Slashdot Mirror

U.S. oil production is down 43% from what it was forty years ago. U.S. production is LONG past peak, and the small increase of only 55 million bl/yr in the past two or three years -- no doubt the result of massive investment from when oil was at $140/bl in 2008 -- has only made up about 4% of the amount it has dropped since then.

Source: Energy Information Administration

Wrong.
http://www.eia.doe.gov/pub/oil_gas/petroleum/data_publications/company_level_imports/current/import.html
The USA imports 2.5 as much petroleom from Canada as Saudi Arabia.

    The fuel tax already covers that nicely. Truckers are using the most expensive fuel. According to the US Department of Energy, both gasoline and diesel are taxed at 12% average. The average cost of regular gasoline is $3.56/gal. The average cost of diesel is $3.91/gal.

    According to the Bureau of Transportation Statistics (in 2008 numbers), the average passenger car gets 22.6mpg, and the average other 2 and 4 wheel vehicle (motorcycles, passenger trucks and SUVs) get 18.1mpg. That's average, everyone will claim "mine gets [higher|lower]".

    A tractor/trailer rig gets 10mpg unloaded, or about 5 to 7mpg fully loaded. so, on a hypothetically average trip of exactly 1,000 miles, and equally average driving conditions for all involved...

    Avg passenger car: Fuel: 45 gallons. Cost: $160.20 Tax: $19.22

    Avg tractor/trailer Fuel: 167 gallons. Cost: $652.97 Tax: $78.36

    And lets address his complaint of "In fact the (highway) road damage of one 18-wheeler is equivalent to at least 9600 cars", lets consider what the car to truck ratio is...

    Again, according to the Bureau of Transportation Statistics, in 2000 (the last year this report shows any numbers), there were 133,621,420 passenger cars, 4,346,068 motorcycles, 79,084,979 passenger trucks and SUV's, and 5,926,030 other 2 axle vehicles.

    So, 222,978,497 2 axle vehicles, and 2,096,619 truck/trailer combination. So 106 cars for every truck on the road. Consider that those heavy trucks spend far more miles on common routes, (i.e., interstates, state highways, etc) than on the sprawling local roads and community streets. You'll see that it doesn't matter much that they do 9600:1 damage to the highway, they are likely only driving on a very very small percentage of the overall roadways. They only have to repave an interstate once and it's repaired, so the cumulative effect does not equal a 9600:1 burden on the overall paved streets across the country.

    Consider your own neighborhood. How many cars drive past your house for every heavy truck. The number probably becomes tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands to one truck.

    But don't let factual statistics get in the way of cherry picking numbers to scream about the awful blight of the heavy truck. :)

Electric vehicles and increasing fuel economy

Just impose a road tax on electricity use at a residence above a certain threshold. The GM Volt uses about 10 kWh to travel 40 miles, which would be a bit below the typical daily use for an American car. The typical American home uses 11,040 kWh per year, which works out to about 30 kWh per day. So charging your electric car daily represents a rather substantial increase (at least 33%) in the average home's daily electrical consumption. Just tax that. No need to come up with some new intrusive and foolproof system to measure how many miles every car is driven every year.

it's become politically unacceptable for some reason to increase the fuel tax rate which means revenue has been dropping and the drop is likely to accelerate even as our need to overhaul or transportation infrastructure is increasing (average age of bridges in the US is 50+ years even though most were designed for 40 year lifespans and for half the traffic they support today).

Start taxing in proportion to how much damage the vehicles cause to the roads. Right now, trucks cause nearly all of the damage to our roads (they have a substantially higher loading per area), but pay less fuel taxes per ton than cars. The trucking industry is basically subsidized by passenger vehicle fuel taxes. Correct that and you should see rail transport (about 10x more fuel efficient per ton-mile than trucks) becoming competitive again in the U.S.

Electric vehicles and increasing fuel economy

Just impose a road tax on electricity use at a residence above a certain threshold. The GM Volt uses about 10 kWh to travel 40 miles, which would be a bit below the typical daily use for an American car. The typical American home uses 11,040 kWh per year, which works out to about 30 kWh per day. So charging your electric car daily represents a rather substantial increase (at least 33%) in the average home's daily electrical consumption. Just tax that. No need to come up with some new intrusive and foolproof system to measure how many miles every car is driven every year.

it's become politically unacceptable for some reason to increase the fuel tax rate which means revenue has been dropping and the drop is likely to accelerate even as our need to overhaul or transportation infrastructure is increasing (average age of bridges in the US is 50+ years even though most were designed for 40 year lifespans and for half the traffic they support today).

Start taxing in proportion to how much damage the vehicles cause to the roads. Right now, trucks cause nearly all of the damage to our roads (they have a substantially higher loading per area), but pay less fuel taxes per ton than cars. The trucking industry is basically subsidized by passenger vehicle fuel taxes. Correct that and you should see rail transport (about 10x more fuel efficient per ton-mile than trucks) becoming competitive again in the U.S.

The petrofuels compete only on the $BILLIONS a year in subsidies they get. Which you are paying.

You're conflating total subsidy dollars with amount of energy that's generated per subsidy dollar. Yes the oil companies get billions in subsidies. But the amount the oil companies get per unit of energy produced is peanuts compared to what developing technologies like solar and wind get. It has next to no impact on the competitiveness of the petroleum industry. (Note that these are subsidies only for electrical generation. But the figures I found for total subsidies for the oil industry were only about 4x higher, which would still put it far, far below what solar and wind get per MWh.)

Page 6, table E35, subsidy dollars per MWh
Coal - $0.44
Refined Coal - $29.81
Natural Gas and Petroleum $0.25
Nuclear - $1.59
Biofuels - $0.89
Geothermal - $0.92
Hydroelectric - $0.67
Solar - $24.34
Wind - $23.37
Landfill Gas - $1.37
Municipal solid waste - $0.13

Instead of concentrating on total subsidy dollars (which is silly - like arguing a homeless shelter is wasteful because it spends $5,000/mo on food while you only spend $100/mo), you need admit that solar and wind are getting disproportionately large subsidies for the amount of energy they produce, but then shift the argument over to appropriateness of the subsidy. Nuclear, oil, and coal all got substantial government aid when they were first being developed. Solar and wind deserve the same. So their extraordinarily high subsidy per unit of energy is warranted.

some people are saying the cost of cleanup and indemnification in fukushima can be as high as 60 billion.

how many wind turbines can you buy with that ?

Assuming a cost of about $1.75/watt installed, about 35 GW of wind. Wind typically has a capacity factor between 30-40% depending on how effectively it is sited. Newer sites tend to have higher capacity factors, so let's assume 35% average or about a constant 12 GW of power.

Nuclear typically has a capacity factor of appx 90%.

Here's some data on capacity factors of the US grid: http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/electricity/epa/epat5p2.html

In the end it's probably easiest to look at cost per kWh before a project is built - and cost to run the plant after it's built. For those reasons once they're built nuclear and renewables typically have a very high capacity factor (fuel is cheap or free once built) compared to coal/gas plants.

Now, I'm going to flip this on you a bit: You've been hurting from the gasoline prices lately, yes? Pretty much everybody is.

Sorry to burst your bubble but, according to wikipedia the battery pack for the Tesla model in question costs $36k and has a lifetime of 100k miles which is 36 cents/mile travelled to which you can add about 3 cents/mile in electricity costs (86kWh per full charge at 200 miles/charge and assume 7 cents/kWh). Current US petrol prices seem to be about $3.55 per US gallon so for a petrol car to have the same fuel costs as the Tesla it would need to have a fuel consumption worse than 9.1 miles per gallon...which is about comparable to a hummer.

So, unless the cost of petrol gets very significantly higher (by x3-4) or the cost of batteries drops considerably the fuel cost of an electric vehicle is significantly higher than a petrol driven one. I wish that were not the case but sadly, for now, it is.

What are you trying to prove, except for the fact that you pay absurd rates for electricity, several times more than most Americans pay?

I pay 8.5 cents per kWh for each incremental kWh.

The US national average for residential electricity, all buys together, is now up to 11.04 cents per kWh. That's residential; commercial and especially industrial are even cheaper (industrial is 6.59 cents per kilowatt hour).

Sorry to have to tell you that you're getting ripped off.

A "new refrigerator" is, supposedly, more efficient than the last one. The emergence of IT made entire armies of secretaries, messengers, archive managers, human computers etc obsolete, changing society profoundly. The comparison to an iterative development of an existing technology strikes me as moot.

A very interesting expanded comparison between IT and refrigerators can be made. The introduction of refrigerators also changed society profoundly (though perhaps not quite as profoundly as IT). The ability to ship food long distances and store it for long periods of time throughout the supply chain, right down into the kitchen, the invention of new food products (Birdeye's flash frozen vegetables, etc.) had major economic and social implications. But this was in the first half of the 20th century, long before the life experience of /. readers.

And since 1972 there has also been a genuine revolution in refrigerator technology. Prices of refrigerators have plummeted, and efficiency has sky-rocketed. This chart only takes us to 1997, but it shows a near-tripling in energy efficiency over 25 years, and the progress has not stopped since then. A new 18 cubic foot refrigerator uses 350 kWh per year, which is an average energy consumption of only 40 watts. Most PCs use more power than this, even taking into account the long periods of idling.

I suggest that computer processor energy consumption needs to follow a curve like that of refrigerators as a share of the national energy consumption - reverse its still climbing share of national energy consumption, and begin a long decline.

Side note: the only power source capable of generating 1.21 gigawatts of electricity is a bolt of lightning.

Japan has two ABWR's at Kashiwazaki-Kariwa that output 1.3 GW's each. Of course, it's not individual power sources that matter but the fleet as a whole, and, if I interpret DOE 2009 figures correctly, Japan's fleet has a generation capacity of 280 GW and an average load of 112 GW. I have no idea what peak capacity is this time of year or how load/generation are distributed geographically, but it's easy to see how the 1.21 GW conversion capability is a mere straw through which to sip power (~equivalent to 1 large reactor).

There are 600 coal plants in the US, generating about 2000TW. A few recent projects for large scale solar range from 50MW to 700MW. It would only take a few hundred of these to make a significant dent in the need for US coal and nuclear generating capacity. What is lacking is determination, and money. The fossil fuel subsidy per year is about $70B and roughly $13B per Nuclear plant. That should pay for a whole lot of alternatives including solar.

Did you read the whole page? The only (levelised) study that shows nuclear to be competitive it the UK study (and only by a relatively small margin). In everything else, nuclear trails on-shore wind.

The Wikipedia entry for U.S. DOE levelized cost lists nuclear at 119, onshore wind at 149.3. However, this is inconsistent with the referenced source which lists 113.9 for nuclear, 97 for onshore wind. The history of the chart on the wikipedia page shows no edits, so likely the DOE revised their report. Note that these are estimated levilized costs for 2016, so there's room to fudge. I'll call this a draw.

The figures in the UK study are consistent with the source. Winner: nuclear.

The Califoria Energy Commission costs listed in Wikipedia does not match the source. If you flip to table 24, you'll see the levelized costs are both $99//MWh for wind and nuclear. However, that is the subsidized cost. Without tax credits, nuclear is $114, wind is $140. Winner: nuclear

The Australian figures for nuclear cite a reference which is not available online. Putting the title of the chart into Google yielded this report. If you scroll down to figure 10-13 (p. 218), wind comes out at roughly 90-210 AU cents/MWh, nuclear 120-200 AU cents/MWH. I'm inclined to call this a draw, but one could argue it's a win for wind.

The final chart on wiki is unreferenced, does not state where the data supposedly came from, and does not describe what factors and assumptions went into the calculations. My guess is the source is German, but my German is not good enough to be searching through their publications. However, it is pretty well known that Germany has a strong anti-nuclear bias, having banned it in their country.

Overall, I'd say the sources in the Wikipedia entry more strongly support the conclusion that nuclear is cheaper than or about the same as wind.

We emit over 30 billion tons of carbon dioxide per per. That's over 4 tons for every person on the planet. Is every person going to be able to grow tons of plants every year? If not, we need to either reduce emissions or find a way of scrubbing the carbon dioxide out of the air and sequester it to prevent carbon dioxide levels from rising.

Well, more recently, the 2009 UN Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen where delegates from 183 countries negotiated approaches to reduce CO2 emissions by between -25 and -40% below 1990 levels by 2020. Based on studies like this, we can take on a great deal of pain ourselves but there will still be plenty of pea in the pool if the effort isn't unilateral.

Something like 75% of oil is used as fuel:

http://www.eia.doe.gov/energyexplained/index.cfm?page=oil_home

Actually nearly all our oil comes from Canada and South America now, so that one is a myth.

Nearly all? Not quite. The Persian Gulf region supplied 18% of the US's crude in 2009. Angola and Nigeria provided another 13.6%, and Russia 2.5%. Yes, Canada, Mexico and Venezuela account 44.2%, but that is hardly "nearly all."

1) It is easier to build a bomb with weapons grade fuel than pu-239.

2) It is easier to fuel a reactor with weapons grade fuel than pu-239.

Well that depends on the bombs and the reactor doesn't it. So apart from stating the obvious, what is your point?

The value of spent fuel is less than the value of raw ore.

The value of weapons grade fuel is far greater than the value of raw ore.

The Department of Energy's Plutonium Certified Reference Materials Price List and Uranium Certified Reference Materials Price List list the values of the respective materials as follows

• raw ore per gram (Uranium Metal un-enriched) $323.75
• weapons grade fuel per gram (Uranium Metal enriched ) $920
• spent fuel per gram (plutonium, pu239) $10,890

So as you can see the value of the spent fuel is over 20 times the value of the raw ore, that's not my presumption, that's the certified price listed by the DOE. Since your ability to do research so obviously needs to be refined I'll leave it as an exercise for you to figure out what weapons grade material actually is and why the reality runs counter to your assumptions.

Which do you think people are going to try harder to steal?

I think you need to re-assess your belief system about nuclear issues as the things you have been saying seem to be rhetoric and flawed reasoning stated in an attempt to win an argument rather than to communicate any facts. None of the statements you made change the facts regarding the logistics of moving nuclear materials. So unless you can provide some actual facts to the contrary, I'll just presume you've conceded to the points raised in my original post.

1) It is easier to build a bomb with weapons grade fuel than pu-239.

2) It is easier to fuel a reactor with weapons grade fuel than pu-239.

Well that depends on the bombs and the reactor doesn't it. So apart from stating the obvious, what is your point?

The value of spent fuel is less than the value of raw ore.

The value of weapons grade fuel is far greater than the value of raw ore.

The Department of Energy's Plutonium Certified Reference Materials Price List and Uranium Certified Reference Materials Price List list the values of the respective materials as follows

• raw ore per gram (Uranium Metal un-enriched) $323.75
• weapons grade fuel per gram (Uranium Metal enriched ) $920
• spent fuel per gram (plutonium, pu239) $10,890

So as you can see the value of the spent fuel is over 20 times the value of the raw ore, that's not my presumption, that's the certified price listed by the DOE. Since your ability to do research so obviously needs to be refined I'll leave it as an exercise for you to figure out what weapons grade material actually is and why the reality runs counter to your assumptions.

Which do you think people are going to try harder to steal?

I think you need to re-assess your belief system about nuclear issues as the things you have been saying seem to be rhetoric and flawed reasoning stated in an attempt to win an argument rather than to communicate any facts. None of the statements you made change the facts regarding the logistics of moving nuclear materials. So unless you can provide some actual facts to the contrary, I'll just presume you've conceded to the points raised in my original post.

You are correct.

Hence the "invade" part, to get it cheaper...

You're probably just kidding, but..

Because oil is fungible that still wouldn't make any difference. Even now It's not like a gallon of gas made from oil from the U.S. is any cheaper than when it's made from oil elsewhere. According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration the U.S. imported 51% of the oil consumed in the U.S. in 2009 It follows that the U.S. already produces half it's own oil.Even if we invaded Canada and 'took' their oil, the consumer would still have a price based on the world market. I suppose the government could try to dictate the price of oil. But I don't think that's even possible (never mind constitutional) with our insatiable demand. In all reality supply has some debatable limit and is beyond our control.

Also according to the E.I.A. we get our oil from all over the world. In other words, it takes the world to feed our demand. You have a big field, we want some. You're close, we want some.

Gas goes up, the economy goes down. Gas goes down, the economy goes up. There are more factors, but gas is fundamental to modern life. Cheap energy means lots of cheap stuff and cheap distribution.

I found many of these reports full of information
.
Perhaps you might argue that I should not be inebriated when I reply, as I do not think my post is directed towards you but I'm going to hit post anyway because I've already typed all of this out.

Hence the "invade" part, to get it cheaper...

You're probably just kidding, but..

Because oil is fungible that still wouldn't make any difference. Even now It's not like a gallon of gas made from oil from the U.S. is any cheaper than when it's made from oil elsewhere. According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration the U.S. imported 51% of the oil consumed in the U.S. in 2009 It follows that the U.S. already produces half it's own oil.Even if we invaded Canada and 'took' their oil, the consumer would still have a price based on the world market. I suppose the government could try to dictate the price of oil. But I don't think that's even possible (never mind constitutional) with our insatiable demand. In all reality supply has some debatable limit and is beyond our control.

Also according to the E.I.A. we get our oil from all over the world. In other words, it takes the world to feed our demand. You have a big field, we want some. You're close, we want some.

Gas goes up, the economy goes down. Gas goes down, the economy goes up. There are more factors, but gas is fundamental to modern life. Cheap energy means lots of cheap stuff and cheap distribution.

I found many of these reports full of information
.
Perhaps you might argue that I should not be inebriated when I reply, as I do not think my post is directed towards you but I'm going to hit post anyway because I've already typed all of this out.

3) Costs

Typical dishonest right wing BS; he doesn't mention the huge huge huge cost subsidys to cars - have you ever heard of something called the mideast ? and how much we spend on the military to defend oil there ? you did any sort of honest analysis - includuding loss of public land for cars, cost to the environment to get fuel for\ cars, etc etc etc, I bet the current subsidys for cars are higher then rail

Er, actually most of our oil comes from Canada and Mexico.

Quite the comedian, aren't you?

Ignoring ad hominum attacks and thermal energy tangent, it appears your arguments are (1) work on everything blind to its contribution to the whole and (2) work on vehicle engines because they have a shorter product lifespan when compared to coal plants.

(1) Focus on every single piece and you end up with no focus at all. The question is, where would you have the greatest IMPACT. The solar panel company I work for is now building solar cells that are just a penny or two above the $0.10 per kilo-watt-hour of grid parity. Give us a few years and I think we'll be cheaper than coal. Kill coal and start building solar and wind farms! Coal and petroleum are currently equivalent in their CO2 emissions Source and we can get that power through alternative methods for less than the cost of replacing all of our cars with only slightly better mileage, which would have the greater impact?

(2) Using $250m cars on the road with an estimated average $30k/vehicle retail cost ( Source ), here are approximately $7.5 trillion (that's with a T) worth of cars on the road today. There are approximately 600 ( Source ) coal plants in the US. To improve the mileage of cars, you essentially have to replace them entirely. Cost: $7.5 trillion. Spending that money on coal plants instead would provide $12.5 BILLION on EACH of the 600 coal plants. Considering that a coal plant costs less than $1b ( Source ) to build, I am sure we can find significantly better uses for that extra $11.5b per plant.

Some additional arguments
(1) Where do you suppose the power charging your Chevy Volt is coming from? Chase people from gas and you end up with a coal-powered car.

(2) The largest 15 ocean-going ocean tankers emit as much of some types of air pollution as every single car on earth. (!!!!) Source. I can't seem to find how much CO2 they emit... How many tankers do you think we have circling the globe?

In conclusion, I stand by my position: For CO2 emissions reduction purposes only, our dollars would be better spent on improved power generation... and to beat the CO2 drum is rhetoric designed to whip up the uninformed... or to advance someone's agenda...

Lighting only makes up 8.8% of residential power use. That's 5th place behind air conditioners (16%), refrigerators (13.7%), heating (10.1%), and water heaters (9.1%).

Switching to CFLs is useful, but it's not a panacea.

Coal and NG: 0%

Really? The Coal industry gets *no* money from the federal gov't?

EPA Act 2005 "$2.3 billion in tax credits. Of these, 18 request credits for integrated gasification combined cycle plants and 4 for advanced coal-based generation plants. Applications include projects using bituminous, subbituminous, and lignite coals to be built in 19 states" and "$2.7 billion in tax credits. Project are proposed in 17 states: Arizona, California, Florida, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, New York, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Texas, and Washington"

Not all 'subsidies' are grants. If they get tax credits for their work it's the same thing. The Oil industry gets tens of billions of dollars in tax breaks annually.

$17 billion between 2002 and 2008 for coal source

Nuclear is certainly green from the point of view of CO2 production

and Coal is green from the aspect of the electricity fairy farts you so astutely mentioned. Nuclear needs massive subsidies to ever get off the ground. $8 billion loan guarantees And it has waste issues. Why not put that money towards something that doesn't have those issues?

Here is a good paper on Sodium vs other coolants and it gives a good history of reactors built that used it.
http://www.ne.doe.gov/pdfFiles/SodiumCoolant_NRCpresentation.pdf

I disclosed this sort-of-cogeneration idea before on the open manufacturing list so that no one could patent it, but for years I've been thinking that the electric heaters in my home should be supercomputer nodes (or doing other industrial process work), controlled by thermostats (or controlled by some algorithm related to expectations of heat needs).

When we want heat, the processors click on and do some computing and we get the waste heat to heat our home. When the house is warm enough, they shut down. They would use the network to talk to the rest of the nodes in neighbor's homes, or homes across the globe, to form a supercomputing cloud. Basically, any place in the country that has an electric heater (or similar thing) could have a processing node instead (this includes water heating, too, and even things like kilns). (Hydroponic agriculture would be another example use as well instead of computing, growing plants in winter where the grow lights were controlled by thermostats or heating algorithms or timers.)

For reference, for those who don't know much physics, essentially all use of electricity produces waste heat eventually, so if you run a computer that takes 100 watts, it heats the room as much as running a 100 watt heater. The same goes for a 100 watt incandescent lightbulb, which also doubles as a 100 watt heater. For those who live in homes in cold climates (heating somewhat most of the time) and who do not have very well insulated homes, paying more for energy efficient appliance may not pay well, because your electric heaters just have to pick up the slack left by the the more efficient lights.

I don't know the industrial figures, but for residential electric heating use in 2001:
http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/reps/enduse/er01_us.html
"Electric space heating accounted for an additional 116 billion kWh (10 percent of the total)... Electric water heating accounted for over 100 billion kWh (9 percent) in 2001."

So that is about 200 billion kWh per year, or about 23 gigawatts continuously. It is "free" power to use for computing in a sense. (I know, it would need to be networked -- maybe with integrated wireless of some sort?) So, that would be enough power for about 46 of the 500 MW computers they mention in the article. The cost savings would be (at US$0.10 per kWh) 20 billion dollars a year in energy costs. Looking around, commercial buildings use about the same amount of electric heating. Electric use has increased over the past decade, as well. So potentially 100 or so of these exaflops machines could be powered by residential and commercial heating needs alone.

I don't know what the figure would be for industrial process heat. If we shift way from fossil fuels and towards more energy from PV, wind, nuclear, and cold fusion, there might be terawatts of power available to use for computing in this way, where the waste heat (on demand) then drove industrial processes like making plastic or refining ore. Waste heat could also drive heat engines for mechanical action. So, industrial processes might be able to power (for "free") thousands of these supercomputers.

Large datacenters could also be located in places that wanted the heat, like near big buildings. Power plants sometimes have industrial plants near them that want their waste heat already, so this would be a similar thing. The datacenter waste heat could also be concentrated by heat-pumps and used for industrial processes (like melting silicon to make solar cells or IC chips).

I guess with cold fusion in the air (with the Italy demo claim) I should disclose the idea of integrating cold fusion power production (such as without limitation nickel/hydrogen fusion) directly into, or adjacent to, computing nodes that somehow directly use the energy, either electricity generated someway or even running directly off any generated radiation. These too could also be thermostat controlled (or controlled by some algorithm related to exp

If we're serious about Middle East dependencies and carbon footprint, then we need to act serious.

First, I would debate that are not dependent on Middle East oil. Canada and Mexico alone provide the US with about 39% of our crude oil. When you compare that to roughly 20% coming from Saudi Arabia, Iraq, and Kuwait, I think we're more dependent on the countries we border than any other state.

Hmm. Trying to talk to you is a bit trying.

Occupying a country by military force means you exert absolute control with that military force.

No, it does not and I did not claim it does. Germans had occupation forces in France in WWII yet there was a local gov't and yes, it did have the authority to sign off on everything, from the economy up to and including who got sent to the camps and who didn't.

If you had even the slightest notion of what it costs [...] you would very quickly see exactly how much America is 'profiting' because of the war in Iraq.

You advance an estimate of $3 trillion. What can we compare it with? What would happen to the US economy if oil spiked to 200$ a barrel or more? What price-tag would you attach to total economic collapse? Alternatively, why, if you believe the occupation is bad for your country, aren't you protesting?

I don't even know what 'pay your allies for their friendship' means, as if Britain were some thug we hired to do our job for us. They're a sovereign country and they had no obligation to send anyone to Iraq.

It means "reconstruction" contracts to BP and others. Of course the UK had no obligation to help. That's why the US needs to make sure it's worth their while.

'Satrapy' isn't a system and it certainly isn't an Empire - it's a derogatory term used to reduce an enormously complicated situation to something simple enough to fit your one-dimensional worldview.

It's a form of political organization of conquered territories peculiarly suited to loosely-held empires such as the one you live in.

We're not 'post-oil' and won't be for a long time.

Do forgive me for taking the long(ish) view, please. We are at peak oil now.

And finally:

I'm not suggesting that we aren't there because of self-interest. But that self-interest is a large, democratic, stable Middle-eastern country (instead of a large, tyrannical, unstable Middle-eastern dictatorship).

What are the political benefits the US derives from democracy in Iraq, given that the latest elections and subsequent re-shuffling have put Islamists in (nominal) control?

In what way was Saddam's regime unstable? It survived religious strife, Kurdish uprisings, two wars and a 10-year trade embargo that was actually enforced. There was zero indication that Saddam won't die in power.

When people start talking about reliance or dependence on Arab countries for oil, it makes me wonder how many people actually know where the US get's its oil from. The U.S. Energy Information Administration keeps track of this.

I guess my point is, if we all stopped driving cars and started using bicycles, how much would oil consumption in the US drop?

So 3 hours to work, 3 hours to get home every day? No thanks. Actually, it would take me longer since bikes are illegal on the interstate (80 of the 100 miles a day I drive). The average commute in the US is 16 miles, which would be an easy hour or more considering traffic stops, turns, etc. Its a nice thought, in a tree hugging way, but Americans aren't going to switch in significant numbers. They might drive less, but it won't be to bike that much more.

But to answer your question, http://tonto.eia.doe.gov/dnav/pet/pet_cons_psup_dc_nus_mbblpd_a.htm is a good place to start.

In 2009, we were down around 10% from our peak at 18,771,000 barrels per day total oil consumption (peak 2005, 20.8m). Around 9m barrels were for gasoline (not counting motor oil and other uses in cars), or just under half. 3.6m went to "Distillate Fuel Oil" (mainly diesel and a little for home heating oil I believe). Another 1.4m went to aviation. The rest goes to petrochemical, plastics, lubricants and other uses.

You might note that total oil consumption has dropped much more dramatically than gasoline consumption. My guess is that this is due to the gutting of manufacturing in the US. Total consumption is around 1998 levels, while current gasoline consumption is around 2003 levels, or down less than 3% of peak levels in 2006. Even the biggest recession since The Depression didn't change that much.

Probably a lot of you know this, but for the benefit of those who don't, S. Korea is currently pursuing an aggressive build-out of new nuclear reactors. According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration S. Korea already gets 34% of its power from nuclear, and plans to be generating 50% from nuclear by 2022 (and will likely keep pushing that percentage up to the 60-80% range longer term).

If the electricity to charge the batteries in the buses comes from nuclear, it should be very low-carbon emissions, low air pollution energy. The South Koreans are also building nuclear at something like 1/2 the cost of equivalent nuclear plants constructed in the U.S., so it should be pretty cheap energy too.

S. Korea is even starting to get into the business of exporting nuclear power plants to other countries - they recently inked a deal with the United Arab Emirates to build four 1.4 GW plants in UAE for a total of $20Bn(USD).

http://www.eia.doe.gov/pub/oil_gas/petroleum/data_publications/company_level_imports/current/import.html

Sneak peak:

The top five sources of US crude oil imports for September were Canada (1,936 thousand barrels per day), Nigeria (1,107 thousand barrels per day), Mexico (1,098 thousand barrels per day), Saudi Arabia (1,082 thousand barrels per day), and Venezuela (919 thousand barrels per day). The rest of the top ten sources, in order, were Iraq (422 thousand barrels per day), Angola (404 thousand barrels per day), Algeria (366 thousand barrels per day), Colombia (308 thousand barrels per day), and Russia (236 thousand barrels per day).

September 2010 Import Highlights: Released November 29, 2010

Actually Canada and Saudi Arabia are about the same on imports.

Bullshit! The United States imports more oil from Canada than from any other country. Nigeria is second, far behind Canada, with Mexico third. Saudi Arabia comes in at fourth.

Falcon

You are quite correct, but you're misunderstanding the error. People know that a significant portion of our electric generation is from natural gas (24%), and they know that the majority of the world's reserves are in the Middle East. What you need to correct them on is the reasonable (but false) assumption that what portion of our supply we import comes from there and not Canada.

You are quite correct, but you're misunderstanding the error. People know that a significant portion of our electric generation is from natural gas (24%), and they know that the majority of the world's reserves are in the Middle East. What you need to correct them on is the reasonable (but false) assumption that what portion of our supply we import comes from there and not Canada.

His two biggest issues were distribution and the ever decreasing price of natural gas.

First was where he was putting a bunch of the turbines. This was northern Texas and Oklahoma. Lots of flat plains and wind there, but no serious energy distribution grid. Pickens specifically lamented the lack of transmission capability.

The second was as the processes of recovering natural gas from shale and other sources becomes cheaper and more efficient, the price of natgas dropped like a rock.

Look here, especially at the drop in the last column for 2009: http://tonto.eia.doe.gov/dnav/ng/ng_pri_sum_dcu_nus_a.htm

From what I understand, it is even lower in 2010. Pickens was touting competitiveness of wind with an electric power price of $7 or greater on natural gas. In 2008 it was over $9 and had been rising, but today it is hovering around $4.

Are there extraordinarily well engineered nuclear plants that can withstand attacks of idiocy?

Pretty much all of the US designs. Take a look at the EIA's data from 1998 through 2009. The two baseload sources that are supposed to be running 24/7 are coal and nuclear. Nuclear power has been ridiculously reliable in the past decade. Even with a select few nuke plants shut down for a year or more, the average for nuclear is way higher than coal.

The reason for this is simple - the nuclear industry is very effective in implementing predictive/preventive maintence programs and sharing operating experience between companies. Whenever anything goes wrong with a critical component it is extensively analyzed, and the important information is relayed to all other nuclear generating facilities in the US. External failure is treated with the same rigor as internal failure.

Of course, there are some exceptions to this, but the point I'm trying to get across is that the nuclear industry takes itself seriously, and the results of the dedication are self-evident.

Uh, a hair dryer needs 1250 watts, that's almost two horsepower. For a hair dryer. Do you see where maybe your idea of the scale of energy is maybe off?

I use, at most, around 450 kWh/mo, which is 625 Watts continuous or 0.83 horsepower. I'm accounting for some battery storage for short term spikes, but the scale isn't too far off. Given conversion losses, I could easily live with a 2 hp steam engine as my sole energy source.

The average US house consumes 920 kWh/mo or 1.7 hp. I think you have real problems if you couldn't make do with, say, a 10 hp steam engine even without battery storage. So it's within an order of magnitude at least.

It's quite absurd for you to call Iran dangerous; they haven't been at war for years.

You're joking right?

Longstanding Support for Terrorism

U.S. officials describe the Iranian regime as the world's "central banker of terrorism." Indeed, Tehran has a nine-figure line item in its budget to support terrorism, sending hundreds of millions of dollars to various groups each year; the payments to Hizballah alone are as much as $200 million annually. According to Canadian intelligence, "[I]n February 1999, it was reported that Palestinian police discovered documents that attest to the transfer of $35 million to Hamas from the Iranian Intelligence Service (MOIS), money reportedly meant to finance terrorist activities against Israeli targets." Illustrating how such support is part of official government policy, from 2001 to 2006, Iran transferred $50 million to Hizballah fronts in Lebanon by sending funds from its central bank through Bank Saderat's London subsidiary.

Iranian support for terrorism goes well beyond the financial realm, however. Its well-known sponsorship of Palestinian terrorist organizations, for example, has included training and related contributions. Shortly after the second intifada erupted in September 2000, the regime assigned Mughniyeh himself to help Palestinian militant groups. According to a former Clinton administration official, "Mughniyeh got orders from Tehran to work with Hamas"; he was tasked with assisting PIJ as well.

Similarly, according to the U.S. government, Iran's al-Qods Force -- a wing of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) -- has a "long history" of providing all types of support to Hizballah, including training, guidance, and arms. In addition to running training camps in Lebanon, al-Qods has trained more than 3,000 Hizballah operatives at its own facilities in Iran. The unit also played an important role in rearming Hizballah following the summer 2006 war with Israel. According to the Treasury Department, al-Qods has provided a wide variety of weapons and financial support to the Taliban as well, in support of the group's anti-coalition activity in Afghanistan.

Iran also keeps threatening to cut off the world's oil supply by closing the Straight of Hormuz.

Of course they are concerned that the US may invade since Iran has wealth to extract and won't play along with the US, so they're developing nuclear weapons.

That's a laugh. The US gets the oil it needs from other countries while Japan, China, and other US allies and friends buy Iran's oil. That also doesn't take into account the large oil reserves that the US has that are undeveloped.

No, the Iranian's have a very different outlook.
Ahmadinejad: Destroy Israel, End Crisis
Iran's missiles are ‘ready to destroy Israel’

“If this [an Israeli attack] happens, which, of course, we do not foresee, its ultimate result would be to expedite the last breath of the Zionist regime,” Ahmad Vahidi, the Iranian Defence Minister, said on state television.

Iran says can cut energy to Europe, hit enemies

“Iran is standing on 50 percent of the world’s energy and should it so decide Europe will have to spend the winter in cold,” Hossein Salami, deputy commander of the elite Revolutionary Guards, said in a meeting with war veterans and volunteers in Ker

Nothing new - the Manhattan Project had plenty of spies.

I'd like to see what data you base all that on. Particularly how China has "far less" corruption then the United States. China most certainly has lobbyists(from private industry) unless you believe their government makes decisions in a complete vacuum.

"To me, it seems like sometime in the next 10 years, they will have the ability to switch over, nearly overnight, to clean energy solutions."

Take a look at their current and projected coal-fired generation capacity. They are not moving away from coal for several decades at least, regardless of any greenhouse gas agreements the ROW conjures up.http://www.eia.doe.gov/oiaf/ieo/pdf/electricity.pdf http://www.eia.doe.gov/oiaf/ieo/index.html

"Without a bunch of opposing interest groups like we have in the U.S., it'll literally be like flipping a switch."

While there's certainly groupthink in China, it's not nearly as prevalent as you think. A significant number of the population is used for the mining and transport of coal. Their 'representation' at the top may not be elected, but it is there.

I won't address the food safety, railroad waste handling or village landfills.

I'd like to see what data you base all that on. Particularly how China has "far less" corruption then the United States. China most certainly has lobbyists(from private industry) unless you believe their government makes decisions in a complete vacuum.

"To me, it seems like sometime in the next 10 years, they will have the ability to switch over, nearly overnight, to clean energy solutions."

Take a look at their current and projected coal-fired generation capacity. They are not moving away from coal for several decades at least, regardless of any greenhouse gas agreements the ROW conjures up.http://www.eia.doe.gov/oiaf/ieo/pdf/electricity.pdf http://www.eia.doe.gov/oiaf/ieo/index.html

"Without a bunch of opposing interest groups like we have in the U.S., it'll literally be like flipping a switch."

While there's certainly groupthink in China, it's not nearly as prevalent as you think. A significant number of the population is used for the mining and transport of coal. Their 'representation' at the top may not be elected, but it is there.

I won't address the food safety, railroad waste handling or village landfills.

NG is currently commercial price is $6 / 1000cubic feet for 1 million BTU's worth. Diesel is 2.39 for 130,500BTU.
so Diesel price is around 2* more expensive at commercial. Retail price (NG to your home) brings that down to Diesel 15% more expensive.

Air gapping (as others have mentioned) is a great idea, but not always feasible. Remote access to plants is sometimes needed for emergencies.

Have a look at the Computer Security Resource Centre. NIST IR 7628 covers cyber security for the smart grid, and much of that is applicable to water and sewerage plants.

The report, 21 Steps to Improve Cyber Security of SCADA Networks, is also worth a read.

My opinions, based on power station and substation SCADA are: don't use one vendor for everything, have two levels of firewall from different vendors at the remote site, turn off or block services that are not needed from every device, have reporting and audit trails that are reviewed, and if management want reporting, do it through a one way connection to an intermediate system (one way Ethernet, RS232, RS485 or read only shared storage).

You're not taking into consideration the energy required to make the book, or to transport it to the marketplace. The amount of carbon sequestered in the physical pages of a book is insignificant in comparison.

The production of a book releases 8.85 lbs. of CO_2:
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/emeraldcity/2008/06/paper-vs-paperl.html

Here's a page which indicates most CO_2 production is for energy:
http://www.eia.doe.gov/oiaf/1605/ggrpt/carbon.html

And here's a page which indicates that CO_2 production is a much larger problem for the manufacturing of electronics:
http://www.energybulletin.net/node/49730
w/ a ratio of 12 to 1 for energy usage to weight, so my PRS-505 weighs roughly 9 ozs., so presumably required 108 ounces of fuel to manufacture (on-going energy usage is trivial and not considered)
http://www.epa.gov/oms/climate/420f05001.htm
gives us a figure of 19.4 pounds of CO_2 per gallon of gasoline which equals roughly 16.36875 pounds of CO_2 to make the ebook reader.

So getting two books for the Sony should make it roughly break even, and each printed book beyond that which is not purchased should result in a net reduction of CO_2 emissions, since the energybulletin.net page indicates that the embodied energy usage for electronics is much greater than the lifetime usage.

i'm in NYC

In NYC? Oh when I lived there there was this super advanced nuclear-electric vehicle over there that goes all over town. It was "subway". Actually it's over over 100 years old, not so new, but still quite efficient

http://www.eia.doe.gov/state/state_energy_profiles.cfm?sid=NY
"Although New York’s total energy consumption is among the highest in the United States, energy intensity and per capita energy consumption are among the lowest, due in part to the region’s widely used mass transportation systems."

Canada and Mexico are America's top two sources of imported oil, how are these not good allies? http://www.eia.doe.gov/pub/oil_gas/petroleum/data_publications/company_level_imports/current/import.html

There is nothing useless about a supercomputer. Oak Ridge National Lab has over a billion dollar budget each year and huge portions of that budget relies on the availability of high performance computing resources. (Not to mention all the other national labs) HPC supports research in areas like energy conservation, new power sources, bioinformatics, material science, weapons simulations, engineering, and computer science. Applications range from freeing ourselves of fossil fuel reliance to designing materials to be used in [insert next big product]. HPC is the reason we don't need to do nuclear weapon testing anymore. HPC is the reason our grandkids will have a longer average lifespan. I can guarantee that these machines wouldn't be built for tens or hundreds of millions of dollars if they weren't being used. And I can guarantee that when the US regains #1, it won't be for the sake of being #1... it will be for the necessity of furthering science that benefits us all.