rd world emerging economy so that they’d NOT run riot over their equatorial environment. We need the tropics to stay as is: they generate the oxygen we breathe.
Keeping the hot stuff always in our possession permits dang near ANY regime to sign up, even Libya. If the contracting party defaults in a major way, repo man floats the power plant away! (USN + USMC is a killer repo squad.)
This approach de-links politics from the nuclear energy solution.
Weep, weep you bloody oil ticks!
I think Wretchard has hit upon the reason why pebble bed reactors are not being developed with alacrity in the US. Once one has a high temperature reactor, making nuclear gasoline from water and coal becomes feasible and at a reasonable cost. We could have the first commercial nuclear gasoline by 2020 or 2030.
What true green environmentalist would want that!
Even now, the big oil refiners are asking for pebble beds for process heat to increase refinery yields. A lot of the petroleum energy is consumed in refining crude into product. Add nuclear heat and more of the crude’s energy content makes it into salable product.
Note that the Chinese are active in the field with a 10 MWth prototype and have bought into the South African program with the retreat of the new government there.
As to the floating nuclear power plant concept, this was pretty far along in the late 70s in the US. The major reactor vendor bought land near the port of Jacksonville, Florida to build the floating nukes. The Russians have a couple small size versions too.
All those nimrod watermelons will do is transfer economic dominance to China and India.
While India is a step behind the Chinese…
Nothing motivates a society more than having a peer competitor break away from you.
Maintaining her rank in the world will mean that India will completely re-orient her economy. No way can she bear to imagine a hyper dominant China lording it over her. Whereas, a hyper dominant America is on the other side of the world.
And then India is in the Anglo-sphere, especially her elites. She also has more natural resources than China. It stands to figure that American politicians will also promote Indian interests for the explicit purpose of countering rising Chinese militancy.
blert @ 124, Eggplant @ 125
I am much impressed by the creativity of your thinking. Thanks for your response.
Best wishes,
Jim
Whitehall:
Making nuclear gasoline from coal would make more sense than making ethanol from corn using coal energy.
Habu:
So far our track record for regional outages has shown a good deal of area for improvement.
I believe we are far more vulnerable to catastrophy than we are to managing any catastrophy.
============================
My one area of concern is new systems that are coming online. Not Nukes or monster coal plants, but herds of gas turbines, solar banks, lots of small sources.
Places like California could be in trouble because they have the most unconventional power sources. They also have the most experience with rolling blackouts. Not just the utilities but the public in general. All the people that need it, know how to get it.
Uncle Bob with his home respirator/dialysis machine?
If he is important, get him out of there.
The new plan is to save your customers first (islanding) which means open the furthest breaker you own, and keep moving in until you get control.
New York and the North East are screwed. You guys should have built some power plants when you had the chance.
My main point is how long did it take to get mostly recovered from the last outage? Not completely, but functional, 3 days?
By the way, ever try starting up a nuclear plant in the dark? I can attest that nuclear safety systems do not need light to perform their functions.
Back to the three days. What we have now is experience. No one ever dealt with a dead grid before. Now we have. No one ever expected to lose the whole grid, and we weren’t ready for it.
Our customers have experience too. Power went away for a week. What was your plan? How are you not going to let it happen again?
Good design had a lot to do with our success. Somebody figured that your had to run the now depressurized (leaky) water lines above the now pressurized (leaky) sewage lines. Meanwhile the water company bought some generators. The sewage plants just open the gates and let raw sewage flow out to the lake/river.
All the Nuke plants that have manual systems. They synch to the grid by hand. Even their Emergency diesels. The closest a PC would get to actual component would be to serve a display or monitor function (through a PLC). Reactivity manipulations are done by hand.
Even out in the secondary plant things are setup to fail to operate positions, and then the operators come back and control them manually. The only PC you’ll find the coal plant is the one they use for solitare during the day and pron at night. At our local coal plant they are still using open air 3 story (Frankenstein) switchgear. I hear Niagara Mohawk is still using some of the stuff that Tesla built. Good luck hacking that.
In Belmont speak, we have tightened up our OODA loop. We have a better idea of what we are looking at(OBSERVE), we have a better understanding of how our systems interoperate(ORIENT), we have plans in place and training (cross training, really) for the big one. We can decide on priorities now, to eliminate those decisions later (DECIDE). And practice, or train to act (ACT) The government taught us well.
So Clubbers, expect to be without power for a week. It could be Chinese hackers, an earthquake, or the running out of your unemployment checks. Water, food, fuel. Me, I have 100 gallons of water, 50 lbs of rice,plenty of kerosene and a lot of veggie oil. Gotta love that Petromax lantern. I need to find a way to charge my brand new Dell Mini-9 and I’ll be all set.
Eggplant:
In the event of a major accident (loss of coolant accident with radiation leakage), the whole plant could be towed over the deep ocean abyss and dumped there. This is less desireable than proper decommisioning but better than leaving a radioactive corpse near a major city, e.g. Chernobyl.
The concept is such an obvious winner. I don’t know why it hasn’t been done already.
================================
Even Jimmy Carter could figure this one out. Or you could just check Google Books for “The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Submarines” and look for emergency cooling.
No pumps, big hole in top and bottom, natural circulation.(Build the reactor below the surface of the water.) Close the big hole off with valves.
Open the valves before core damage occurs.
Why it won’t work here: Jane Fonda.
markb,
Long ago and far away a bubblehead told me that Hyman Rickover made sure that all the controls on the nuclear plants he supervised were analog and in fact outside of the reactor itself the interfaces in one of his submarines remained right out of the 1940s. The reason was that people are good at responding to changes in an information flow they are interacting with but lousy at observing and reacting to a rare event in a display. No Homer Simpsons were wanted in the nuclear Navy.
Further analog systems cannot be overloaded by information saturation. They don’t lock up… No blue screen of death. You don’t reboot them.
LL3 @28: It all came to fruition during Katrina, in the Superdome.
The DOODA loop was compromised.
Tom Holsinger, Jamie Irons,
Consider southern San Mateo County. It is beset by environmental politics which aim to prevent use of local water resources, as far as agricultural production is concerned. A large and growing part of the county is being taken up by conservation agencies – POST and RCOST, for example, and the latter may have condemnation authority. Any farmer with intent to engage in unsubsidized commercial agriculture would have very tightly limited options under a partnership achieved by selling either one a conservation easement.
At any rate, this large and growing area is no longer producing anything like the saleable products that it did 100 years ago. The happy families who remain on the land are not doing much to feed the increasing population, and the happy motorists passing on Highway 1 are not, either. POST controls thousands of acres which is passing into 18th-century conditions, without even allowing public access. Under the Coastal Act, the zoning is effectively ‘rural decay’, with the remains of former farms furnishing quaint scenery for viewers, with limited residences for descendents of former entrepreneurs, with some scattered Trust administrators among them.
You’d better hope for sufficient energy supplies to allow the remaining agricultural acres in the country to produce vittles affordable to the nonproductive consumers.
The new generation of nuclear power plants are almost completely digitized. We retain a select few manual override controls just in case.
The cyber security issue is a major one – very hot. The basic nuclear safety issues are pretty well covered already but the open area is “continuity of power” – keeping the juice flowing out to the grid. That is where there will be a lot of improvements to be made.
I.S.,
Teach your grandmother to suck eggs, not me. The agriculturally productive land in San Mateo County is long gone save for some coastal patches. When my brother ran for County Clerk there, I ran into some old folks who recognized me due to my great resemblence to my maternal grandfather.
One very nice old lady living in her parent’s house on Ralston Boulevard in Belmont told me my grandfather, operating a horse-drawn wagon in the drayage business, took her father to and from the Belmont train station on his daily commute to San Francisco.
My father, as a San Mateo realtor, sold the last parcel of my maternal grandfather’s old stables uphill (west) of Alameda de Las Pulgas for residential development. He took me up there for the final paper signing so I could look at all the old photos and newsclippings in the office.
I live and practice law in a rural area of the San Joaquin Valley. I’ve defended a cattle rustling case. One of my clients was arrested by the FBI for fraud on the government for cheating on his agricultural price supports. Agriculture and ranching I know.
Tom Holsinger: The agriculturally productive land in San Mateo County is long gone save for some coastal patches.
It is precisely those coastal patches that I refer to. They sent a 2500-pound cheese for auction in San Francisco to raise funds for Union soldiers in the Civil War. That would be impossible today.
Civilian Industry wised up to the computer threat at least ten years ago. I think it was Sasser worm that was found at Davis Besse. You can find the event report in the NRC reading room.
Here is a speech from the commissioner of the NRC,
entitled “A Regulatory Perspective of the Digital Evolution”
http://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-collections/commission/speeches/2009/s-09-007.html
By the way, the NRC is no FAA. I have never met a NRC resident that didn’t impress me as being WOW smart.
Ex Navy guys mixed with MIT Nuclear Engineers.
The reason was that people are good at responding to changes in an information flow they are interacting with but lousy at observing and reacting to a rare event in a display.
The trainers tell me that some of the new kids coming up can monitor multiple trends simultaneously because of their adolescent video game addictions.
Also please note that computers don’t ask questions like, “What are you going to do if that valve falls clean off when you operate it? And how would you know?”
(Had to try the edit feature!) I think there are several nukes here at BC.