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Also, as well as using 75% less electricity, they give around 50% less light. Don't believe me? Check with a good light meter. Just to put the icing on the cake, not only do they have a hideous colour cast, but their colour temperature changes over the first few minutes.

Erm, if you're using a light meter that's designed to be used with incandescent bulbs, it won't read properly when exposed to the light being produced by a fluorescent bulb. This is due to the design of the meter, not to the bulbs actually producing less light. Fluorescent bulbs produce their light in well-defined peaks across the visible spectra [1], while incandescents produce a continuous distribution (which actually peaks somewhere down in the infrared). A light meter designed to work with black-body radiators (e.g. sunlight, incandescent / tungsten lamps), which includes most of those with CdS or silicon cells, won't accurately measure the light output from a fluorescent bulb (or an LED, or neon tube, or Hg-vapor), because they make assumptions about the radiated spectra that simply aren't true, namely that it is continuous, and that a measurement at a particular wavelength can be extrapolated out to give an idea of the light's intensity. With a fluorescent, if you don't measure the particular wavelengths that it emits light at, you will get a very low reading. Thus in order to accurately assess one's output, you need to measure intensity continuously across the visible spectrum and then integrate.

This is done using a spectrophotometer, which is a significantly more complicated piece of equipment than a simple light meter. Luckily for us, the manufacturers of light bulbs (both fluorescent and regular) do this at the factory and print the light output on the packaging, measured in lumens. Granted it's probably under idealized conditions, but since the numbers printed on incandescent bulbs probably are as well, it's good for comparison purposes. It is trivial to see, based on power consumption and light output in lumens, that fluorescent bulbs are far more efficient at producing visible light than incandescents. (And looking at the spectra of each [2], it's pretty clear why this is.) In general, fluorescents can produce around 60 lumens/watt, while incandescents are around 15.

While you have a point about the power factor of fluorescents versus incandescents, it's not a particularly significant problem. There are lots of large-scale deployments of fluorescent lights which have lower power factors than incandescent bulbs, and still manage to be far more efficient. Utility companies have been dealing with power factors for decades, and it's not difficult to correct for it, when it becomes a problem. (Also, high power factor (HPF) ballasts can have a factor higher than 0.9.) That power factor issues would completely eat up the inherent energy efficiencies of fluorescent lights is ridiculous -- if they did, you wouldn't see them as often as you do. Lighting represents only 8.8% of residential power consumption in the U.S. [3], about half that of air conditioning (which is a low PF load), and with fluorescent bulbs it would be even smaller. The impact on overall apparent power consumption, if not negligible, is probably very small.

[1] See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Fluorescent_lig hting_spectrum_peaks_labelled.gif
[2] Incandescent and 5000K fluorescent spectra compared: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:SPD.png
[3] http://www.eia.doe.gov/neic/brochure/electricity/e lectricity.html

It also affects the equation because Colorado has some of the cheapest electricty in the country.

According to the Energy Information Administration of the DOE:

http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/mer/pdf/pages/sec9_14. pdf ...the average Residential price for electricity in the US in the first 9 months of 2006 was $0.1047/kWh, while in Colorado we pay $0.05546/kWh.

In comparison, the average PG&E Customer in California pays $0.114 per kWh up to their baseline usage, then it goes up to $0.3707/kWh if you triple the baseline household. The baseline is anywhere from 700kWh to 1100kWh per month, and roughly halves in the summer.

When your electricity is a fraction of the cost of other states, it really torpedos some of the savings of CFLs (though we have maybe 8 in our house now) and completely kills any sort of personal solar initiatives.

According to the department of energy, the two largest exporters of oil to the United States in the world are Canada and Mexico, with a combined total of just over 3 million barrels for the month of October 2006, and Russia isn't even in the top 15. In terms of total petroleum, Russia is the 9th largest importer, with between 381 and 530 thousand barrels per month. Compare this to Canada and Mexico, which combined export over 3.7 million barrels of petroleum in total. The top five importers of petroleum to the US each export more than 1 million barrels a month.

If Russia is making big money on oil, it's because of markets other than the United States. In the American market, they're a tiny player.

Department of Energy report, 15 top exporters of oil to the United States up to October 2006

Is a million gallons a lot? Hm. Daily per capita water use in the US is 1400 gallons, though I don't know how much of that is, for instance, water running through a coolant loop and tossed back out into a river. Petroleum usage is 840 million gallons per day, which is about 2.8 daily gallons per capita. Of course, I may be comparing apples to oranges here (fuel is single-use; water isn't), so let's skip that. (Evaporation losses can be cut or eliminated by growing the algae in an enclosed system, as another poster has pointed out.)

Isn't seawater usable for this sort of thing? It's not free to pump a million gallons of seawater over to the farm, but it's certainly not a dealbreaker, is it? Ah, but where do all the salts go? Would they accumulate in the bodies of the algae? If so, it would likely be quite possible to pull out accumulated minerals at the refining stage, wouldn't it?

And as others have pointed out, it's lighting and HVAC that make all the difference. Think of it this way: at my 20 cents, a 100-watt bulb on for ten hours a day costs about $6 a month. That's one bulb. In a big house, you might have 75 or more bulbs. And that's just for lighting. Switch to compact flourescent; I even like the light quality better now.

There is a great need to increase world-wide carrying capacity without impacting high biodiversity ecosystems such as the Brazilian rainforests or continental shelf fisheries, and that reduces greenhouse phenomena. There may be an economic option that uses sea water pumped to desert areas powered by the fact that ground level temperatures are much higher than temperatures at high altitudes. Indeed, it would dump greenhouse heat to space for its power while producing biodiesel, electricity, fish, fresh water, salt and real estate -- all in quantities demanded by developed-world populations -- without adding to, and possibly even sequestering, greenhouse gases.

Proposals for solar updraft towers have typically assumed that they would be single use structures: solar to electricity via heat differentials between high altitude air and ground level greenhouse-enclosed air. The resulting system has marginal economic value.

Something which would further enhance the value of the solar updraft tower power structure is to use the greenhouse area for algae ponds to add biodiesel, water, fish and salt production to the production of electricity normally envisioned.

Doing so brings the proposal from marginally viable to viable, with a net present value, primarily from live fish production, of $3.5 billion per system, thereby allowing for far higher capitalization and/or return on investment.

Let's start with just the value of algae biodiesel:

The greenhouse area required per solar updraft tower of is huge:

(pi * (5km/2)^2) ? hectares
= 1963.49 hectares

producing peak at peak 200MW via a 1km tall tower.

We now add to this the production of algae biodiesel:

The UNH estimate for algae biodiesel production is 1 quad per 200,000 hectares. Let's assume only half of the area of the solar updraft tower greenhouse would be available for production at any time (the other half would be used for ponds that buffered heat for the inner ponds, produce fish, provide additional evaporative surface for desalination and provide recreation for residential areas at the outer rim).

That gives us:

(1963.49/2)hectares/tower;200000hectares/quad ? towers/quad
= 203.719 towers/quad

Or about 200 towers per quad of biodiesel.

We can now calculate the biodiesel per tower:

7.2gallon/1e6btu;200tower/quad ? gallon/tower
= 3.5998E+07 gallon/tower

or about 35M gallons of biodiesel per year per tower.

At $2/gallon for wholesale diesel, this yields $70M biodiesel revenue per year.

Now for electrical revenue:

At an average rate of sold production only 1/2 (100MW) of peak capacity (200MW), electrical production per tower per year, is:

100MW;year ? GWh
= 876 GWh

At $30/MWh wholesale:

100MW;year;30$/MWh ? $
= 2.628E+07 $

or about $25M electrical revenue per year.

Interestingly, the biodiesel revenue is nearly 3 times the electrical revenue of a solar updraft tower!

200*200MW or 40GW electrical peak capacity is produced per quad of biodiesel.

Further that same UNH document estimates 19 quads to replace all transportation fuel in the US or 3800 towers, which would also produce 3800*200MW or 760GW or .76TW of electricity.

Current winter capacity in the US i

There is a great need to increase world-wide carrying capacity without impacting high biodiversity ecosystems such as the Brazilian rainforests or continental shelf fisheries, and that reduces greenhouse phenomena. There may be an economic option that uses sea water pumped to desert areas powered by the fact that ground level temperatures are much higher than temperatures at high altitudes. Indeed, it would dump greenhouse heat to space for its power while producing biodiesel, electricity, fish, fresh water, salt and real estate -- all in quantities demanded by developed-world populations -- without adding to, and possibly even sequestering, greenhouse gases.

Proposals for solar updraft towers have typically assumed that they would be single use structures: solar to electricity via heat differentials between high altitude air and ground level greenhouse-enclosed air. The resulting system has marginal economic value.

Something which would further enhance the value of the solar updraft tower power structure is to use the greenhouse area for algae ponds to add biodiesel, water, fish and salt production to the production of electricity normally envisioned.

Doing so brings the proposal from marginally viable to viable, with a net present value, primarily from live fish production, of $3.5 billion per system, thereby allowing for far higher capitalization and/or return on investment.

Let's start with just the value of algae biodiesel:

The greenhouse area required per solar updraft tower of is huge:

(pi * (5km/2)^2) ? hectares
= 1963.49 hectares

producing peak at peak 200MW via a 1km tall tower.

We now add to this the production of algae biodiesel:

The UNH estimate for algae biodiesel production is 1 quad per 200,000 hectares. Let's assume only half of the area of the solar updraft tower greenhouse would be available for production at any time (the other half would be used for ponds that buffered heat for the inner ponds, produce fish, provide additional evaporative surface for desalination and provide recreation for residential areas at the outer rim).

That gives us:

(1963.49/2)hectares/tower;200000hectares/quad ? towers/quad
= 203.719 towers/quad

Or about 200 towers per quad of biodiesel.

We can now calculate the biodiesel per tower:

7.2gallon/1e6btu;200tower/quad ? gallon/tower
= 3.5998E+07 gallon/tower

or about 35M gallons of biodiesel per year per tower.

At $2/gallon for wholesale diesel, this yields $70M biodiesel revenue per year.

Now for electrical revenue:

At an average rate of sold production only 1/2 (100MW) of peak capacity (200MW), electrical production per tower per year, is:

100MW;year ? GWh
= 876 GWh

At $30/MWh wholesale:

100MW;year;30$/MWh ? $
= 2.628E+07 $

or about $25M electrical revenue per year.

Interestingly, the biodiesel revenue is nearly 3 times the electrical revenue of a solar updraft tower!

200*200MW or 40GW electrical peak capacity is produced per quad of biodiesel.

Further that same UNH document estimates 19 quads to replace all transportation fuel in the US or 3800 towers, which would also produce 3800*200MW or 760GW or .76TW of electricity.

Current winter capacity in the US i

In order to get off the "foreign oil tit", as you put it, we'd have to do alternatives for lubricants, plastics, asphalt, jet fuel, diesel oil, heating oil, etc.

Your claim is refuted by the facts.

• US oil production is around 5 million bbl/day.
• Jet fuel, lubricants, and asphalt don't come to half that.
• Diesel and heating oil (combined under distillates) are somewhat more, but diesel consumption can be slashed by moving freight to rail, electrifying trucks (don't laugh, the tech is here) and just making them more efficient (WalMart is looking to double the economy of its fleet).

It would be quite difficult to run the US without imported oil, but it would be even harder to get all ground transport and electric generation off fossil fuels — but even that looks possible with current technology.

In order to get off the "foreign oil tit", as you put it, we'd have to do alternatives for lubricants, plastics, asphalt, jet fuel, diesel oil, heating oil, etc.

Your claim is refuted by the facts.

• US oil production is around 5 million bbl/day.
• Jet fuel, lubricants, and asphalt don't come to half that.
• Diesel and heating oil (combined under distillates) are somewhat more, but diesel consumption can be slashed by moving freight to rail, electrifying trucks (don't laugh, the tech is here) and just making them more efficient (WalMart is looking to double the economy of its fleet).

It would be quite difficult to run the US without imported oil, but it would be even harder to get all ground transport and electric generation off fossil fuels — but even that looks possible with current technology.

In order to get off the "foreign oil tit", as you put it, we'd have to do alternatives for lubricants, plastics, asphalt, jet fuel, diesel oil, heating oil, etc.

Your claim is refuted by the facts.

• US oil production is around 5 million bbl/day.
• Jet fuel, lubricants, and asphalt don't come to half that.
• Diesel and heating oil (combined under distillates) are somewhat more, but diesel consumption can be slashed by moving freight to rail, electrifying trucks (don't laugh, the tech is here) and just making them more efficient (WalMart is looking to double the economy of its fleet).

It would be quite difficult to run the US without imported oil, but it would be even harder to get all ground transport and electric generation off fossil fuels — but even that looks possible with current technology.

This isn't a suprise at all. Residential energy use is well documented in the EIA's Residential Energy Consumption Survey. The DOE runs these once every 4 or 5 years. Heating > A/C > Lights/Fridge/Cook/Clothes > gadgets.

Things might change as people consume their 8h/day TV on 60" plasma space heaters.

Actually the US rate of consumption increase is about 2% per annum, a bit more precise than "the last few decades", this is in line with population growth. Source : http://tonto.eia.doe.gov/dnav/pet/pet_cons_psup_dc _nus_mbblpd_a.htm I also said current rates of consumption so my original statement did factor this in.

The current rate and expected future usage are not the same thing, it's amusing that you think so. Anyway a lot of sources disagree with you and claim that at the expected rate of consumption (note my mention of China and India, not to mention places like the former USSR) we will hit an oil shortage within the next 50 or so years.

Really and what does a conventional generator do when all this winderful fee energy is being generated? Exactly the same as it does when it is not i.e. they keep on running. Net reduction in Co2 emissions? Nill. You cannot switch a generator on or off like a light, they take time and effort to spin up. In fact the net effect is to increase carbon in atmosphere due to the production of cabling and equipment for renewable generation.

The conventional generators are running at the time but overall you need less of them (note that during peak demand during the summer there is likely to be a lot of nice sunlight to use but not during other periods). Not to mention that there is some economic flexibility in power usage, if you can expect (over the whole grid and such) there to be more power at certain time you can lower the price at those times (this in turn will drive demand up somewhat during that time).

The significance of the Dutch abandoning the expansion of it's wind turbine program is that they cannot get the strategy to work. The have an open western seaboard with pissibly the best laminar airflow you can get and they still cannot get it to work. That is a reasoned and sentient argument, understood by intelligent people, something which you obviously struggle with.

No, I simply am not stupid enough to make wild conclusions from a simple statement. See, I'd actually go and read WHY they're no longer expanding not just jump to random conclusions.

I am an accredited engineer and you obviously fuck pigs for a living.

Oh, did I touch a nerve there Mr. Engineer? That's like the most worthless example of "I know this area" that I've heard in a while. I know a lot of electrical engineers, and most know very little about this area as they've had no training or experience in it.

There's scads of papers on biodiesel, its efficiency, and cost.

If petroleum goes up in price a bunch more, biodiesel gets to break even.

The unmapped territory is that although it burns a hydrocarbon, 100% biodiesel
doesn't increase atmospheric CO2, because that CO2 was removed from the atmosphere
less than a year prior. It is cyclic in the short-term. Biodiesel could be a
near drop-in replacement for gasoline in cars and solve greenhouse gas
problems from automobiles. Of course, if you use peanuts instead of soybeans, and
oil costs stay high....people bet billions on shifts like this, the shift
to biodiesel would become reality if regular diesel wholesale prices get too
high and we have a strong need to minimize emissions...both of which are
very real scenarios. Both factors have shifted a lot since this white paper
in 2002.

http://www.eia.doe.gov/oiaf/analysispaper/biodiese l/

According to the DOE, 2001 energy use was 13,290 billion kWh. Average cost of residential electricity was roughly ten cents per kWh. So the world electric bill was $1.329 trillion, making a lot of assumptions.

With the possible exception of AK and HI, not much oil is burned for electricity generation in the US.

Ummm...maybe I'm misreading the statistics, but according to the DOE over 211 million barrels of oil were used for power generation in the US in 2005 alone. I'm not sure how you don't consider that much oil.

http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/electricity/epa/epat4 p1.html

Your question was not too clear, but this information might be informative to you. It is the Department of Energy's list of oil imports to the US from the OPEC countries for the past 15 years.

http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/ipsr/t410.xls

35 (not 25) square miles ((5280x35)^2 feet = 34,151,040,000 sq. ft.) x 200 ft (depth) = 6,830,208,000,000 cubic feet.

I found this page which states that 1600 lbs. of garbage is about (3x3x6=)54 cubic feet. Using that as a linear ratio, a ton (2000 lbs.) of garbage is 67.5 cubic feet.

Doing the math for this, we get (6830208000000 / 67.5 = ) 101,188,266,667 tons of trash that could fit into that space.

The population of the NYC metro area is 18.7 million. The population of the earth is 6.5 billion. That's approximately 350 times the population of NYC (347.6, but we'll round up to account for growth).

Now, you stated that NYC produces 12,000 tons of garbage per day. 12,000 tons x 350 NYC's of population on earth = 4,200,000 tons of trash per day.

So that 101,188,266,667 ton-capable space could store (101,188,266,667 / 4,200,000 = ) 24,092 days = 66 years worth of trash for the entire earth, if the entire earth were as wasteful as New York City . I'll leave it to you to calculate how long that area will last if you cut out of the equation the 6.2 billion people that don't live in the USA. It's simple math. You should try it sometime.

It's pretty clear that the GP was right. There is no landfill shortage. Now, if you'll excuse me, I have a strip mine to buy.

The amount of carbon released into the atmosphere can vary widely between man-made and natural sources. For example:

• USA = 1.64 Billion Metric Tons carbon released in 2005
• Borneo peat bogs = 2.5 Billion Metric Tons carbon released in 1997-98

Granted, man is basically behind the burning in Borneo...

I'm surprised nobody has mentioned the radioactive warning signs meant to be legible in 10000 years. Every one of these suggestions of digital media, electronic, or solar powered durable signals was considered, but in the end it was decided to go with architecture - simple concrete with engravings.

Looks pretty unscientific to me: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peak_oil

OK, then try the actual numbers from the DOE.

The 2006 monthly average production is so far down 108 MBD from the 2005 monthly average. 1Q06 and 2Q06 were the lowest quarters in two years (they don't have 3Q06 data up yet). Oil production increased steadily up to 2004, then by a little in 2005, and is now falling.

If "here are the numbers -- peak oil was last year" doesn't convince them, nothing will. And since these people claim to be experts, you can bet they've seen this data. That suggests to me that the report is to inspire consumer confidence, not be a scientific rebuttal of Peak Oil.

Cambridge Energy Research Associates said in a report that the world has some 3.74 trillion barrels of oil left -- enough to last 122 years at current consumption rates and triple the amount estimated by "peak oil" theorists.

Sounds like their analysis is rather simplistic. They looked at the *current* consumption rates, assumed that consumption rates would be static for the next 122 years, and then said we've got plenty of oil for 122 years. Nevermind the fact that places like China and India are quickly increasing their oil consumption.

China's petroleum imports are expected to grow fourfold from 2003 to 2030 Source: http://www.eia.doe.gov/oiaf/ieo/oil.html

World oil consumption rose by about 1.2 million barrels per day in 2005, after an increase of 2.6 million barrels per day in 2004. Source: http://www.eia.doe.gov/oiaf/ieo/oil.html

Overall, global oil consumption is expected to grow by about 1.4 percent each year over the next 25 years - roughly a 40% increase. If those rates hold steady, we'll be using twice the oil in 50 years. Based on increasing oil consumption, that 122 years shrinks down to something like 80 years.

Further, their report assumed a bunch of new oil discoveries, and that we'll be extracting known, but expensive-to-extract oil deposits in shale and other places. Nevermind that these alternatives routinely rank in the $70-$100 per barrel range. Here's a graphic of their sources of oil: http://www.realcities.com/mld/krwashington//160120 61.htm

It says:
1.08 trillion barrels already consumed
0.76 trillion barrels available from conventional sources
1.07 trillion barrels yet to be discovered
1.91 trillion barrels available from unconventional sources

In other words, of the 3.74 trillion barrels they're talking about, 30% is assumed to exist (we just haven't found it yet), and 50% is from unconventional sources (ranging from expensive to extremely expensive). Only 20% of their 3.74 trillion barrel estimate comes from known, economical sources! That means that known, conventional sources are expected to run out in 24 years - and that's according to current consumption rates, so 24 years is an overestimate. We'd better hope that lots of new oil is discovered and put into production before then (it takes about 10 years to get a new oil well up and running to full capacity), and we'll be switching to more and more expensive unconventional sources in the meantime.

Remember - peak oil doesn't say when the oil will run out, it talks about the interplay between cost, consumption, and economics.

Cambridge Energy Research Associates said in a report that the world has some 3.74 trillion barrels of oil left -- enough to last 122 years at current consumption rates and triple the amount estimated by "peak oil" theorists.

Sounds like their analysis is rather simplistic. They looked at the *current* consumption rates, assumed that consumption rates would be static for the next 122 years, and then said we've got plenty of oil for 122 years. Nevermind the fact that places like China and India are quickly increasing their oil consumption.

China's petroleum imports are expected to grow fourfold from 2003 to 2030 Source: http://www.eia.doe.gov/oiaf/ieo/oil.html

World oil consumption rose by about 1.2 million barrels per day in 2005, after an increase of 2.6 million barrels per day in 2004. Source: http://www.eia.doe.gov/oiaf/ieo/oil.html

Overall, global oil consumption is expected to grow by about 1.4 percent each year over the next 25 years - roughly a 40% increase. If those rates hold steady, we'll be using twice the oil in 50 years. Based on increasing oil consumption, that 122 years shrinks down to something like 80 years.

Further, their report assumed a bunch of new oil discoveries, and that we'll be extracting known, but expensive-to-extract oil deposits in shale and other places. Nevermind that these alternatives routinely rank in the $70-$100 per barrel range. Here's a graphic of their sources of oil: http://www.realcities.com/mld/krwashington//160120 61.htm

It says:
1.08 trillion barrels already consumed
0.76 trillion barrels available from conventional sources
1.07 trillion barrels yet to be discovered
1.91 trillion barrels available from unconventional sources

In other words, of the 3.74 trillion barrels they're talking about, 30% is assumed to exist (we just haven't found it yet), and 50% is from unconventional sources (ranging from expensive to extremely expensive). Only 20% of their 3.74 trillion barrel estimate comes from known, economical sources! That means that known, conventional sources are expected to run out in 24 years - and that's according to current consumption rates, so 24 years is an overestimate. We'd better hope that lots of new oil is discovered and put into production before then (it takes about 10 years to get a new oil well up and running to full capacity), and we'll be switching to more and more expensive unconventional sources in the meantime.

Remember - peak oil doesn't say when the oil will run out, it talks about the interplay between cost, consumption, and economics.

I say there's been so much doom-and-gloom about oil, every prediction I can remember about oil running out has been proven wrong time and time again. As our technology increases, we will find ways to get more oil out of existing locations and find new ones

Let's talk about the North Sea production, then: First discovered around 1978, it was the largest oil find in 10 years. We had the 10 largest oil companies drilling there, using the latest technology and latest drilling techniques. The estimate was that it would peak in 2010. They were wrong. It was 1999.
How sure can we be of the experts predicting the peak to be 30 years from now? Also note that all the discoveries found nowadays pale in comparison to the ones found in the 60s.

It's not that oil is running out, it's that the cheap oil is running out. Peak Oil is definitely a phenomenon. Look at Texas in 1972. The price of oil was going up up up, so the logical thing to do was drill more wells -- which is what they did. Unfortunately for them, production went down.

That's the same thing happening to Saudi Arabia now, by the way. They call it "voluntary," but let's wait and see a couple of years.
"Falih added that by 2006, Saudi Arabia would have 90 drilling rigs in the Kingdom, more than double the number of rigs operating in 2004." from http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/cabs/saudi.html

We're currently burning 6 barrels of oil for every 1 that we find.
Considering that 95% of our current infrastructure is dependent on cheap oil, we'd better do something about this quickly.

Many small discoveris don't make up for the (large) empty oil pockets that where found in the past.

See the following url.
http://www.gregcroft.com/peakoil.ivnu
http://www.oildecline.com/
http://www.eia.doe.gov/pub/oil_gas/petroleum/featu re_articles/2004/worldoilsupply/oilsupply04.html

Have a nice day.

http://www.eia.doe.gov/neic/rankings/stateelectric ityprice.htm

I currently pay about 10 cents per kilowatthour (it varies). US residential electricity rates averaged about 10 US cents per kilowatthour in 2004. Hawaii was the most expensive at over 18 cents per kilowatthour. In 1980 I paid just over 1 cent per kilowatthour in Sacramento, CA (SMUD).

Most of what you say is true. Up to the "and not vice-versa" part. Bzzzt! Faulty logic! The first part of your statement is true (CO2 can lag temperature changes), but you present nothing to prove the vice-versa (CO2 can't be a driver) part.

Sure, in the past CO2 has lagged temperature. However, that doesn't mean that it hasn't sustained climate changes as a positive feedback. What it does mean is that CO2 has often not been the driver for climate change events. Until now.

We are generating lots of CO2. A small amount relative to natural fluxes, but enough to . Can anyone provide a plausible alternative hypothesis for current conditions?

CO2 acts as a greenhouse gas. This is basic physics. What's not so basic are all of the other feedbacks, positive and negative- water vapor, ice cover, and so forth. That's where the action is. Let's talk about that. But to get caught up talking about whether we are responsible for increases in CO2, and whether or not CO2 is a greenhouse gas, is just a colossal waste of time. It's basic frickin physics and chemistry. It's the fluid dynamics that makes everything so hard to resolve.

To recap:

Climate varies naturally. That doesn't mean it can't be affected unnaturally.
Historically, CO2 concentrations have lagged temperature changes (b/c yes, Virginia, there are other factors that affect climate). That does not disprove that you can drive climate change with CO2; it just hasn't been tried often.
All else equal, higher CO2 = higher temperatures. Basic physics. The problem is the all else equal part.

Humans are trying an interesting experiment. What happens if we try to force climate change with CO2?

Why does everyone here think that they are smarter than climate scientists?

... which brings us back here.

Man is causing the increase in atmospheric CO2 concentrations. I don't know of any alternative hypotheses that come close to fitting the data. There are large carbon natural fluxes and we've tipped the balance.

OK, climate sensitivity is something worth talking about. I'll bet you my house the sensitivity is closer to 5 degrees than .005 degrees if we go 3x baseline CO2 (closer on a log scale that is). If we could gain high confidence that the impact would be more like .005 degrees than yeah, you can rest your case, but we aren't exactly there yet. Of course, we'd still have to worry about acidification of the oceans (guess where a lot of the excess CO2 goes [CO2 + H2 = HCO3- + H+]), but that's another story.

So, to recap:

Increased CO2 concentrations: Our fault. I'll bet my wife and 1st born.
Increased CO2 concentration leads to higher temperatures: Yup. I'll throw in kids 2 and 3.
Climate sensitivity to 3x CO2 is Y degrees: There's pretty good science here, but there's room to haggle. I'll throw in my two cars and road bike that we need to be worried.
Impact of the sun: Obviously a factor, but if there's a smoking gun tying temperature to solar output this century, I sure haven't seen it. Here's a RealClimate article on the subject.
Ocean acidification: Definitely happening; this is basic chemistry. Severity of impact not well known, but think "Alka Seltzer'

Talk about pseudo-scientific gibberish. Good frickin lord. What's your alternative hypothesis for the relationship between human emissions and atmospheric concentrations? Yes, there's a lot of natural carbon flux going both ways. But we've tipped the balance. No one with more than three neurons firing debates this. There are plenty of things about global warming to debate; please for everyone's sake find a topic that's not so obviously wrong and easily disproved.

Here's another fun graph

Nuclear weapon simulation. Err, sorry, "to increase the understanding of enduring stockpile." http://www.nv.doe.gov/nationalsecurity/stewardship /default.htm

The last census in which the U.S. was 50% rural was in 1860. U.S.Steel was capitalized at one billion dollars in 1901. The U.S. had the money and resources in 1905 to undertake projects on the scale of the Panama Canal.

pumping and exporting oil like crazy while the real developed world aka Europe was shooting itself in the foot

Industrialization in the U.S. was coal-fired.

Oil exports were trivial in the years of greatest industrial development. U.S. Crude Oil Exports.

I've tried to verify your statement, but all I've found so far is that increased CO2 will lead to increased forest fires which will lead back to increased CO2 (how much was not stated), most of the contribution of forest fires to CO2 is due to tropical forests (think slash-and-burn), and that boreal forest fires (as opposed to tropical forest fires, for example), contributed 828-1,103 Tg of CO2 in 1998, compared to 2,214.837 Tg emitted by US fuels (only fuels, mind you) in 1998. According to that same link, the fuels are 40.5% of the total US contribution, so that comes out to about 5,470 Tg of CO2 from the US alone.

So, your facts might be correct, but it's hard for me to verify. Do you have a source?

The answer to global warming is *very* simple, and *very* well known. We just need to plant massive amounts of biomass to soak up all the excess carbon.

Okay. No problem. Let's work that out then.

We need to plant X number of trees to counteract Y tonnes of CO2 being produced. As CO2 production goes up, we need to increase the number of trees we plant.

Oops. It seems that those numbers aren't exactly favourable to your solution right now. Could it be that currently, the amount of trees is going *down* while the amount of CO2 being produced is going *up*? Oops. Well, okay, let's reverse that trend.

Let's start in America, where most of the world's human contribution to atmospheric CO2 is produced (see earlier citation)? Well, to soak that up, you'd need to have about 146 25 year old pine trees for every (metric) tonne of CO2 produced. Not plant, but *have*. They have to be at least 25 years old before that sort of CO2 absorbtion is being done. And then you'd have to add 146 more 25 year old pine trees per year per ton of CO2 that that amount goes up.

So how many tonnes of CO2 does the US produce? About 5.4 billion, way back in 1997. You would need to *have* 788 billion 25 year old pine trees in 1997, and increase that number by 1.5% every year (11.82 billion) to keep up with growth.

Let's assume each tree needs 4 square meters of land to grow on. That's a wildly optimistic number, by the way, but it makes the math nice and easy. That's 3.154 billion square meters, which means 315 million hectares. Great. According to The World Factbook, that's 34.4% of the total land mass of the US.

Looks like it's time to get out there and start planting. :)

While most corporations don't have big positions for high school students, you can usually get in the door and start learning. Try some local companies and offer to work cheap. The smaller the company, the more likely they are to accept you.

For better opportunities, the National Labs and assorted government research facilities almost all have high school internship programs. Some examples:

DOE Labs: http://www.doe.gov/organization/labs-techcenters.h tm
Apprentice Programs: http://www.gwseap.net/default.asp, http://www.asee.org/seap/index.cfm
FFRDCs: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FFRDC

These can often turn into college scholarships (partial or full), guaranteed job when you graduate, etc. And if you do go work there, your years of service will be from your first day of internship. Can get you better benefits and perks later on in your career. Clearances may also be issued.

Step 1: Take a price from this map.
Step 2: Multiple that price times 2,000.

So for California, 2,000kWh would cost $240 per hour to run. That's $5,760/day, $40,320/week, and a whopping $2,096,640/year!

Of course, for diesel your prices may be higher. As of right now, diesel is approximately $2.669 per gallon in California. To compute the costs, you'd need to know how efficient the generator is. This page claims "approaching 40%", so we can use that for a guesstimate. At about 146,520,000 joules per gallon of diesel, we can compute a need of 122.85 gallons per hour. At the going rate, it would cost ~$327.89/hour to run a 2MW generator.

Sorry, cite for the gasoline consumption here

Umm, wrong graph. That says 3% of our oil demand is for electrical production. A very, very small percentage of electricity in this country is made from oil. Most of it's coal and nuclear.

In 2005, we produced 4000 billion KWH (4 Million Gigawatt hours of electricity).

At the same time, we bought 384.7 Million gallons of gas / day in 2005. 131 MJ / gallon * 365 days = 5 Million Gigawatt hours.

A bunny slope of 75/4?! Where the fuck do YOU ski? Check this graph from this report

-Peter

A bunny slope of 75/4?! Where the fuck do YOU ski? Check this graph from this report

-Peter

First, wow, not to be rude but "Is uranium naturally radioactive" is a grade 6 science fact. You might want to look into brushing up a bit on your Science 101, if only so you can be more confident of choices you make based on science (and recognizing when things aren't based on such.)

Next, there are, well really were, natural reactors. Wikipidia has a short entry on this, a great webpage on it from the US Dept. of Energy, here's also a picture from Astronomy Picture of the Day showing what it looks like in a mine today. The article that first brought this to wide attention is "A Natural Fission Reactor" by George A. Cowan in Scientific American, July 1976. (Pages 36 - 47) (apparently not available online, visit your local library to read this fascinating article for free.)

Uranium ores are found all over the planet. Australia has 40% of known Uranium ores and is the largest exporter, the US West has 7 active mines, and Canada has 3 very large mines for both domestic use and export. Uranium ores are not always deep in the ground, surface mines are common, indeed there are places, including in the US, where rocks & soil sufficiently "hot" (in terms of emitted radiation, they're generally not warm enough to discern by touch) to harm folks in long term exposure can be found laying around on the surface.

However rocks are a rare, purely local danger, radioactively contaminated water is much more common & dangerous, and also Radon gas. Indeed there are parts of the US, for example Massachusetts, where radon gas detectors are routinely recommended for residential basements.

Finally, the University of Manchester has been doing research* on using bacteria to bioremediate radioactive materials, in short to use biological processes to convert dangerous radioactive compounds into less dangerous (but still radioactive) ones. These biochemical processes can't convert elements, no lead-to-gold, but they can "lock up" materials into less chemically active, or insoluble, forms. Doubtless discovery of bacteria already evolved to take advantage of highly radioactive environments will be of great advantage to their research.

* This is to an archived version of the University of Manchester website, the current website doesn't seem to have as widely informative a page.

Let's give it the old google try. The US Department of Energy has some sort of estimate that roughly 6 gigatons of CO2 released into the atmosphere (in carbon equivalent, it's really about 20 gigatons of CO2) from fossil fuel consumption and industrial processes, but apparently not deforestation. Wikipedia currently claims that around 200 million tons of CO2 is released from volcanos (I gather this is around 60 millions tons of carbon equivalent).

Don't forget the USS Sturgis (about 3/4 of the way down the page) http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/nuclear/page/nuc_reac tors/superla.html

A US Army 10,000 kW Nuclear reactor installed in an ex-WWII liberty ship, moored in Gatun Lake, in the Panama Canal. The reactor was used purely for electric generation for the surrounding area, and (AFAIK) didn't even provide power for ship propulsion.

1.6 MW only sounds impressive. It actually isn't. If you see a switchboard that is designed to handle a MW or see the size of a generator that is designed to produce a MW you won't be as impressed. They are small because a MW isn't a huge amount of power. 1.6 MW is only 2145 HP. This is about 5 or 6 Mac trucks operating near full power (like driving up a mountain pass).

There is a reason that people like to make comparisons like 1.6 MW is the equivalent of 1000 homes, because homes don't use much power. Find a silicon refinery or a mine and see how much power they use. 30-50 MW will be a low value. Find a large water pump (like the ones they use in New Orleans). It will probably be in the MW range.

In 2005 the US produced 4 trillion KWh of electricity which comes to a value of 1.5 KW of electrical power being used per capita. The average household size in the US is 2.61. This means the US energy production is about 4 KW per household. If you assume that the average household actually uses 1 KW, then utilities and other uses account for another 3 KW. These values only take into account electricity usage.

Now if we compensate Google's power usage by the average amount of power produced per household (instead of what is used per household--because this is what most people think of when they hear this comparison), we get a measly 400 households (as in that Google could handle the entire electrical production of a city of 1050 people). Hardly impressive.

Hell, if the 4% figure is right then we could eliminate ALL nuclear plants simply by eliminating standby mode! The US uses 3.3TW of electricity 4% of 3.3TW is 132,000MW or about 30% more than the total output of all nuclear power facilities in the US (99,988MWe source from this site.) Of course I would be much more in favor of shutting down an equivilant capacity in older coal fired plants since the environmental impact would be about an order of magnitude greater =)

Hell, if the 4% figure is right then we could eliminate ALL nuclear plants simply by eliminating standby mode! The US uses 3.3TW of electricity 4% of 3.3TW is 132,000MW or about 30% more than the total output of all nuclear power facilities in the US (99,988MWe source from this site.) Of course I would be much more in favor of shutting down an equivilant capacity in older coal fired plants since the environmental impact would be about an order of magnitude greater =)

Actually, contrary to Norway's Foreign Ministry's sunny report oil production in Norway has peaked. Though, as you pointed out, they have better gas reserves. Russia still supplies a major part of Europe's gas needs (#1 at 1,680 trillion cubic feet in reserves).

Production from Norway, OECD Europe's largest producer, is expected to peak at about 3.6 million barrels per day in 2006 and then decline gradually to about 2.5 million barrels per day in 2030 with the maturing of some of its larger and older fields.

Estimated Reserves (BB):
Kazakhstan 9.0
Norway 7.7
Azerbaijan 7.0

Maybe the US will live high on the hog from coal.

Total recoverable reserves of coal around the world are estimated at 1,001 billion tons--enough to last approximately 180 years at current consumption levels ...67 percent of the world's recoverable reserves are located in four countries: the United States (27 percent), Russia (17 percent), China (13 percent), and India (10 percent).

Actually, contrary to Norway's Foreign Ministry's sunny report oil production in Norway has peaked. Though, as you pointed out, they have better gas reserves. Russia still supplies a major part of Europe's gas needs (#1 at 1,680 trillion cubic feet in reserves).

Production from Norway, OECD Europe's largest producer, is expected to peak at about 3.6 million barrels per day in 2006 and then decline gradually to about 2.5 million barrels per day in 2030 with the maturing of some of its larger and older fields.

Estimated Reserves (BB):
Kazakhstan 9.0
Norway 7.7
Azerbaijan 7.0

Maybe the US will live high on the hog from coal.

Total recoverable reserves of coal around the world are estimated at 1,001 billion tons--enough to last approximately 180 years at current consumption levels ...67 percent of the world's recoverable reserves are located in four countries: the United States (27 percent), Russia (17 percent), China (13 percent), and India (10 percent).

First off, all of the predictions that we see in the article are from Colin Campbell. He's a geologist who represents the fringe of the "peak oil" movement, and founded the association for the study of peak oil and gas. The guy has trouble being right. In addition to being continually proven wrong about the discovery of large new oil fields (which keep turning up -- not to mention old fields unexpectedly finding new life) and the rates at which existing fields will produce, every few years he pushes back his predicted peak. First it was 1995. It's all the way back to 2007 now. Aaany day now, Colin!

Care to cite any sources for this? It's easy to argue with unfounded assertions. I'm not familiar with Colin Campbell, but he's just one of many people working on peak oil, including British Petroleum, the US DOE, and even T-Boone Pickens. Peak oil is real. Predictions for the year of peak production vary from 2006 to 2040 (see above links), but regardless, it will happen in our lifetime, according to the experts in the industry. The 1995-2007 discrepancy from one single person you discuss is not significant. In fact, some people are saying that it has happened this year already. Perhaps you should stop trying to be cute and research your facts.

The more expensive oil gets, the slower world economic growth occurs, which drastically reduces demand. At the same time, the more expensive oil gets, vast new reserves come online. At current oil prices, Saudi Arabia doesn't have the world's largest reserves: Venezuela does. Venezuela's reserves were once dwarfed by Saudi Arabia's because they're more expensive to produce from. With high prices, a vast amount of Venezuelan oil comes online.

Congratulations, you understand a bit of peak theory. Yes, this is all included. In peak oil theory, when peak oil is reached half of the world's retrievable oil still remains. Peak oil theory states that this half will be much more expensive to extract, which you corroborate here. Of course there are more undiscovered reserves, but the point is that the rate of production will continue to go down, because less and less is discovered per year. Instead of thinking in terms of money (which can be created and destroyed), think in terms of energy (which can't). Once it takes more energy to extract one barrel of oil than the oil provides, the oil becomes useless as an energy source.

But it doesn't stop there. Current prices are high enough to make Canadian tar sands profitable. Shell is leading the way here, and is majorly scaling up their operations. If you count the tar sands, Canada goes up into the world leader position. But hey, why stop there? Coal liquifaction is borderline profitable at current prices. The US has hundreds of years of coal to mine; even if we start converting it to oil, it's a massive energy influx. And do we really even need to get into oil shale, methane hydrates, ethanol (esp. from cellulose), biodiesel, waste polymerization, and vehicles driven by electricity or hydrogen (which, effectively, can be powered by the grid, which means that any potential power source will work).

See above comment. All of the sources you mention here are much more expensive and take more energy to extract.

Yes, prices will rise. So? We've gotten a free ride on ubercheap oil for too long. At current prices, however, countless technologies are either freshly viable or near-viable for energy production -- both for producing petroleum, and for producing petroleum alternatives. If prices rise further, it makes them all the prettier for investors. This peak

We have 2 trillion barrels of oil in the US in the form of oil shale. This oil is recoverable at $30 a barrel. There are many other forms of oil to recover and many new deep water fields left to explore.

In the mean time, we should continue to work on hybrid and other technologies to reduce our consumption. Doom and gloom on this is not justified or necessary.

It is actually even worse than that. It uses the data from BP and the ASPO:

This assessment uses as data sources the Statistical Review of World Energy, published yearly by BP, and the monthly newsletter published by ASPO, where assessments for future oil production are available for more than 40 individual countries.

Now, why would a site that seems to be focused on a scarce energy outlook use these two sources? Probably because BP and the ASPO both have huge energy holdings. Their reports will show that energy is going to be more valuable in the future. The only way for it to be more valuable is if it is scarcer.

The real question is, why didn't they use data from the IEA or EIA? (I know, very similar letters)

The EIA suggests cheaper energy prices long term and a probable energy glut short term because we've had unreasonably high oil prices (high prices means that you drill for more oil... but our consumption has been basically flat = too much oil!) and the IEA is more moderate.

Not saying that this slam dunk bullshit but you have to question the source.

I know everyone loves the "running out of oil" story, but if that were true then why is oil barely above $60 when we have 2 huge suppliers threatening to cut back production, and North Korean bomb tests? If we were really running out of oil and some people threatened to cut us off plus some negative diplomatic news, we would be over 100 easily.