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The trouble with biodiesel (especially in the U.S.) is that it's usually grown in the Great Plains, and the Ogallala Aquifer, which supplies a big chunk of the Plains, is running out of water for irrigation. 1 2.

That we get 80% of our total energy from dinosaurs is my biggest concern. True, energy from dinosaurs is inexpensive, and the inefficiencies in storing large amounts of electrical energy in a portable fashion present challenges, but these are challenges we must meet while we curtail our energy consumption.

I like the idea of tapping into the energy we've put (and trapped) in the atmosphere; such an approach makes good use of existing resources.

I clicked on the parent's link, and found this chart:

http://www.eia.doe.gov/pub/oil_gas/petroleum/analy sis_publications/oil_market_basics/Dem_image_US_co ns_sector.htm

So while 45% may be gasoline, 65% is transportation. If that use goes to 0% due to biofuels, electric cars/trains/busses running on stored wind/solar/bio power, etc then we're only consuming 1/3rd of the oil we're consuming now. Since only about 20% of our oil comes from the Middle East (about 25% from OPEC, but that includes Venezuela, etc) we'd be able to cut out the Middle East entirely. Other domestic tricks (like using F-T to convert coal to liquid fuel) could extend tUSA's production, and Canada's tar sands could keep North America "truckin'" for a long time.

But then some other country would buy their oil from the Middle East, right? Well, if this technology existed at marketable prices in tUSA, you can bet it would be being used in Europe. The only major oil net-consumer left? China. I don't have any idea what position they'd be in, but I suspect if tUSA and Europe wanted to help China become more energy independant, China would be happy to go along for the ride... all the while, the price of Middle Eastern oil would fall.

Excellent point. The DOE says the feedstock is the "largest single component of biodiesel productions costs." [page 4] Thought experiement: If you got 100% volume yields at zero cost when converting veg. oil to biodiesel, how much veg oil do you have to buy to get a cheaper per-gallon price than what dino-diesel costs at the pump?

Ummm... you do realize that burning gas is only one way in which oil is consumed, don't you? Or did you forget about plastics, styrofoam, synthetic fibers, lubricants, fertilizer... hell, Cool Whip. In fact, gasoline comprises only 45% of oil consumption:

reference

So, don't count on breaking that dependence on 'foreign oil' so easily.

Actually, Canada and Mexico would be more upset than Saudi Arabia. Canada is the largest USA supplier of crude oil and petroleum products. Venezuela and Nigeria are large exporters as well. http://www.eia.doe.gov/neic/rankings/totimportsby_ country.htm

China currently gets aproximately 10-12% of their power from hydro-electric, and is aassumably going to increase that once the three gorges damn goes online. Also note in the above link that types of energy production other than hydrocarbons, "thermal" in the link, are increasing at a greater rate.

It's the "Department of Energy" (DOE). Unlike French, the English language has two different ways of representing the same relation: "X of Y" or "Y X". So either you initiate a small language revolution to eradicate one of the two forms, or you appoint one bit of your brain to remember which one is correct.

The DOE show that the prewar production levels were on the order of 2.5 m bbl/day (peak) and 2.0 m bbl/day now.

CIA World Factbook shows Iraqi production as currently 2.25 million bbl/day (2004 est.); note - prewar production (in 2002) was 2.03 million bbl/day (2004 est.)

And the Iraqi gov't says they can return to prewar levels sometime in 2006.

My point is that your claim:

You can see this by looking at graphs of consumption before and after the speed limit in the US was raised from 55 to 65.

... cannot be substantiated. There are many factors that cause gasoline consumption to rise. Aside from a few pauses, consumption has risen without regard to the speed limit: http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/aer/pdf/perspectives.p df. Look at figure 19 on page xxiv. There's no discernible change in the trend in 1995. As I posted in my last message, the US DOT estimates that -- at most -- the 55mph speed limit reduced consumption by 1%, which is statistically insignificant. But, that was at the expense of billions of man hours, which translated directly into reduced productivity and billions of wasted dollars.

Repealing the speed limit didn't increase accident fatalities or injuries, either. After accounting for the increase in miles driven, accident injuries and fatalities actually declined from 1995 to 1997: http://www.cato.org/pubs/pas/pa346.pdf

I know you're trying to be funny...

no, I WAS being funny, you just seem to be too uptight aboot yourself as a Canadian to get it [I'm assuming you are Canadian, my apologies if I'm wrong, Gord].

..start a political battle by making fun of Canada..

I'd start with the accent before I talked smack aboot your Loonies & Two-nies...

Blah, blah, blah ..."attacking other countries and stealing their oil...

Yep: really, really uptight... Catch a clue, Gordo, if we were stealing it we would not be paying money for it. If your theory was correct we would be attacking CANADA [#1 on US oil import list : http://www.eia.doe.gov/pub/oil_gas/petroleum/data_ publications/company_level_imports/current/import. html ] to get the most bang for the greenback. My apolologies for introducing facts into your delusional world but we get >3.9 million barrels per day from Canada, Mexico and Venezuela compared to 450,000 from Iraq, which is 2/3 the amount we imported from them in'04 [see same link].

The lame-ass idea that Iraq is about oil is really just pathetic. If you don't like George just sack up and say so, you don't need to make up silly shit just to make yourself feel better for being so full of hate. I don't like the guy either but I'll stand up and say its because of [what I view are] his oppresive consevative/religeous views and the fact that he not attacking the global terrorist networks hard enough.

I don't think US workers share your views on the Canadian Dollar

Wake up and smell the Tim Horton's - I am a US Worker (tm) and so is everyone I know who has a job. We all laugh at the Canadian Dollar, we chuckle at the Canadian economic system and we bust a gut out loud at the Canadian Healthcare system [funny how more Canadians get MRIs in Buffalo than in Toronto...]. We only smile bemusedly at Canadians in general because you were English more recently than we were - its not your fault.

Last time I checked, about 50% of Hollywood movies are filmed in Vancouver, Toronto and Montreal because of the exchange rate - meaning less work for them.

Your point illustrates why I and my fellow NASCAR-loving, oil-stealing, two-time-george-bush-electing US Workers (tm) view Canadians as our comfortably familiar yet just a bit more than odd, lead-paint eating cousins: THEY ARE GOING THERE BECAUSE YOUR ECONOMY SUCKS JUST A LITTLE MORE THAN OURS SO YOU ARE CHEAP LABOR!. That, and full nudity at the strip clubs. And the beer. And hockey. F*ck the beaver, but moose are pretty cool...

and big.

So, anyway, you humorless Newfie, that was the joke: your economy sucks just a little bit more than ours so $20 from a Canadian would not cover the cost of the Legal Lubricant she will need...
Get it now?

Now you got me all worked up - I'm gonna get a bunch of my militia buddies together and go squeeze a few more gallons of crude out of Afghanistan...

Good point to make, Tchaika; although, I'd want to question the actual infrastructure - whether it takes advantage of the most efficient technologies. One can assume that many don't - but I concede that I don't know exact numbers.

Some interesting numbers, though - at least in the US - for CO2 emissions put the total for coal firing and natural gas plants a good 32% ahead of petroleum (as of 2003), with a small upward trend.

You are right that many states offer green options - New York included (we're signing up for hydro/wind power for my Brooklyn apartment), but not everybody knows this, sadly - especially in New York City. Hopefully awareness of the whole infrastructure, from power plant to car, will increase. But, of course, I welcome any change, big or small, away from CO2 emissions, and BEVs are certainly a step in that direction.

And personally, as much as I like fusion, I'm big on fuel cell power plants for electric and heat energy. Though admittedly I haven't been paying attention to recent developments with it.

The article discusses that the goal is to improve the efficiency of solar cells to 50%. As I mention earlier in this thread, silicon-based semiconductor photovoltaics top out at a theoretical efficiency of about 25-26%. Other semiconductor technologies top out somewhere around 35%. These are the two technologies people think about when they imagine solar cells. I think the outlook for discovering and commercializing a semiconductor-based solar cell that's 50% efficient in the next 50 months to be very poor. I won't get into the physics, but the theoretical limitations have to do with the fact that semiconductor photovoltaics make inefficient use of the solar spectrum: a red photon will produce as much electrical energy as a blue photon, even though the blue photon is more energetic.

But solar power is not limited merely to what one can do with photovoltaics. When people talk about the many terawatts of solar power that falls on the surface of the earth, most of that solar goes into two things: photochemistry (like in plants) or to heating the earth's surface. Plants make very efficient use of the solar power that falls on them, and a black, nonreflective object will convert the incident solar power to heat (or reradiated infrared light) with extremely high efficiency. If we could focus efforts to developing technologies that capture sunlight first into chemistry or raw heat and converting that to electricity, rather than the direct conversion to electricity that photovoltaics do, we may have a better chance of reaching the 50% goal.

For instance, there was (is?) a solar power project that in the California desert that was a solar-thermal generator. Hundreds of mirrors focused sunlight onto a tower, much like the Archimedes death ray (which has received some press in /. lately). Instead of trying to burn a ship, the focused sunlight heated sodium to about 1200 Celcius, which liquified it. That sodium was passed through a heat exchanger to boil water, which made steam, which turned a turbine, in a similar closed-cycle technology to a nuclear plant.

I'll admit this isn't much use in the battlefield, which is what DARPA is aiming for, but it is not out of the question to consider a smaller solar thermal unit for an encampment, which used a different medium than sodium.

Here is an abstract of doe grant taken from:

http://www.science.doe.gov/sbir/awards_abstracts/s birsttr/cycle20/phase1/071.htm

__________________________________________________ ________________

An Advanced Cathode Material for Li-ion Batteries--A123 Systems, 8 Saint Mary's Street, 6th floor, Boston, MA 02215; 617-250-0566

Yet Ming Chiang, Principal Investigator, yet@a-123.com

Ric Fulop, Business Official, ric@a-123.com

DOE Grant No. DE-FG02-02ER86138

Amount: $100,000

Research Institute

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Cambridge , MA

Currently available Li-ion batteries do not meet Department of Energy targets for electric vehicle (EV) or hybrid electric vehicle (HEV) applications. The specific problem is that currently available cathode materials do not allow the specific energy and power density targets to be achieved while simultaneously being low cost, safe under abusive conditions, and environmentally benign. This project will develop electronically conductive lithium cathode materials, which have low raw materials and manufacturing costs, high energy and power density, and are environmentally benign and electrochemically stable. These materials are expected to be the first low-cost Li cathode materials to exhibit high electronic conductivity at room temperature. Phase I will synthesize and characterize the lithium materials with high electronic conductivity in the complete absence of conductive additives. Novel particle morphologies, consisting of nanoscale primary crystallites in partially-sintered aggregate particles, will be used to optimize power density.

Commercial Applications and Other Benefits as described by the awardee: In lithium ion battery cathode applications, the high electronic conductivity coupled with tailored particle design should allow near-theoretical energy densities to be achieved at high power densities and operating conditions relevant to EV and HEV technology.

Sounds like good questions. I would point out, when you answer them, that the other methods you have above are not mutually exclusive. Biodiesel can only be expanded as far as the biomass producing farmland will go. A backup is needed, be it some form of battery or reserve generation capacity in the instances of a cloudy day.

WARNING: Linked PDF
http://web.mit.edu/pebble-bed/Economics.pdf
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/12.09/china.htm l
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_cell
http://www.biodiesel.org/resources/fuelfactsheets
http://www.eia.doe.gov/oiaf/analysispaper/biodiese l
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alcohol_fuel

The battery is the real kicker. I've wanted to see for some time where the grid was only tapped for part of the energy needed for a home (or car, given Honda's home refueling idea) where the rest came from built in power generation and utilization ability. But without a battery solution to store excess energy, the grid must be overbuilt to handle a day when little ambient energy is available and more energy is required from remote generation.

Put available farmland to use generating biomass for Biodiesel and Ethanol, put solar panels on roofs and solar windows in standard. Converting good, arable farmland into fields full of solar panels ... well, I'll have to keep looking for numbers that would support that decision.

I nominate the entire DOE Handbooks, not only for the /. editors but for the most part of /.ers overall, myself included. DOE-HDBK-1012/1-92 will cover Thermodynamics, Heat Transfer, and Fluid Flow. The math and science DOE Handbooks are a great free, downloadable resource. The basics of Physics, Chemistry, Electricity, Materials science, Reactor science and attendant math are all covered.

The DOE Handbooks are a rich resource that cover every aspect of implementing and running an organization. The books cover disputes, roundtables, the list is very nearly all encompassing.

Nothing speaks to independence like your own in house nuclear reactor and the DOE Handbooks guide you through nearly every step of the way.

I didn't imply that there was no waste. I said that any large-scale mining produces lots of nasty tailings. And even if getting 1 ton of uranium makes 1000 tons of tailings, you have to mine 16000 times less of it (bottom of page) than you would coal to get the same amount of energy. I meant that although neither coal nor uranium are much better in terms of environmental damage caused by mining them, spent fuel rods can be dealt with more easily than millions of tons of CO2.

This could be a big advance for LEDs. But as of now, commercially available LEDs do NOT produce as many lumens per watt as Compact Fluorescent Light bulbs (CFLs.) Of course, this new LED discovery may improve LED efficiency to the point where they exceed CFL efficiency. We'll have to wait and see.

CFLs are inexpensive and readily available today. CFLs have a long life, and they save a ton of energy when compared to traditional light bulbs. Even more importantly, they don't suck like the CFLs of a few years ago that had a noticeable/painful "warm up" time.

I save quite a bit off of my energy bill by using CFLs. They really cut down on electricity consumption, and I've never had one "burn out" on me. Ever. Yet.

So slap a foolproof alarm device with language-agnostic hieroglyphics on there and you can finally tell the Beings of the Distant Future whether or not it is safe to enter the area around Yucca Mountain.

I see. They're "[breeding] a lot of people living in mut huts" to get a "free pass". So you suggest we go by what? Per country? The very few living in Liechtenstein will be happy to hear that. If you want to go by economic output, China looked in fact pretty bad -- they heavily rely on coal to produce energy. They still do, nowhere near as bad as they used to, but they're still about at US levels.
You can find various relevant statistics here, among other measures graphs of carbon dioxide emmissions per economic output for the G7 countries and developing asian nations.

I've been to Beijing. The air there ain't clean. I've never actually felt sick just from breathing a city's air before, and I've been to most major cities in the US and Europe.

At least they're doing something about it.

I see. They're "[breeding] a lot of people living in mut huts" to get a "free pass". So you suggest we go by what? Per country? The very few living in Liechtenstein will be happy to hear that. If you want to go by economic output, China looked in fact pretty bad -- they heavily rely on coal to produce energy. They still do, nowhere near as bad as they used to, but they're still about at US levels.
You can find various relevant statistics here, among other measures graphs of carbon dioxide emmissions per economic output for the G7 countries and developing asian nations.

I've been to Beijing. The air there ain't clean. I've never actually felt sick just from breathing a city's air before, and I've been to most major cities in the US and Europe.

At least they're doing something about it.

I see. They're "[breeding] a lot of people living in mut huts" to get a "free pass". So you suggest we go by what? Per country? The very few living in Liechtenstein will be happy to hear that. If you want to go by economic output, China looked in fact pretty bad -- they heavily rely on coal to produce energy. They still do, nowhere near as bad as they used to, but they're still about at US levels.
You can find various relevant statistics here, among other measures graphs of carbon dioxide emmissions per economic output for the G7 countries and developing asian nations.

I've been to Beijing. The air there ain't clean. I've never actually felt sick just from breathing a city's air before, and I've been to most major cities in the US and Europe.

At least they're doing something about it.

The SPR is capable of supplying roughly 60 days worth of import protection. And you apparently didn't look to hard at the SPR website. See SPR Facts.

As to Iraq, I argue that we are trying to leave an independent government in control there, with the specific goal of not pissing off the Europeans. I believe the other scenario involved a willingness to piss off the rest of the world at a much higher level.

As to the SPR:
http://www.fe.doe.gov/programs/reserves/spr/spr-fa cts.html

I guess it is only 60 days. Still, I believe that would be enough to seize control of a lot of production capacity if we were sufficiently willing to piss people off.

the USA creates more oil itself than we can get in Iraq.

Stop watching so many Michael Moore films.

http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/ipsr/t22.xls

They see a nation that has previously sold chemical weapons to others to use, that has previously dropped not one but two nuclear bombs on concentrated population centres and sees none of the idealism of the invasion of Iraq that the US populace has been sold (it's about "freedom and democracy"), but only the US claiming the oil supply for themselves.

I love the stupidity of the argument that the US is just in it for the oil. Not saying you claimed the argument, but you're right, most of the world and half the US thinks the same thing.

Except, that argument doesn't hold up one bit. At the end of major conflict with Iraq, the average US gas price was $1.51 (May 5, 2003). As of September 5, 2005, the average price for gas in the US was $3.07. Crude oil went from $21.53 per barrel (May 2, 2003) to $59.84 per barrel (September 2, 2005), mirroring the world's averages of $22.04 to $60.75 at the same points of time. These figures come from the Energy Information Administation website.

Gas prices have more than doubled since the US declared an end to major conflict in Iraq, mirroring trends in the world economy. This is very inconsistent with the claim, "we went in it for the oil."

And if you read this, it further confirms that California has no way to ship gas back and forth. So, we are being jacked. Big time.

Oil companies are making HUGE profits off of everyone from these Hurricanes.

So robbak... had these environmental lobbyists not dissuaded the policy makers from using nuclear means instead of coal for our energy needs, we wouldn't be seeing the greenhouse effect as we are today? In comparison to other factors, namely the oil consumption of the world's vehicles, the coal-fueled power plants are in the minority of causes for global warming. Other air-polluting industries unrelated to the energy industry are those producing such materials as cement, iron, steel, and fertilizer. These are major contributors to global warming.

Besides, nuclear power is still alive and well in the US, with most coal and nuclear-powered states averaging a 5-to-3 ratio of the energy created. Others even have nuclear power create more energy for its citizens than coal power does (e.g. Illinois, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, South Carolina, Vermont). Source: http://www.eia.doe.gov/.

Also, it is a benefit well-known by oil companies that the more consumers of oil they have, the more power and wealth they will have. Allowing the emergence of technology that allows a cheaper substitute to these consumers would be detrimental to their position. As is predictable, it is wholly within their interests to quell any such prospects of substitution and to encourage the status quo of rising oil demand. With environmentally healthy fuels being economically barred and oil-based fuels remaining economically entrenched, not to mention the other numerous factors, the idea that environmentalists are the cause of global warming looks pretty damn untrue.

"China is also the main coal supplier of the USA."
--SysKoll

"Bullshit"
--Penn and Teller

The US is an exporter of coal to China, not the other way around:
http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/coal/page/special/fea ture.html

Methanol has 35% the energy content of gasoline. Ethanol has 59%. Ethanol's two carbons yield double the CO2 (Greehouse) gas product as methanol's single carbon, but it ultimately produces only 85% the CO2 as does methanol, per "vehicle mile traveled" (95% of gasoline).

However, that table shows that ethanol produces 130% the "CO2 equivalent" (overall Greenhouse effect) waste gases as does gasoline per VMT. Considering the larger volumes of less-potent fuel to be produced, transported and filled into tanks, each operation with its own per-transaction energy consumption, the "Greenhouse efficiency" of ethanol seems significantly worse than that of gasoline. I'd like to see energy budget numbers on the transformation of methanol or ethanol into gasoline. If it costs less than 1/3 of the alcohol's energy content, it seems like we should be using alcohol fuelcells only for efficiently powering the ethanol->gasoline industry. And rolling out high-efficiency "gasoline cells" for our end-user devices, like MP3 players and cars. Considering the energy we'd save by reusing our vast existing gasoline infrastructure, we might be better off stuck with gasoline indefinitely. Though getting rid of the expensive desert tracts we currently convert into gasoline, in favor of, say, amber waves of grain (corn, sugarcane), might be the best way to save our planet for ourselves.

Carbon Dioxide is not the only greenhouse gas.

There is a lot of water vapor in the air, and it is a greenhouse gas. The warmer the climate, the more water evaporates into the air, the more heat is trapped, and it gets even warmer, at least to a point where cloud cover reflects light.

Methane is a much more effective greenhouse gas than CO2. The advent of civilization and agriculture roughly around 6,000+/- years ago significantly increased the amount of methane, though there are a lot of natural sources of that as well.

Even more effective greenhouse gases include refrigerants and other manmade chemicals not common until the industrial revolution. There are no siginificant natural sources of R-22, R-11, R-12, etc. and several other manmade chemicals.

Some particulate pollutants, manmade and natural, reflect sunlight and cool the earth, some reflect sunlight and cool the earth.

There is much uncertainty in the particular changes in climate that may hit a particular area, but there is no question that the models back up the general trend - it is getting hotter and human activity is a significant contributing factor to that trend.

http://www.eia.doe.gov/oiaf/1605/ggccebro/chapter1 .html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenhouse_gas
http://www.sciamdigital.com/browse.cfm?ITEMIDCHAR= F9374686-2B35-221B-635B1D2A02A8B6D5&methodnameCHAR =&interfacenameCHAR=browse.cfm&ISSUEID_CHAR=F9214C AB-2B35-221B-641728E52ACE63F4&ArticleTypeSubInclud e_BIT=0&sequencenameCHAR=itemP

Oh, I see, you're reading his saying "Humans produce ... " as "Each human produces", hence the per-capita....

Anyhow, his number is right for Humans (collectively) in the USA. it's probably off by a factor of 5 or 10 for the world as a whole...

But then he was comparing humans (collectively) to volcanos (collectively), as far as I could tell.

Kilauea volcano emits more than 700,000 tons of CO2 each year, less than 0.01% of the yearly global contribution by human sources. For some local perspective, this is about the same amount of CO2 as is emitted by 132,000 sport utility vehicles (there are 118,000 registered vehicles on the island).

According to US DOE EIA

U.S. greenhouse gas emissions in 2003 were ... 6,115.2 million metric tons carbon dioxide equivalent...

So that makes the volcanos:USA ratio about 1:6.

Does that help clarify?

It would be odd if pumping millions of tons of CO2 into the atmosphere had no effect, wouldn't it?

Not if the planet's capacity for absorbing said CO2 is significantly in excess of your "millions of tons" figure.

To put it in perspective, in 1997 the United States produced 5.4 billion tons of CO2 emissions, most of it from fossil fuel burning (I would use more current figures, but the first Google link was to the DoE and all they had was 1997 data).

However, according to an Oak Ridge National Laboratories study, roughtly 97% of all global-warming gasses in our atmosphere are produced naturally, largely by volcanic activity. So, to say that we (as humans burning fossil fuels) are adding to global warming is entirely correct. But to say that we're contributing noticeably to the overall global warming of the planet is absolutely ludicrous. You overestimate our ability to alter our climate and you underestimate the planet's ability to deal with our puny, pitiful emissions compared to its own.

Further, in order to blame global warming (or "climate change" if you prefer the currently popular buzzword) entirely on human factors, you have to totally discount anything else...like, say, a thermonuclear fusion reactor 1.4 million kilometers in diameter operating right next door to Earth, namely our sun. It goes through semi-regular cycles of increased activity and decreased activity, altering its output significantly.

We just happen to be in the latter stages of a warming trend in the sun. However, these things are not exact, and nobody really knows how long the warming trend will go and how much warmer things will be. However, NASA studies predict that the current solar maxima might be an unusually high one. Indeed, the number of solar flare warnings dispersed in the last decade has increased quite a bit over the prior one.

However, we are having an impact. In a few decades we will have doubled the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere - that is a major change.

I'd love to see your source for this data. I've posted mine from the Department of Energy, Oak Ridge, and NASA. One can only hope you've got sources of a similar caliber, otherwise your arguments are looking rather weak.

There were 2 test towers in place that were mothballed in 1992 when the testing moratorium went into effect, but they seemed like they could be returned to service if needed.

It was interesting to train in such a "hot" facility, and if you are learning to respond to radioactive emergencies, there isn't a better place in the country to get hands on experience.

It's not that big of a problem. I mean, it's only after forty years that plants are running out of room in their 'temporary' storage pools. The interim solution that's been found is above ground crypts. After spending twenty years in a pool, they're cool enough to transfer to an above ground crypt. At this point the heat produced has lowered to the point that active cooling isn't required. The thing to remember is the small size of this stuff. You can keep 20 years of waste in a pool the size of an olympic swimming pool.

If we were to take all the spent fuel produced to date in the United States and stack it side-by-side, end-to-end, the fuel assemblies would cover an area about the size of a football field to a depth of about five yards.

The cost estimate from the article is Very Bad. According to http://www10.antenna.nl/wise/index.html?http://www 10.antenna.nl/wise/456/4525.html

and http://www.uic.com.au/wns0729.htm

and as another poster mentioned,
http://eia.doe.gov/cneaf/nuclear/page/nuc_reactors /superla.html

the cost is around $200M (not including estimation errors, mismanagement costs and other overheads).

Editors should check some of the fantastic claims.

-

Would you like a Honda Accord for $1.95?

From the unique reactors linked to by the parent poster:

2008: The Floating Reactor (the Severodvinsk Reactor)

In 2008, if all goes according to plan, the world's first commercial floating nuclear power plant will be ready to begin operation... Pravda, the Russian news publication, reported the project was approved by the head of the Ministry for Nuclear Power, Alexander Rumyantsev. Sevmash Enterprise, which specializes in submarine construction, will build the vessel. Rosenergoatom, the Russian nuclear firm, will supply the reactors. Two such floating power stations are planned, each anticipated to cost $100 to $120 million. The first one will supply power to the city of Severodvinsk, approximately 50 miles west of Archangel.

Looks like TFA was wrong by several orders of magnitude on this one....

According to this site the reactor will cost between $100 to $120 million.

So I guess it is a misprint.

The $200,000 is way off. According to this page from the DOE, this reactor is going to cost between $100 and $120 million. A tad more than $200,000.

How about the Sturgis, a "440-foot-long World War II Liberty ship that the Army converted into a floating 45-megawatt nuclear power plant."

More about Unique Reactors

CO2 in the atmosphere has risen from 275ppm to about 375ppm since measurements of that gas began more than 100 years ago. Everyone assumes it is due to burning of fossil fuels, but that assumption cannot be proven because Carbon atoms from various sources have not been tagged and followed by any global experiment that I am aware of. All assignments have been based on statistics, and with that science you can prove anything.

At the equator water vapor is present in the atmosphere at 2,169 times the concentration of CO2 and water vapor has 7 TIMES the greenhouse power that CO2 has. That makes water, effectively, 15,000 times more powerful a greenhouse gas than CO2. Most people assume that CO2 is the culprit because of an unproven theory that water vapor amplifies the effects of CO2. Or, maybe it's the other way around. Unproven theories tend to be dynamic.

Other sources of CO2 have increased: the human population has risen from 1 BILLION to 6 BILLION in the last 100 years, and humans exhale CO2 24/7, unlike combustion engines. Most humans on this planet do not own a combustion engine or use one.

The ratio of CO2 produced / O2 consumed is called respiratory quotient (RQ), which depends on type of nutrients being used for energy. According to a study by the USDA [1], an average person's respiration generates approximately 450 liters (roughly 900 grams) of carbon dioxide per day, or about 5.4 Billion tons per day, or 1,971 Billion tons per year. That's about 538 Billion tons of Carbon. By comparison, the USA produces about a little more than 1 Billion tons of coal per year. The World demand for oil last year was 82 Million barrels per day, or around 9.3 Billion tons of oil per year. If I've made a mistake I'm sure someone will correct me, if they use the same source of information: http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/international/petroleu .html
Please do.

If my figures are correct human breath contributes more C02 to the atmosphere than machines do, probably because CO2 absorbed from the atmosphere by plants used as food, as they grow, is more than that created by farmers producing the food plants.

Dr. Alfred Bartlett was the first to state that "Farming is just a way of using land to convert oil into food." It's takes approximately 7 times more energy to put a slice of bread in your mouth than you get by metabolising it.

If CO2 is the cause of gloabl warming, humans appear to be the major source and the Carbon fuels used to feed them the minor source. If we cut back on the use of fossil fuel we condem a BILLION or more people to a death sentence by starvation, and the starving will continue until we replace Carbon with another energy source of equal or better density, or until the final population level can be supported by the new energy source.

Personally, I believe the evidence shows, and long before the "Carbon Tax" became the newest wealth redistribution scheme, that the Sun is responsible for the Earth's mean temperature, even with 6 BILLION people calling Earth home.

Transmission losses
A reasonable argument, though H2 can be produced on location and piplined. But going with your argument, your efficiency number is off. Average losses are only 7.2%.

Wind power price
I went off memory here, and I was off only slightly. Long-term wind contracts can be had for 3.5 cents/kWh. So hydrogen can be produced for $1.50 a gallon gas equiv - with retail wind power. If a wind company wanted to product H2 directly, it would be even lower.

IC engine Efficiency If you look in the fuel cell article, it clearly says that IC engine efficiency is 12% in a typical driving cycle. The problem isn't that IC engines can't be more efficient at the peak point, but that cars are driven in the real world all over the RPM spectrum, bringing the efficiency down substantally. Here is another link that claims a marginally higher 16% (depends on the car/driving cycle you use).

Crude oil to gasoline
As in the privious link, the Energy return of investment for US oil is 11, the EROI for gas is 4.4. Divide the two and you get 40% efficiency.

End result
Adding the trasmission losses to the mix, and taking the optpmistic view on average IC engine efficiency you still get 3 Times better with H2.

• The tar sand pilot plant you mention is actually a 155,000 barrel per day facility called Albian Sands. I've worked on the design of this plant and I can assure you it is not a pilot plant. The cyclone feed pumps are >half metre dia impellers, about as large as they get! The problem with oilsand is there are not enough workers who understand it.
• I had a run-in with a IGCC coal gasification technology at work last week. Coal is reacted with oxygen in a "reaction tower". The gas they create is none other than carbon monoxide. They burn it to make, wait for it, carbon dioxide. Sounds like combusion in a closed vessel, to me.

-AD

Hey idiot!

The US has had a *negative* output of carbon since 1952. Yes, that's right: because of forestation, the US *consumes* more carbon than it emits.

The regrowth of U.S. forests has had important impacts on net U.S. carbon dioxide emissions. Overall, U.S. forests have been a net carbon sink since 1952. According to Birdsey and Heath, between 1952 and 1992, carbon stored on U.S. forest land increased by a net of 11.3 billion metric tons, an average net increase of 281 million metric tons per year, and an amount that offset approximately 25 percent of U.S. emissions of carbon for the period." See that? The *increase* in trees alone was enough to offset 25% of the total carbon emissions.

Pssst! Hey, guess what, when we started piping electricity to people at their homes we didnt stop burning coal.... how do you think electricity is generated? a magical gnome in a hamster wheel??

http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/electricity/page/co2_ report/co2emiss.pdf


Carbon Dioxide (thousand metric tons)
Coal 1,799,762
Petroleum 110,244
Gas 291,236
Other Fuels b 13,596
U.S. Total 2,214,837

"That graph doesn't mean anything. Have a look at some global ones"

Perhaps if this were an isolated case, this graph would mean very little, but there are many cities in the US experiencing long term temperature declines.

"Early days yet; the target date is 2010. You might notice that those countries are at least cutting emissions (unlike the US)"

Not Spain:
http://cdiac.esd.ornl.gov/trends/emis/spa.htm

Not the UK:
http://www.foe.co.uk/resource/press_releases/uk_ca rbon_dioxide_emission_26022004.html

And not the EU as a whole:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/4115670. stm

The EU isn't gonna make it to Kyoto compliance. They're not on track, and unless there's some major economic/political disturbance, they're not going to get on track.

"Citation please. The US is actually quite bad at this."

The original article had one, but here is another:

http://www.eia.doe.gov/oiaf/1605/gg02rpt/gas.html

Carbon intensity has been dropping 14.52% per decade 1950-2000 in the US, even with cheap gas during much of that time.

Actually, China lags far behind in two ways. CO2 per dollar GDP. I'm using different numbers from what you are, since you didn't indicate what source you used. I'm using http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/cabs/contents.html for my data.

US GDP, 2003 (estimated): 11.0T USD
China GDP, 2004 (estimated): 1.65T USD
India GDP, 2003 (estimated): 0.56T USD

US CO2 emissions, 2002 (est): 5796M tons
China CO2 emissions, 2003 (est): 3541M tons
India CO2 emissions, 2002 (est): 1026M tons

I'll go ahead and list GDP/CO2 like you did, as opposed to CO2/GDP:

US $GDP/ton CO2: 1898
China $GDP/ton CO2: 466
India $GDP/ton CO2: 546
(For reference, with the data I used, EU $GDP/ton CO2 is 2762. That's CO2 emissions in 2002 and GDP in 2003.)

Another thing to look at is the CO2 emissions per unit energy consumed.

US tons CO2/billion BTU: 58.96
China tons CO2/billion BTU: 77.82
India tons CO2/billion BTU: 73.28
EU tons CO2/billion BTU: 54.42

The difference in this number between the US and the EU is likely from the higher rate of adoption of nuclear power in the EU (France, Germany, and the UK all have higher rates of nuclear power generation than the US, and while Italy has no nuclear power plants, it uses more hydro power and less coal power than the US). However, the US's power generation is roughly as clean as that of the EU.

As for the difference between the US and the EU in GDP/CO2, I honestly don't know what could cause that large a difference. A couple possible contributors: The US is bigger, and the major population centers are on opposite sides of the country, so fuel costs for shipping are higher. Also, large consumer automobiles are far more common in the US than the EU. (Note that I'm all in favor of measures to encourage the use of smaller cars in the US.)

However, the numbers for China and India, both of which have about three times the GDP growth rate of the US or EU, should be of much more concern. The increased oil consumption of these two countries is largely responsible for the increase in oil prices this year, yet neither one is considered even an Annex I country under the UNFCCC/Kyoto Protocol, meaning they are both exempt from the CO2 reduction requirements.

From this link a good average differential between a processor at load and idle is 40W. If you turn the computer off instead, that's maybe 80W. (Broad average over many computers).

Now Here we see that 2million years of computing time has been used, so (times 40W/hr) that comes to 700,000MWHr.

No the 2000 U.S. consumption of energy was ~21 billion MWHr. (Here, and trust the government to use quadrillions of BTUs as a unit). So to date, SETI has used 0.003% of U.S. annual energy consumption. And that's almost enough energy to power the City of Red Deer, Alberta for 17 months! Someone else can tell us how many libraries of congress you could have read with that much light.

Feel free to check my units and zeros, I've been wrong before, as long as someone can tell the Brits what a quadrillion is.

"There is not an iota of evidence that reducing carbon emissions would lead to a depression."

See late 1970s stag-flation in the United States.

Wikipedia will help you understand:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stagflation

Oil, like food and land, is a critical component of today's economy.

It's less critical than it was (as measured by carbon intensity), but it's still important.

http://www.eia.doe.gov/oiaf/1605/ggrpt/trends.html

That's not to say that we can't do more to reduce carbon emissions, but with temperatures falling in some places, there is still some wiggle room vis-a-vis global warming and human causation:

http://michiganimc.org/usermedia/image/2/large/Cli mateGraphAnnArborSourceStateOfFearByMichealChricht on.jpg

But, given that many in the international community want more action from the United States on this issue, and in general there is distaste everywhere for dumping tons of waste into the atmosphere, there is some room for hope, including the North Eastern United States pact on emissions:

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/25/nyregion/25air.h tml

As well as a similar plan for the Pacific costal states of California, Oregon, and Washington also in the works.

http://www.ppionline.org/ppi_ci.cfm?knlgAreaID=116 &subsecID=900039&contentID=252175

In general, there is a self righteous feeling amongst non-Americans (especially from pro Kyoto treaty Europeans), but keep in mind please that very few European nations are even meeting their Kyoto targets:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/climatechange/story/0,12 374,1098635,00.html

Those nations that are meeting the targets are in deep recessions (including Russia):

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/3702640.stm

Kyoto is a 'first step', but many nations supporting that first step aren't actually taking it, making it "a tale, Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing." [Macbeth Act 5, Scene 5]

The real key is reducing our economic carbon intensity (generating more money with fewer carbon emissions). We in the United States are already doing that quite well.

Can we move faster? Yes. And we will, if by hook and crook, including regional emissions limitations, higher international oil prices, and a general shift in our economy away from manufacturing and oil consumption.

But arrogant attitudes about 'excuses and misinformation' miss the real point.

The average computer uses as much as two circus tents worth of coal to run on any given day.

Umm, any hard data (from an impartial site, please) for this? I'm guessing you pulled this out of your ass.

Reason why I don't believe it is that my building has thousands of computers, usually running all the time. One circus tent, according to De Boers (warning: large PDF), is 44x44x12 meters, or somewhat less than 23,232 cubic meters Your quote means that every day a computer uses about 46,464 cubic meters of coal every day.

To keep things in perspective, the United States produced about 2936986.3 tons of coal per day in 2003. Let's say that coal is about 52 pounds per cubic foot on average. That means we produced an average of 112,961,000 cubic feet of coal, or 3,196,796.29 cubic meters, per day. (2936986 * 2000 / 360 /52 * .0283), tons/year->lbs/year->lbs/day->ft^3/day->m^3/day)

If my math is correct (and I did do this in kind of a hurry, so be kind), your statement would mean that only 68 computers (3196796.29 / 46464) running all year long would exhaust the yearly coal production of the United States.