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Dramatic decreases in emissions will most certainly have to be accomplished by decreased production. Retooling may now be an option, as Bush has relaxed some of the constraints on emission standards, the permit producers to make their plants more effecient, but may result in increased capacity for emissions. However, "environmentalists" and the media lambast Bush for this not because they care about the environment, but because they have an anti-capitalist agenda.

First, Kyoto did not require dramatic decreases in anything. A small reduction like 10% could be easily accomplished just by moving all new motor vehicles to hybrid technology, no other changes required. If you added some common-sense measures such as best-practice insulation standards in all building codes, you could take an even bigger whack out of emissions related to space heating and cooling (50% is fairly easy).

Second, some large improvements are easily accessible. If you combined an acid-rain abatement program with efficiency improvements and mandated that all old coal-fired powerplants be either retired or repowered with integrated-gasification combined-cycle plants, you'd boost efficiency from 30-33% to around 40%. This would give you a reduction in CO2 emissions between 20 and 25% per unit of electricity. It's been done; check this.

My beef with Bush is that he's obviously a pawn of the industrial interests. We created a regulatory regime for reducing pollution, but existing plants were grandfathered in and not required to do anything until they were replaced or upgraded. Industry's response was to game the system, failing to build new plants and claiming that their changes to old ones never met the requirements for having to clean them up. If you want to look at negative effects on the economy, think of all the employment that would have been generated in construction if those mandates had instead been on a timetable with no exceptions and those plants had been scrubbed, replaced or re-powered.

Bush's slimy acquiescence to the polluters is particularly galling to me, as I live in a state where the game fish are so loaded with mercury (mostly from coal-fired powerplants) that eating them steadily can cause acute mercury poisoning even in an adult. I don't even want to think what is happening to children (who are far more sensitive to heavy-metal poisoning), and when I see Bush touting his efforts on their behalf all I can think is "what a fucking liar".

• Little immediate direct practical application
• Very expensive equipment/techonology required to carry out the research
• Few, if any corporate sponsors (see previous reasons)
• HUGE benefits to the world of science/technology in general, as well as unanticipated future benefits

I figured it's about 5% from this page by dividing the cost of oil used by the percentage of oil in the energy usage. This is the true cost of energy in everything. 5% is much but not THAT much.

Why go those routes. Why not Hydro Electric or Geo-thermic or wind and wave. Hell why not all of them. Sure it limits where you can build your power plants but I find that that's always better then sticking nuclear power plants on a major fault line (like San Onofre, oh and a big congratulations to Bechtel for installing one of the reactors backwards thus negating the usefulness of the seismic braces.)

Pinatubo expelled more CO2 into the atmosphere than the entire history of industrialized civilization.

Pinatubo was spectacular, but its CO2 contribution wasn't even a blip on the scale. Worse, even a trivial amount of research would have dispelled your misconceptions. Don't you know how, or don't you care?

If you look at the Department of Energy statistics (older statistics also available here), you'll see that the Middle Eastern countries which the US imports crude oil from (Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Algeria are the only ones in the top 15) comprise less than 20% of the US imports. Canada and Mexico together are over 30% of imports. Despite what most people think, the US imports oil from a wide variety of places. Please take a look at this before making more statements like that.

If you look at the Department of Energy statistics (older statistics also available here), you'll see that the Middle Eastern countries which the US imports crude oil from (Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Algeria are the only ones in the top 15) comprise less than 20% of the US imports. Canada and Mexico together are over 30% of imports. Despite what most people think, the US imports oil from a wide variety of places. Please take a look at this before making more statements like that.

With regards to the above discussion about wastes and the carbon cycle, I thought it might be interesting to provide some numbers in order to provide a bit of perspective.

In 1996, the US used 364.6 million tons of oil.
source

In 1996, the US also generated 209.7 million tons of Municipal Solid Waste, of which 38% was paper, and 13% was yard clippings. source

So it can be seen that the amount of solid, burnable waste which is generated (in municipal areas alone) in the US is the same order of magnitude as the amount of oil, in terms of approximate carbon weight. Interestingly, 30% of that waste was burned in incinerators, adding to our net carbon into the atmosphere. It would appear that if the carbon were converted to a more useable form and burned in place of petroleum, then yes, we could operate in a carbon neutral economy.

Of course, for ~real~ big numbers in energy, look to the atmospheric water cycle. (1.2*10^24 J/year transferred; equal to 2.26*10^14 barrels equivalent/year)

please, none sponsored by the UN... no offense, but they're a bunch of tree-hugging hippies

Care to give some examples?

that would twist and distort facts to suit their own purposes

Um... you mean the goals of the entire global community? That's who the UN represents(aside from the security council, but that's on non-economic issues anyway). And as such there is no coherant 'purpose' of the UN because it's members and therefore opinions is so diverse. Really, your opinion of the UN is assine and ignorant. Name one policy or action that is fool-heartedly 'hippie'

However, if anyone has a link to a study that shows exactly when we're destined to run out of oil

Global oil estimates vary from widely from a few decades to around 150-200 years. Global estimates seem to be only 14 times what what we have already extracted. Add to that an ever-climbing consupmtion rate How about 284 years at present consumption rates, and much less than that given the inevitable increate in consumption rates. I give it ~100 yrs before oil becomes scarce enough to drive it off the market.

Oh, and that survey is by the USGS, I hope that meets your exacting standards. Their estimates are liberal If even the USGS is not sufficient, propose a competeing estimate.

The truth is, unless we find that the core of the earth is made of oil, we're going to run out in a matter of decades (probably 10-20) instead of thousands of years.

I'll start you off with this overview link. Then I'll direct you here to read an energy security justification of the Biofuels research program at the DOE. If you are interested in reading a technical and economic assessment of one such program in this area, I encourage you to read this report from the NREL (big PDF warning) which has lots and lots of numbers to backup a feasibility analysis of large scale bioethanol production. Search around the ott.doe.gov/biofuels page, you'll find tons and tons more research and useful information, and hopefully you won't think this is just "snake oil".

I'll start you off with this overview link. Then I'll direct you here to read an energy security justification of the Biofuels research program at the DOE. If you are interested in reading a technical and economic assessment of one such program in this area, I encourage you to read this report from the NREL (big PDF warning) which has lots and lots of numbers to backup a feasibility analysis of large scale bioethanol production. Search around the ott.doe.gov/biofuels page, you'll find tons and tons more research and useful information, and hopefully you won't think this is just "snake oil".

Ethanol is more fuel efficient? How do you figure?

Might want to check here. Check last paragraph page 2 "Some critics say that ethanol contains less energy per unit volume than unblended gasoline. This is true."

Thank you, drive through.

Current world consumption is around 75 million bbl/day.[2] This might lead one to believe that oil will last our current rate of consumption for another 35+ years.

Unfortunately, there are two problems. Firstly, oil consumption is increasing globally at around 5% annually. Secondly, and much more seriously, oil production is unlikely to proceed at a increasing rate until the last drop comes out of the ground.

The shape of the oil production curve is subject of some debate, but a popular model is the "Hubbert Curve" named for the Shell Oil geologist who, in 1956, used it to successfully predict that oil production in the lower 48 would peak in the early 1970's.

Using the Hubbert Curve for global oil reserves, Kenneth Deffeyes predicts peak global oil production will occur between 2000 and 2007 before beginning an irreversible decline.[3] Other geologists have given more optimistic forecasts, pushing out the start of the decline several more years.

Sources:
[1] World Resources Institute
[2] Energy Information Administration (part of the Department of Energy)
[3] "Hubbert's Peak" by Kenneth Deffeyes, Princeton University Press, 2001.

For example, "goop" gets fed to a cracker (catalytic or thermal) which (oddly enough) cracks the C20's into smaller pieces. While one typically aims for the the gasoline range as the max product out of cracking units (assuming that's where the money is), going down to C1-C2 is not difficult - you just have longer catalyst contact times or higher temperatures.

7 1/2 weeks worth of reserve is alot? a hair under 2 months?

As far as domestic production goes

• Domestic oil production has been steadily declining since 1970. U.S. petroleum production is expected to remain virtually unchanged (9.03 million barrels per day in 2000 to 9.95 million barrels per day in 2020) over the next two decades, but oil consumption in the United States is expected to rise from 19.7 million barrels per day in 2000 to 26.7 million barrels per day in 2020, a 35% increase (EIA Annual Energy Outlook 2002, Tables A21 and A11).

from : US Dept of Energy

There's plenty of oil out there. Sure you would think so....again from our friends at Dept of Energy,(same link as above)

• In 2000, the Persian Gulf supplied 12.4% of U.S. oil consumption; by 2020 it will supply 15.5% (EIA Annual Energy Outlook 2002, Table 107). This region will continue to increase its influence in world oil markets, as oil supplies in other regions are exhausted, because over half the world's known oil reserves are concentrated in the Persian Gulf (EIA International Energy Annual 1999, Table 8.1).
• Several factors are contributing to America's increasing vulnerability. Oil and oil production facilities are concentrated in the Persian Gulf region. In addition, the Persian Gulf's share of worldwide petroleum exports is projected to grow from 45% in 2000 to 60% by 2020 (EIA Annual Energy Outlook 2002). At these levels, a supply disruption from this one region would have an immediate impact on oil supplies and prices worldwide.

Sounds like in the near future the Mideast "influence" on worldwide oil will increase. At least based on what or agencies have to say about it.

7 1/2 weeks worth of reserve is alot? a hair under 2 months?

As far as domestic production goes

• Domestic oil production has been steadily declining since 1970. U.S. petroleum production is expected to remain virtually unchanged (9.03 million barrels per day in 2000 to 9.95 million barrels per day in 2020) over the next two decades, but oil consumption in the United States is expected to rise from 19.7 million barrels per day in 2000 to 26.7 million barrels per day in 2020, a 35% increase (EIA Annual Energy Outlook 2002, Tables A21 and A11).

from : US Dept of Energy

There's plenty of oil out there. Sure you would think so....again from our friends at Dept of Energy,(same link as above)

• In 2000, the Persian Gulf supplied 12.4% of U.S. oil consumption; by 2020 it will supply 15.5% (EIA Annual Energy Outlook 2002, Table 107). This region will continue to increase its influence in world oil markets, as oil supplies in other regions are exhausted, because over half the world's known oil reserves are concentrated in the Persian Gulf (EIA International Energy Annual 1999, Table 8.1).
• Several factors are contributing to America's increasing vulnerability. Oil and oil production facilities are concentrated in the Persian Gulf region. In addition, the Persian Gulf's share of worldwide petroleum exports is projected to grow from 45% in 2000 to 60% by 2020 (EIA Annual Energy Outlook 2002). At these levels, a supply disruption from this one region would have an immediate impact on oil supplies and prices worldwide.

Sounds like in the near future the Mideast "influence" on worldwide oil will increase. At least based on what or agencies have to say about it.

I'm not saying reliance on oil is the best situation to be in, but unless someone reinvents lots of associated goods/services/processes I don't see a lot changing.

The slant of the evil oil tyranny was what mainly rubbed me the wrong way with this piece...

Most of U.S. oil is used for gasoline for cars. So the fastest way to reduce demand is by either driving less. Using some fuel other than gasoline can take a decade or more to have a major effect.

Interesting quote from the simulation: "After Saudi Arabia, the U.S. is the second largest oil producer in the world. But the United States also happens to be the largest consumer of oil. Oil consumption in the United States and Canada is almost three gallons per person per day, twice as high as in Europe."

Most of U.S. oil is used for gasoline for cars. So the fastest way to reduce demand is by either driving less. Using some fuel other than gasoline can take a decade or more to have a major effect.

Interesting quote from the simulation: "After Saudi Arabia, the U.S. is the second largest oil producer in the world. But the United States also happens to be the largest consumer of oil. Oil consumption in the United States and Canada is almost three gallons per person per day, twice as high as in Europe."

Most of U.S. oil is used for gasoline for cars. So the fastest way to reduce demand is by either driving less. Using some fuel other than gasoline can take a decade or more to have a major effect.

Interesting quote from the simulation: "After Saudi Arabia, the U.S. is the second largest oil producer in the world. But the United States also happens to be the largest consumer of oil. Oil consumption in the United States and Canada is almost three gallons per person per day, twice as high as in Europe."

:)

If you are interested in the deregulation here in the US, you can poke around this web site....

BTW, large portions of the United States deregulated without any problems. New England is mostly there and Texas has deregulated without any problems.

The main problem with the North American grid, as I understand it, is that it basically works by having twenty guys spread across the NA calling each other when something goes wrong in their part of the electric grid. It's the administration-by-Batphone system and the same low-tech solution they've used for 80 years. Like the US Air Traffic Control system, everyone is afraid to upgrade to computer control because they don't trust the electronics.

• 1 Gallon of Gas contains 132x10^6 joules of energy, equivalent to 125,000 BTU, 36.650 kwh(kilo-watt-hours), 31,000 food calories.
  
• A 70mpg Hybrid sips 0.52 kwh/mile, the average 20mpg car uses 1.76 kwh/mile and The Hummer H2 wastes 3.7 kwh/mile or more.
  
• Electric Vehicles use from 0.2 to 0.6 kwh/mile, that's up to 18 times more efficient. EV Album
  
• 7.5 Billion miles at 0.4 kwh/mile is just 3,000 Giga-Watt-Hours, as compared to 13,000 GWH. 23% as much power.
  
• America currently produces 27.3 Giga-Watts-Hours per day with wind power alone.AWEA
  

You can't turn this back on me. You show me proof that oil is why we went to Iraq.

If this was about oil, our money would be better spent fixing Venezuela so would could depend on their oil with less risk. US Oil Imports

If you want to make an emotional argument that's more difficult to refute, you should be arguing that GWB went to avenge his father's failure at removing Hussain in 1991. But your oil argument is easily disproved.

We'll round down the cost of the Iraq war to $150 billion (since some of the above figure is for Afghanistan, which is about something other, and better, than oil).

There are 204 million cars registered in the U.S. (cite), which burn a total of 156 billion gallons of gasoline and diesel each year (cite).

So that's a cost of about $1 per gallon of gas this year. Federal gasoline taxes are 18.4 cents per gallon (cite).

So even if we stopped building roads and bridges, we wouldn't come close to paying that cost with gas taxes.

But I agree, it doesn't look so bad that way. Let's look at it over the next several years: Suppose the cost of being in Iraq drops from $4 billion per month to $2.5 billion over the next year, and we're in there for just 3 more years. That's a total of ($30 billion x 3 = $90 billion + $150 billion) = $240 billion over 4 years. Over that period we'll burn about 600 billion gallons of gas, for a cost of 40 cents per gallon. Now, I'm willing to go without Federal highway spending for one year, but not for 4 years. So rather than applying Federal taxes towards that amount, I think it sounds fair to raise the price of gas by 40 cents per gallon for the next 4 years, don't you?

Yes, with legislation demanding that a certain (high) percentage of models sold be more fuel-efficient and have cleaner emissions. This has been going on already, and is continuing to go on, and it is improving mileage and decreasing emissions. So the problem is being solved, through legislation as you suggest, but at the automaker end. It's not necessary to do it by raising gas prices.

I'm a student.

If you don't mind me asking, what kind of disincentives to consume petroleum fuels would you consider as being "fair"? Heck, isn't the fact that gasoline costs money "unfair" to the poor because they can't travel as much as the rich? What's your perspective on the issue and how much the poor should be part of any change?

Got anyone who can do math on that statement?

Lets see. A 5x5 mile field is a surface area of 64 million square meters. The solar output is 1300 W/sq. meter, but there are efficiency factors to take into account: 0.25 for day/night and geometry (the sun isn't always overhead), 0.4 for conversion efficiecy (wildly optimistic), and probably 0.7-0.8 for weather and clouds. So, 64,000,000*0.25*0.4*0.7*1300= 5.8e9 Watts = 5.8 GW (about equal to 5 nuclear power plants). Given that the current U.S. electricity production is about 433 GW this link I would say that the statement is a bit cracked.

Powering the nation with solar power only is a fantasy; there is currently no good solution to a) storage (weather and night time), b) transmission over the long distances required (it's a long way to go from Nevada to New England) c) cost (panels are basically silicon wafers made with processes similar to that of computer chips. Not cheap to cover the 5x5 mile area.

TDI have alot of touque. HP for show and Tourque for go :)

The VWVortex had a week long look at TDI technology

Diesel engines have been proven in europe.

Europe mandated the use of low sulfur. So their diesel engines generate more HP/Torque.

Here in north america, low sulfur diesel will be mandated in 2007 see http://www.eia.doe.gov/oiaf/servicerpt/ulsd/prefac e.html

Another advantage to diesel engines is that you can run different types of diesel.

1) Biodiesel. see http://www.biodiesel.org/resources/faqs

2) 100% biomater Biomater can be Vegitible oil or processed animal fats(roadkill and stuff that can't be processed in meat production)

3) Diesel

In fact you can go to KFC and get your fuel there
Greasel sells conversion kits for diesels http://www.greasel.com/

Anywho... Checkout VW's diesel spec sheet http://www.vw.com/art/engines/complete_specs_TDI.p df and checkout the flash

Sure, but that's just one anecdote. Surely the overall figures don't back you up? I mean, how dumb would we have to be to cut back on hydro power?

Uh oh. That dumb.

However, let's put aside the medical jargon for a moment and look at mainstream usage. I originally quoted the definition from the The American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition, published in 2000:

1. Of, relating to, or caused by a toxin or other poison: a toxic condition; toxic hepatitis.
2. Capable of causing injury or death, especially by chemical means; poisonous: food preservatives that are toxic in concentrated amounts; a dump for toxic industrial wastes. See Synonyms at poisonous.

Using this simple definition, and noting the fact that we do have a vibrant living ecosystem, it can't be all full of toxins as your original premise asserted.

Now let's look at the law of the land, namely the Toxic Substances Control Act:

"The act authorizes EPA to secure information on all new and existing chemical substances and to control any of these substances determined to cause an unreasonable risk to public health or the environment."

Note the use of the word "chemical". The bulk of the usage of "toxic" is to describe man-made chemicals. Hence the term "toxic waste" and the fact that it doesn't usually apply to a big mound of celery which has inherent anti-insect proteins.

Of course living things produce toxins. We've got snake venom, spider poison, etc. These natural toxins are toxic because they produce injury/death.

For the most part in today's world, however, the bulk of what is toxic to man in the environment has been created by man. Many more people die of man-made illnesses than are killed by natural toxins. And I include poisoned and broken ecosystems here. The crazy use of chemicals in the environment has thrown many ecosystems out of kilter, creating giant problems. Without Man's stupid intervention, Nature had been self-regulating for millions of years. We'll be lucky if human life lasts as we know it for another 100 years.

I just submitted the same story, it will probably get rejected, so here's some more links:
The Washington Post is reporting that the Slammer worm crashed the computerized display panel which monitors the most crucial safety indicators (coolant systems, core temperature sensors, and external radiation sensors) at Ohio's Davis-Besse nuclear power plant in January. No serious problems occured, primarily because the plant has been offline for more than 1-1/2 years.
Davis-Besse is run by FirstEnergy, which many people feel may bear much of the responsibility for last weeks power blackout.

"at least a quarter of the energy in the US is produced by coal"

Actually it is over 50%.

Total Electric Power Industry Summary Statistics

Energy Production (Thousand MWh)
All Energy Sources: 303,091
Coal: 154,690

How so? Oil accounts for only 2% of the electricity generated in the US (coal produces 55%, nuclear 20%, hydro 11%, and gas 8.5%). Oil prices are determined largely by demand for transport, which consumes 61% of the petroleum used in the US.

If we look at coal prices, we see that indeed they have fallen steadily over time and are projected to continue falling for the next few decades.

Would you conclude that this does mean that wind will replace coal as source of electricity in the near future? I would not jump to such a conclusion. Commodity prices are very poor indicators of future demand.

How so? Oil accounts for only 2% of the electricity generated in the US (coal produces 55%, nuclear 20%, hydro 11%, and gas 8.5%). Oil prices are determined largely by demand for transport, which consumes 61% of the petroleum used in the US.

If we look at coal prices, we see that indeed they have fallen steadily over time and are projected to continue falling for the next few decades.

Would you conclude that this does mean that wind will replace coal as source of electricity in the near future? I would not jump to such a conclusion. Commodity prices are very poor indicators of future demand.

Other technology infrastructure types have jack-squat to do with the electric industry. One of the whole points of energy regulation was to provide cheap, reliable electricity to everyone regardless of locale, which it does. The free market will not do much better.

We can go with the "fair price" as defined by the utility companies, or the "fair price" as determined by competition. Option 2 is lower.

How do you know option 2 is lower? One wrong assumption that you make is that the fair price is defined solely by the utility companies. In fact, part of the US energy regulations includes "rate-making" imposed by the government which allows utilities to charge only enough to cover costs and make a reasonable profit. Electricity costs are already measured in cents per kilowatt-hour. A free market would not improve much on that either.

To give a more specific example; the national average cost for electricity is between 7 and 8 cents/KWh. Predictions I have seen (sorry, forgot the links) call for the national average to fall to 5.5 cents/KWh under deregulation by the year 2020. Sounds great, right? Until I find out that the average cost in my home state (Alabama) is already 5.5 cents/KWh. Free market theory says that this cost should go down due to competition. However, basic economics says that, at least in the short term, this cost will actually go up as the market seeks equilibrium between high cost regions and low cost regions. Obviously I am not benefited by the fact that a free market will provide in 15 years what I already have now.

To add to that, here is a link to the Department of Energy website talking specifically about Alabama's efforts (or lack thereof) at energy deregulation. One quote sums it up; "On the matter of Public Interest, the report stated that it has not been demonstrated that all consumers in Alabama would continue to receive adequate, safe, reliable, and efficient energy services at fair and reasonable prices under a restructured retail market at this time."

Illegal activity of people in a free market isn't really an argument against the concept.

Yes it is, if it can be shown that illegal activity is the natural end result of the free market. Which is why in the United States today the so-called free markets are all regulated to a certain extent, if not so much as the energy industry.

I think even with the Enron's of the world, it's pretty clear that government management leads to more corruption, rather than less. Government-controlled methods usually don't have effective checks or balances, as the collapse of the Soviet Union on all levels helps demonstrate.

I think you are either naive or sadly ignorant of history. I suggest you find some good websites or maybe a book about FDR and the regulation of the energy industry and find out why the current system came about. Everything that you say won't happen in a free market actually has happened before. And to bring Enron back into the picture, many of its actions in California parallel those of the worst energy monopolies at the turn of the 20th century. Better yet, just read up on any of the trusts and monopolies of the United States industrial age. Now I am not suggesting that we will return to the dark days of the past without the government to keep us safe. But I do think that you place too much confidence in the magic of the free market to solve all our problems.

This is a great start, especially with the way the power grid is now.
Essentially right now a surge large enough to damage substations creates a large chain effect, where the incoming substation sees the surge, shuts itself down to protect itself, which adds more power to the surge, which heads down to the next station, which shuts off to keep itself from being blown, which adds more power to the surge, etc etc.

With a way to contain a large surge into the system, we could prevent blackouts like the one that occured in NYC in 1977 (Exactly because of this reason). In 1977 a summer storm knocked several high-voltage power lines out of order. Because of the suddenly reduced load, the power tried to flow back to the substation, which knew it couldn't handle it and shut down. This added more power to the grid, which was sent to the next station along the line, which shut itself off, etc. This cycle of power overload, substation shut down happened for about 55 mins till it hit the main generators (which, although they could shut themselves down, had no way to offload this excess power down the line) and took them out for 25 hours.

I said it before, I'll say it again. Get rid of our 30+ year old nuclear reactors (no new orders for units since 1977) and replace them with newer more powerful solutions and second generation solar equipment.
When reactors are running at 102.41% capacity, it's time for an upgrade.
We've got the technology now to produce cleaner, safer, more powerful nuclear reactors - but that Three Mile Island paranoia still looms with us I guess.
Look at European nations, they derive up to 50% of their power from modern nuclear facilites without any problem and no blackouts. The USA? Just 20% of our power comes from Nuclear energy, the rest from coal fired power plants and "peak use" and "daytime use" gas turbine generators.

Hey, I don't want to live right next door to a huge nuke power plant myself, but if it means cleaner, safer, more reliable power I'd be more then happy to.

I don't think blaster caused the power outages or disabled the systems - have you read about the state of the US powergrid as a whole? It's horrendous!
I was watching the discovery channel (or History channel, one of those) and they talked about that large blackout that occured back in NYC in 1977.

The power grid protection system itself is what caused the black out. One substation sees it's getting a huge surge of excess power, can't handle it, and shuts down. This passes this huge surge to the next station, which also shuts itself down to protect itself. It's a huge chain reaction of power surge seen my a substation, substation shuts down to protect itself, surge passes on to next station, etc etc.

The show was about terrorism in the US and how unprotected we are - and it really gets you thinking. If some jackass in Ottawa can plug in their hairblower and toast the power to seberal major metropolitan areas, imagine what a well thought out organized terrorist could do.
Personally, I think we should some new nuclear power plants. 66 reactors provide 769 billion kWh, or about 20% of the total power produced in the US (2001 figures). These plants are old, the newest ones going all the way back to the early 80s, with no new orders for nuclear units since 77.
The US is relying less on its hydroelectric, nuclear and coal plants and building more "peak use" and "daytime" generators, huge gas turbines that are only turned on when there's a peak demand or only on normal business hours, say 9-5.

Why? It's not any more efficient, in fact these giant gas turbines tend to use more fuel then coal systems to produce nowhere near the same power. It's all about asthetics. No one wants a power plant near them, but everyone wants power. So they build these peak use and daytime plants - low output systems that take up almost no room and dont have the usual huge smoke stacks, etc your used to seeing with plants.

I personally wish the US would update it's power infrastructure, and I'd be willing to pay for it. Retire old, inefficient nuclear plants and build new, more powerful, safer ones. Add in more redundancy into the network, more real-time failovers.
They are modernizing it, don't get me wrong, but they aren't going at near the pace I'd like to see.

(Probably kiss my karma goodbye now, oh well. The power grid is something no one cares about or wants to put money into unless something goes wrong - then we all conveinently forget about what happened when theres a bill up to repair and update it at the cost of a couple bucks a week in taxes)

Thanks for the backup on this one.

While I don't necessarily agree that regulation is the answer, it's a simple matter of ethics.

De-regulation wasn't really de-regulation. It was RE-regulation. The rules simply changed, and there became many more of them, one of which was that no new generating plants could be built. Why the hell they decided this was beyond me. Most of these generators were built "way back when" before the age of computers and ubiquitous use of air conditioning. PECO Energy became the most expensive electricity in the nation after PA "de-regulated" the electricity industry. I pay almost $0.16 per kWh, which is ridiculous by any standard. That money is used to pay for electricity that is practically given away to neighboring producers like PP&L and ConEd.

Anyway...

You'd be AMAZED at what percentage of all generated power is dissipated in either a computer or an air conditioner/chiller/etc. 100 million computers at 200 watts each is 20 BILLION watts. 20 GIGAwatts. That's the capacity of more than 20 average-sized nuclear reactors. Limerick here in PA has two reactors each capable of about 1.134 (I was really hoping it was 1.21, really I was!) gigawatts.

Here's a Link to a list of all U.S. Nuclear facilities and their statistics and capacities.

And here is a link to a list of all the reactor statuses showing they're loaded to the teeth - almost all of them at 100%.

The U.S. Department of Energy maintains lots of useful information about the power grids in the United States and how they are running. There are also publicly available status reports on each generation facility.

One graph on the DoE site showed that generation capacity hasn't increased at all since about 1992 (when Clinton took office, what a surprise... bastard killed the military AND our power infrastructure... but that's another thread)...

It's not surprising that this happened since we've been increasing generation rapidly due to the deployment of computers and other tech gadgets, but not increasing capacity to make up for it. It also doesn't help that there's no incentive other than cost for people to use Alternative Energy like solar or wind. Well, that's not totally true, there are actually Lots and Lots of Incentives in some states for end-user renewable energy, but it's still really expensive.

Thanks for the backup on this one.

While I don't necessarily agree that regulation is the answer, it's a simple matter of ethics.

De-regulation wasn't really de-regulation. It was RE-regulation. The rules simply changed, and there became many more of them, one of which was that no new generating plants could be built. Why the hell they decided this was beyond me. Most of these generators were built "way back when" before the age of computers and ubiquitous use of air conditioning. PECO Energy became the most expensive electricity in the nation after PA "de-regulated" the electricity industry. I pay almost $0.16 per kWh, which is ridiculous by any standard. That money is used to pay for electricity that is practically given away to neighboring producers like PP&L and ConEd.

Anyway...

You'd be AMAZED at what percentage of all generated power is dissipated in either a computer or an air conditioner/chiller/etc. 100 million computers at 200 watts each is 20 BILLION watts. 20 GIGAwatts. That's the capacity of more than 20 average-sized nuclear reactors. Limerick here in PA has two reactors each capable of about 1.134 (I was really hoping it was 1.21, really I was!) gigawatts.

Here's a Link to a list of all U.S. Nuclear facilities and their statistics and capacities.

And here is a link to a list of all the reactor statuses showing they're loaded to the teeth - almost all of them at 100%.

The U.S. Department of Energy maintains lots of useful information about the power grids in the United States and how they are running. There are also publicly available status reports on each generation facility.

One graph on the DoE site showed that generation capacity hasn't increased at all since about 1992 (when Clinton took office, what a surprise... bastard killed the military AND our power infrastructure... but that's another thread)...

It's not surprising that this happened since we've been increasing generation rapidly due to the deployment of computers and other tech gadgets, but not increasing capacity to make up for it. It also doesn't help that there's no incentive other than cost for people to use Alternative Energy like solar or wind. Well, that's not totally true, there are actually Lots and Lots of Incentives in some states for end-user renewable energy, but it's still really expensive.

How nice it must be for you, that the "statistics" you heard jibe with your preconceived notion. Let's look at some data though, shall we?

According to Wisconsin's Department of Administration total US energy consumption stood at 68.0 quadrillion BTUs in 1970 (of which 63.5 quadrillion BTUs was in greenhouse-producing hydrocarbons). The comparable figures for 2001 were 97.0 quadrillion BTUs total (of which 82.4 quadrillion BTUs was in hydrocarbons). That's an increase of nearly 43% in 31 years, in total energy consumption, and nearly 30% in hydrocarbon burning energy consumption. Other figures are even worse, eg growth in electricity sales in the period 1990-2001 was 24% according to the Department of Energy.

Now, what these figures don't show is the actual growth in greenhouse emissions; efficiency improvements could also mean that although more power is being generated, less hydrocarbons are being burnt to generate it. No doubt there are better sources out there, but this page at the DOE shows US greenhouse emissions gently rising since the early 1980s, and this one likewise shows US energy consumption per capita gently rising over the same period (presumably the turning point was when people got over the oil shocks of the 1970s and stopped worrying about energy efficiency).

So while more efficient technology is no doubt having an important effect, it's not enough to negate that of increasing energy demands. You'll need to let go of your comfort blanket, or at least find a new one ...

How nice it must be for you, that the "statistics" you heard jibe with your preconceived notion. Let's look at some data though, shall we?

According to Wisconsin's Department of Administration total US energy consumption stood at 68.0 quadrillion BTUs in 1970 (of which 63.5 quadrillion BTUs was in greenhouse-producing hydrocarbons). The comparable figures for 2001 were 97.0 quadrillion BTUs total (of which 82.4 quadrillion BTUs was in hydrocarbons). That's an increase of nearly 43% in 31 years, in total energy consumption, and nearly 30% in hydrocarbon burning energy consumption. Other figures are even worse, eg growth in electricity sales in the period 1990-2001 was 24% according to the Department of Energy.

Now, what these figures don't show is the actual growth in greenhouse emissions; efficiency improvements could also mean that although more power is being generated, less hydrocarbons are being burnt to generate it. No doubt there are better sources out there, but this page at the DOE shows US greenhouse emissions gently rising since the early 1980s, and this one likewise shows US energy consumption per capita gently rising over the same period (presumably the turning point was when people got over the oil shocks of the 1970s and stopped worrying about energy efficiency).

So while more efficient technology is no doubt having an important effect, it's not enough to negate that of increasing energy demands. You'll need to let go of your comfort blanket, or at least find a new one ...

How nice it must be for you, that the "statistics" you heard jibe with your preconceived notion. Let's look at some data though, shall we?

According to Wisconsin's Department of Administration total US energy consumption stood at 68.0 quadrillion BTUs in 1970 (of which 63.5 quadrillion BTUs was in greenhouse-producing hydrocarbons). The comparable figures for 2001 were 97.0 quadrillion BTUs total (of which 82.4 quadrillion BTUs was in hydrocarbons). That's an increase of nearly 43% in 31 years, in total energy consumption, and nearly 30% in hydrocarbon burning energy consumption. Other figures are even worse, eg growth in electricity sales in the period 1990-2001 was 24% according to the Department of Energy.

Now, what these figures don't show is the actual growth in greenhouse emissions; efficiency improvements could also mean that although more power is being generated, less hydrocarbons are being burnt to generate it. No doubt there are better sources out there, but this page at the DOE shows US greenhouse emissions gently rising since the early 1980s, and this one likewise shows US energy consumption per capita gently rising over the same period (presumably the turning point was when people got over the oil shocks of the 1970s and stopped worrying about energy efficiency).

So while more efficient technology is no doubt having an important effect, it's not enough to negate that of increasing energy demands. You'll need to let go of your comfort blanket, or at least find a new one ...

Of course, if South America were overflowing with oil, well I'm sure someone would come up with a nice excuse.

Actually South America (and the Americas in general) is full of oil. In fact the U.S. imports far more of it's oil from Canada, Venezuela, and Mexico than it does from the middle east.

Can't you see??? If they don't tell anyone about these vulnerabilities, "terrorists" will take advantage of them and kill hundreds of thousands of people! What if "terrorists" hacked into the Win98 computer controlling one of the many Nuclear Reactors based in the United States? Can you imagine the havoc that could cause?!?!

For utility installation, you need capitalizations of at most $2000/kW (comparable to hydro and nuclear power plant capital investment requirements) - wind is there now, but solar has some distance to go to be usable as a utility power source. Currently solar photovoltaic systems go for about $2.00/PEAK Watt at best; given night time, solar angle, weather effects etc. and costs beyond the PV cells themselves, that translates to a $8000 to $10,000/kW capitalization requirement right now. PV systems have been dropping in price by about a factor of 2 every decade lately, so we have likely 30 years more development before they will be competitive at the utility installation level.

A lot of this information is available from the Department of Energy's Energy Information Administration.

On the other hand, if the cost of putting stuff in space was low enough, you would get peak watts all the time with a solar power satellite, so in principle that could be a feasible utility option in the near future.

Traffic fines are lesser because everyone NEEDS to drive to work

I was just catching up on my early morning reading... I certainly wasn't going to respond to any of the comments in the article...

But, in case you never thought of this: Not everyone needs to drive to work! This may come as a shock to some. I mean, people use their cars for "trips" that are a couple of blocks round-trip. People build entire communities around their cars. Americans are also, by the way, over 61% obese and growing (pardon the pun). The two might just be related. Who knows...

What I do know is that attitudes such as "everyone NEEDS to drive to work or wherever" become a self-fulfilling prophecy and lead to more suburbs, increased air pollution, less respect from drivers towards those of us who choose alternatives and greater dependence on oil (which can lead to fattening the checking accounts of people who want to kill us)

Mod me off topic. But I had to reply.

What those who speak in praise of the city haven't mentioned is that the swan pond that I'm looking at is surrounded by a fence, that you can't fish anywhere downstream of the labs for miles and miles, and that there are still barrels of STUFF that we don't even know exist buried around the countryside. Sure, on the surface things are fine, but that's because the heavy metals have long since sunken into the earth.

It's not like the situation hasn't gotten infinitely better since the initial mismanagement of the lab (alluded to by a previous poster and by Richard Feynmann's 'The Pleasure of Finding Things Out'). We built an onsite waste management facility, as part of the cleanup led by Bechtel Jacobs. It was a step in the right direction for the lab, as it allows us not only to repair damage already done, but to prevent causing further harm to the environment as research on radioactive materials continues. (side note: we prefer the term 'rare isotope'... It doesn't scare the populace). The cleanup process was not painless, as this proposal by Bechtel Jacobs (the company leading the multi-billion dollar effort) and article from the Knoxville News-Sentinel indicate. We're nearly done, though. Occasionally something surprises us, but the situation's better than it was.

So, on to the article at last... These microbes don't have a huge utility value here, but they have great potential. Chernobyl, anyone? If there's another uncontained meltdown, these little buggers can be deployed almost immediately (via aerosol spray delivered in an overfly by crop dusters) to begin to counteract the fatal seep of irradiated cadmium and contaminated nickel. It's not of use now, but it's a valuable tool to have in our box.

If you're into atomic tourism then the Sedan Crater is much more impressive than Trinity test site. The Titan Museum is also said to be very interesting.

Another spooky monument to technology (not atomic) is the Airplane Graveyard near Tucson.

I've been working in the Grid Computing area for the last two and a half years, and would like to make a stand for all of us who aren't just worried about bigger supercomputers.

Supercomputers are great, but the number of big computing problems that can handle being run on distributed groups of supercomputers is small. That's why things such as the Earth Simulator and the ASCI programme still exist - sometimes it's just better to build a bigger box!

Where Grid Computing might take off in the science and business mainstream is collaboration and sharing of resources. In particular, I work on producing middleware to try and share and unify data resources. In the astronomy community for instance, they have spent many years standardising the naming schemes for their databases and as a result, projects such as Skyserver and SkyQuery are becoming possible. Now consider the bioinformatics field: hundreds of competing standards for naming things as simple as gene expression ids. Grid computing should provide some of the tools to make knowledge extraction from the many disparate scientific databases possible.

This has applications in business, and it's something we're already seeing in the uptake of Web Services. One recent Grid Computing initiative - Grid Services - is pushing the boundaries of Web Services, and extending them to standardise functionality such as state and lifetime management which should make them more useful for the kinds of collaborative problems which are cropping up in both business and science.

For instance: a car manufacturer has an agreement with different suppliers of airbags - obviously information exchange must take place to ensure safety of the passengers, but both the car manufacturer and airbag supplier will not necessarily want the other to be able to see all data for their parts, just use it. As suppliers change, the manufacturer must ensure that data is properly traced and expired. This is not much different from scientific collaborations, financial collaborations or even network gaming where we have a huge number of swiftly changing, transient resources.

It is these problems of dynamic collaboration and maintenance of resources that Grid Computing may eventually solve.

Nature also wrote an article about the American Solar Challenge 2003. This summary of Nature's story contains photographs coming from the ASC Photo Library, but read Nature's article for more technical details.

Bro, here's the schedule.

Can't help mentioning that I submitted a story Saturday (in time to see the cars on display) but it didn't get accepted by the editors. IT did have a link to the schedule too...

Solar Car Race - Chicago to California

We all know that solar power is cool. Even cooler is when you use it to go 80mph on a freeway, with the power consumption of a hairdryer! The American Solar Challenge unites teams from many Universities in the goal of racing their custom-built solar-cars from Chicago to California.
That's 2300 miles along Route 66! They start Sunday morning in Chicago, but you can check out the official schedule to see when the cars will be passing through your state. If you're in Chicago now, the cars are on public display (while last-minute tuning continues) at the Museum of Science and Industry.

Google has a number of related items. For photos and blogs, try these: ASC daily photos, ASC dialy diaries, a Stanford blog.

For the first time this year, 2-person cars will be entering the race. Unfortunately, only two of these passed the scrutineering tests: The Stanford Team is racing a 2-person back-to-back configuration. Here's a list of races held in the U.S.A. in the 90's. A similar race in Australia is less student-oriented.