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If the need is there, the EU (and lets not forget other European countries) will be able to perform their own actions anywhere in the world.

No they couldn't. Real life does not operate like Civ2. The EU does not have the logistical wherewithal or the power projection platforms required to carry out large scale military operations outside of it's borders. They certainly have the economic base and technological know-how to acquire those capabilities but currently lack the political will to do so.

Don't take my word for it though. Study the Falklands War. One or two more Exocet missiles and the British task force would have limped home in defeat. As it was they didn't even have the logistical means to get their ships down there without support from the United States. Contrast that to the capabilities of the United States at that time.

By the way, the US gets half of it's oil from OPEC countries and the Gulf.

Factually incorrect in the context of the Gulf. The reference to OPEC is irreverent in a discussion about the political stability of the Middle East. You think that Venezuela and Angola (just to name two examples) are going to stop exporting oil if the Saudis and Iranians come to blows? Not terribly likely.

This is a bureaucratic method of killing the overall project of a Mars mission. What happens is each sub project runs into "unexpected delays and expenses" that make it impossible to complete the sub project, or delay it so that it splits up the co-ordination with the other projects for a Mars Mission. Apologists will take up the side of NASA, and they should, but in reality there are facts mitigating against NASA even existing, such as the simple fact that the USA is bankrupt and can't pay its bills, and (according to the Hirsch Report from the DoE) the USA needs to spend 20 years and hundreds of billions of dollars converting itself to a non-fossil fuel culture if it hopes to maintain a technical civilisation at all.

In short: good luck with this new plan - cool if it works out - but it has "Cover My Ass" and "Plausible Deniability for Mission Failure" written all over it.

RS

I think you'll find with a little research that is not the case.

This is some text about the first atomic device at the Trinity site. (Link here)

Only six months before the test, according to General Groves Joseph Hirschfelder, a Los Alamos physicist, had first brought up the possibility that fallout might be a real problem. For this reason it was considered essential that wind direction be such that the radioactive cloud would not pass over inhabited areas that might have to be evacuated, and there should be no rain immediately after the shot which would bring concentrated amounts of fallout down on a small area.

The physicists who originally designed these things were no dummies. They knew what they were building. They knew that they weren't simply big bombs. They were something other, and everyone knew that.

Watch Oppenheimer's famous quote and you can see it for yourself. Watch his face. He is near tears.

No - they knew exactly what they were doing.

I think those 40 miles are travelled with a 16 KWh battery pack - so, you should compare the cost of 16 kWh of electricity against about a gallon of gas.

Ok, so it means roughly 2 USD (based on this) for what would cost 2.7 USD with gas (based on that), e.g. a saving of 70 cents per 40 miles, or 175 USD per year if you drive 10'000 miles per year.

At the current oil price, we are very far from breakeven for the US. But in Europe, where oil is 2 (if not 3) times more expensive, the annual savings are much impressive.

I think those 40 miles are travelled with a 16 KWh battery pack - so, you should compare the cost of 16 kWh of electricity against about a gallon of gas.

Ok, so it means roughly 2 USD (based on this) for what would cost 2.7 USD with gas (based on that), e.g. a saving of 70 cents per 40 miles, or 175 USD per year if you drive 10'000 miles per year.

At the current oil price, we are very far from breakeven for the US. But in Europe, where oil is 2 (if not 3) times more expensive, the annual savings are much impressive.

Shows how much you (or your economist friend) know about the energy market. Utilities do not burn petroleum (oil) in any significant fashion to generate electricity. There was this little thing called the 1973 oil crisis which made it too expensive to use for utility level electricity generation.

When people talk about "gas" power generation they are talking about natural gas. You know, methane. CH4. Not oil.

Once again, you're quoting amateurs who don't know what they're talking about. In this case, West Virginia Office of Miner's Safety chief engineer, Monte Hieb. Here's his webpage. Now, you might be asking yourself why you're getting your science data from a mine safety engineer. If not, you probably should!

Here's the huge blunders he makes in his numbers:

1) He only credits a small portion of the CO2 to anthropogenic emissions. Why? He doesn't say it, but one can only assume that it's because natural emissions are higher than anthropogenic emissions. The problem with this argument is that natural emissions of CO2 are nearly perfectly balanced with natural sinks of CO2; that's why CO2 levels have historically fluctuated by such small amounts on the order of thousands of years. We haven't had CO2 levels this high in at least the past 15 million years. Picture a half-full bathtub draining water at a constant rate, with water being added to it at the same rate. The level of the tub remains the same. Now start adding extra water -- even a small amount. The bathtub will steadily fill up. Our emissions are not matched by corresponding sinks.

CO2 levels in the atmosphere are very easily measured. Past levels are very readily measured from air bubbles trapped in ice cores. Here's what you see. That's the addition to the atmosphere that is not balanced out by a corresponding CO2 sink. The atmosphere's C13/C12 ratio changed 1/5th as much in the entire last glacial as it changed in the past 150 years (the C13/C12 ratio shows how much of our atmosphere is made of old, deep carbon rather than fresh surface carbon).

You should also know that Hieb faked this graph. Go compare his graph to the DOE's that he "cites". He adds a "natural" and "manmade" column that exists nowhere on his reference, thus making it sound like the DOE believes what he's trying to imply.

2) He does no calculations to determine his water vapor forcing. None of his references are primary sources, and in fact, one of them states that the elimination of CO2 entirely from our atmosphere would lower heat-trapping efficiency by 12% and elimination of water vapor would lower it by 36%. That said, all of his references for the "95%" number trace back, ultimately, to "Solar Radiation Absorption by Carbon Dioxide, Overlap with Water, and a Parameterization for General Circulation Models" (Ramaswamy, 1993). Please pay attention to the title. Solar radiation absorption. That is, incoming radiation, not outgoing. Here's the abstract. You probably don't have access to the full paper, but I do. The very first line is, "A proper representation of the absorption of solar radiation in the atmosphere is important to determine accurately the radiative fluxes and heating rates in weather forecasting and climate models." Got that? Solar, not re-radiated infrared from Earth's surface. The greenhouse effect is based on absorbing as *little* solar radiation as possible and as *much* re-radiated infrared as possible.

Want real references and numbers for the *total* greenhouse contribution? Here you go. For a more layman's version, here. These numbers all come from first principles.

I hate to dump on Hieb so hard for this, but this is what you get when you go to a coal mine safety engineer for science.

3) As has been mentioned to you before, and is something Hieb completely ignores, water vapor is not forcing. It's feedb

Independent analysis of your idiotic statement http://www.eia.doe.gov/cabs/Iran/Oil.html

Gas was about $1.26 a gallon when he took office and oil was under $20 per barrel.

So quadrupling the price to over $5.00 per gallon then getting it back 'back under $3 a gallon' is not much of an accomplishment. It started its trend upward in mid 2003.

The fact that G.W. stood up to the V.P. and opposed the use of military force on U.S. soil surprised me and is something to remember Bush for.

Gas 'under $3'? We had that before he took office and well after 9/11.

If I missed your sarcasm tags, then I'm sorry

60 cents per Kw hr? Not even close according to the department of energy.
Perhaps the electric company read your sig and are hastily taking their time to correct your bill?

The idea of sitting atop a massive lithium-ion battery pack makes me far more nervous than I've ever been about a tank of gasoline.

Unfamiliarity often makes people nervous. I don't exactly agree with your assessment of old=safe. You might want to look into some sense of scale.

The average US home uses about 30 KW/h of electricity per day site. A gallon of gasoline has the energy equivalent of 33.4 KW/h site. 7 days is 210 KW/h. 210/33.4 is a little over 6 gallons of gasoline.

That's a decent amount of energy, but we already keep equivalent amount of energy in far more dangerous ways (you think that 5 gallon cheap plastic gas can you have in the garage is very safe? How long have they been around?)

So while I'd want to know what kind of safety systems this kind of system has, I also wouldn't reject it out of hand simply because the technology has "only" been around for around 30 years. Of course, why I'd ever need an entire weeks worth of backup power I don't know. It might be nice to have a day or two of backup power though for emergencies, or sudden power outages in the depths of winter.

Leaving aside the broader question, about which I really don't want to speculate, period, the DOE says you're wrong in your data:
http://www.eia.doe.gov/pub/oil_gas/petroleum/data_publications/company_level_imports/current/import.html
and http://tonto.eia.doe.gov/dnav/pet/pet_move_impcus_a2_nus_ep00_im0_mbbl_m.htm

The US does, in fact (and long has) important oil from Iraq and we get well over 10% of our oil from the Gulf/Middle East at ~15%, approximately what we get from Canada. Which is, to be fair to you, the largest source of US oil.

Leaving aside the broader question, about which I really don't want to speculate, period, the DOE says you're wrong in your data:
http://www.eia.doe.gov/pub/oil_gas/petroleum/data_publications/company_level_imports/current/import.html
and http://tonto.eia.doe.gov/dnav/pet/pet_move_impcus_a2_nus_ep00_im0_mbbl_m.htm

The US does, in fact (and long has) important oil from Iraq and we get well over 10% of our oil from the Gulf/Middle East at ~15%, approximately what we get from Canada. Which is, to be fair to you, the largest source of US oil.

You're aware that only 8.5% of US oil imports come from Saudi Arabia, right?

http://tonto.eia.doe.gov/dnav/pet/pet_move_impcus_a2_nus_ep00_im0_mbbl_m.htm

60% of U.S. oil imports are from non-OPEC nations; OPEC nations. The single largest supplier, by volume, is Canada, followed by Mexico.

Of the OPEC nations, the biggest supplier is currently Venezuela, though they were edged out by Saudi Arabia for a couple months this year (last April and July).

Basically, if it was about the oil, we could tell them to pound sand today; we simply aren't getting that much oil from them. What the U.S. gets of of the relationship is a more or less stable Middle East.

-- Terry

seriously, with the amount of petroleum (or equivalent hydrocarbon) fuel used in this world, a 2% improvement in a system that's been tweaked and optimized during one of the most productive centuries for mechanical engineering is no small feat.

According to http://tonto.eia.doe.gov/oog/info/twip/twip_gasoline.html#demand

The US alone uses about 9 million barrels of gasoline each day, or 3.3 billion (US) per year. So if everyone got 2% better, that's a 65M barrel a year equivalent reduction in usage. Unless you come up with the next form of free energy, this sort of incremental improvement is about all we have going for us.

Of course, I seem to recall that a similar level of improvement can be achieved just by making sure your tires are balanced and at the proper pressure. It's winter now, so with colder temps everyone needs to re-check the static pressure in your tires!

Birdwell said the massive software slowed down educational programs in every classroom and cost the district more than $1 million in added utility fees and computer replacement parts.

Well, actually -- they claimed $1.2--1.6 million.

The software is designed to run at the lowest priority, idle. It takes up 16-50MB of RAM while running. Given that most school labs only run web browsers, office applications, and low-quality educational games, I doubt the systems were running out of memory. Antivirus apps take up a lot more than that, as to most web browsers. So on the charge of "slowing down education programs in every classroom" -- no.

Regarding computer replacement parts -- not really. Those machines are going to sit there no matter what, and they will fail at the same rates regardless of what software is running on them. OTOH, if they were running 24/7 and that was being done only so SETI@Home could run, then yes -- replacement costs of fans and harddrives would have gone up.

Regarding utility costs -- they might have a point on this one.

Bandwidth: Each SETI@Home work unit is about 0.25MB in size, padded to about 0.30MB with overhead they add to it. There aren't any stats I could find readily available online for how much network overhead is added to this, but let's say 0.35MB of bandwidth is used. Unfortunately, there's no way for us to know how much processor power is available -- so I'm going to take an estimated guess and say about 5 hours per work unit. That seems to be in the ballpark from what I've read online. So I'm going to round up to an even 2MB per computer, per day. He installed the software onto about 5,000 computers. That works out then to 9.7GB per day. Or about 294.2GB per month (remember, 4.33- weeks in an average month). That might add up to, I don't know, a few hundred extra a month if they had a leased line and a poor contract. But it's paltry in comparison to the electricity costs.

How much power does the average computer take? Answer. I'm going to say 80watts is pretty close. Again, just working with averages here and trying to get a ballpark figure. To convert this to a usable cost figure, we need to use these formulas: Watts=Amps*Volts Cost per hour= (Watts/1000)*(cents). Cents being the per kWh cost. This guy did this in Arizona, and conveniently enough, we know what the average kWh cost in that state is: It's 10.4 right now. So, each computer, per day, uses 1.92 kWh of juice, if it runs 24/7. If they were programmed to go to standby during that time and didn't -- we'll say 16 hours of that day, or 1.27kWh, went to SETI@Home beyond what those computers would have spent otherwise. This doesn't take into consideration holidays, weekends, or anything else... Someone else could probably create a much better estimate than this without too much work, but I'm in a hurry and this is slashdot. 5,000 computers use 6,350kWh of extra juice per day doing Seti@Home, when they could have been powered off. That means $660.40 per day was being spent keeping these computers powered up. That comes to just over $20 grand a month in electricity costs.

So, yeah... over the course of about four years, the costs could hit over a million dollars.

there is a real energy crisis looming. Simply because people won't plan ahead, the oil will start to run out roughly when all the fission plants have to go offline do to safety reasons.

People also don't understand the fuel sources for our electric generation. Oil accounts for a tiny percentage of 1.6% in the U.S., so running out of oil would be a tiny dent in production capacity. Most electric generation comes from Coal, Natural Gas, and Nuclear power.

http://tonto.eia.doe.gov/energyexplained/index.cfm?page=electricity_in_the_united_states

Also, Nuclear is about 20%, not 50%.

Oh, and wind turbines are being built all over the country. Yes, there's some opposition, but there's always some opposition to anything, including building a Wendys, or a softball field.

Last time I looked France even had a 40+ year old tidal hydro power station near Le Havre as well as a wide variety of other power plants. Try harder.

France consumed 447.27 Billion Kilowatt-Hours in 2007, but produced 542.41 Billion Kilowatt-Hours, 430 Billion Kilowatt-Hours were produced by nuclear power plants. They export electricity, but nuclear alone essentially covers their consumption. "France runs on nuclear power" would be an accurate statement.

In that post you provide one fact in one sentence, and it's nit-picky and deceptive. You then proceed to argue as though anyone who reads about the topic or your posts agrees with you. This is in stark contrast to the obvious evidence that the GP has read on the topic (the references provided), and the fact that you have about five people arguing against you.

I read your post because in my reading on the topic I came to the conclusion that nuclear is a great idea that's mostly opposed by antiquated concerns about accidents and waste. But, my curiosity was piqued when I saw an argument about something else, and figured that you might have a good point (i.e. obviously nuclear isn't taking off so maybe there's more validity to counterarguments than I am aware of). But I was sorely disappointed by the lack of references, explanations, or basic consistency or logic. You do sound as though you know enough that you could formulate a good opposing position if you weren't trolling though.

I used a table very similar to this one (but yearly instead of monthly)
http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/electricity/epm/table5_6_a.html
15 US cents seemed to be about the average residential price, 4 cents was the low of the industrial - and considering the massive bulk purchase, the lowest pick seems fair here.
The $1000 was the first google hit for 100W solar panel.

Well, third-hand smoke is considered by at least some docs to be a direct cancer risk.

The NYT doesn't say anything about peer reviews of the study though. Now it does list some of the substances that so called third-hand smoke contains but it doesn't mention what vehicle exhaust contains or the poisons that food is sprayed with. Nor does it say anything about the emissions from the paper industry.

Falcon

Except that you need to get your electricity from the Death Valley to where it's needed, and a lot can get lost in the process, plus it costs infrastructure money.

The US electric infrastructure has to be rebuilt anyway. That's true no matter where electricity comes from, whether it be coal, nuclear, solar, or wind. According to the US Department of Energy [pdf] the US loses billions of dollars a year due to power blackout, brownouts, and poor quality of electricity. In 2000 when the "Chicago Board of Trade lost power for an hour during the summer of 2000, trades worth about $20 trillion could not be executed."

Except that you need to get your electricity from the Death Valley to where it's needed, and a lot can get lost in the process, plus it costs infrastructure money.

The US electric infrastructure has to be rebuilt anyway. That's true no matter where electricity comes from, whether it be coal, nuclear, solar, or wind. According to the US Department of Energy [pdf] the US loses billions of dollars a year due to power blackout, brownouts, and poor quality of electricity. In 2000 when the "Chicago Board of Trade lost power for an hour during the summer of 2000, trades worth about $20 trillion could not be executed."

Recycling and clean manufacturing processes will become economically viable because the energy to do it will be cheap.

Even now recycling uses less energy than refining raw materials, recycling saves energy.

Wealthy people reproduce less than poor ones, so population growth will be slowed or even reversed.

Now this brings up something not many people know or realize. As people's income goes up they have fewer children and care more about the environment. When people are starving they don't care about much else but once they no longer have to fight to scratch a living they start caring about other things.

Falcon

Links to credible information on that. In particular, I will bet 20 right now that hydropower is CHEAPER than coal or nukes. Hell, if you use a LITTLE bit of intelligence, you would realize that hydropower will be cheaper than either coal or nukes. Why? Because it is STILL cheaper to put in a dam than either coal, gas, or nuke plant (assuming suitable location). In addition, you have free energy after that. And geo-thermal has already been shown to be cheaper than nukes (but there are few locations for shallow geo-thermal).

You'd lose your bet. Unless you're talking about the amortized price. The CEC was primarily interested into the 10-year amortized wholesale cost of building a new plant, which hydro is not especially cost-efficient at. Of course, it gives you flood control and other benefits as well.

Here's some links to get you started. Enjoy:
http://www.eia.doe.gov/oiaf/aeo/electricity.html
http://bravenewclimate.files.wordpress.com/2009/06/eiaenergy2016.png
http://climateprogress.org/wp-content/uploads/2009/01/nuclear-costs-2009.pdf
http://www.energy.ca.gov/2007publications/CEC-200-2007-011/CEC-200-2007-011-SD.PDF
http://des.nh.gov/organization/divisions/water/wmb/coastal/ocean_policy/documents/te_workshop_cost_compare.pdf

In Reality B the question is not that oil suddenly doesn't exist. The mismatch between increased oil consumption and declining production and declining storages will cause oil price to jump to a level where ordinary people will have to make significant compromises to reduce oil consumption. Balance will be found, no doubt about that, but it won't be clean and easy.

The reason why IEA would be cooking the books is a lot simpler to explain with the fact that countries themselves report their oil reserves to IEA. While some reports might be accurate the actual oil reserves are considered state secret in many countries. Especially OPEC rules have incentive to overstate the reserves and production capacity.

EIA (US Government data) has international figures on oil reserves: http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/international/oilreserves.html. If you look at the Middle East where most of the world's oil is and look the reserves from end of 1980's up until today, you can see that someone is cooking the books. Can you imagine a situation where UAE for example could maintain constant 98bbl reserve while producing significant amounts of oil? Same goes for most of other countries in that region. Maybe they find new oil fields at exactly same pace as they pump the oil... who knows. When you look at the steady declines in Europe and N. America I think there is going to be some nasty surprises coming up.

I work for a nuclear servicing company.

"massive land necessary for the creation and storage of nuclear fuel"

This is just flat out not true. The amount of storage required for all nuclear waste within the United States could be reasonably moved into the size of a football field.

Also, most nuclear fuel can be reused, but is not simply due to a treaty signed by Jimmy Carter.

The plants you cited do not break down how their land is actually used. A lot of nuclear plants set aside land for wildlife refuges, as well as other completely non-nuclear purposes. For example, the Davis-Besse plant in Ohio generates 879 MW using just 221 acres, but has 733 acres for a wildlife refuge (totaling 954 acres).

Add to that that wind turbines are known for being undependable, and I really cannot see the point in them. Nuclear is not a non-green power source. It is boiling or pressurizing water with a radioactive byproduct. The radioactivity can be safely stored behind a couple feet of concrete or lead, and it's contained. Inconvenient for naysayers that want to fear monger with "radioactivity," but true nonetheless.

Also, for the Harstville SC plant, the coal plant is their first unit, not necessarily their primary unit. At 5,000 acres, it very well may be that the coal plant is actually the largest part of the plant.

I work for a nuclear servicing company.

"massive land necessary for the creation and storage of nuclear fuel"

This is just flat out not true. The amount of storage required for all nuclear waste within the United States could be reasonably moved into the size of a football field.

Also, most nuclear fuel can be reused, but is not simply due to a treaty signed by Jimmy Carter.

The plants you cited do not break down how their land is actually used. A lot of nuclear plants set aside land for wildlife refuges, as well as other completely non-nuclear purposes. For example, the Davis-Besse plant in Ohio generates 879 MW using just 221 acres, but has 733 acres for a wildlife refuge (totaling 954 acres).

Add to that that wind turbines are known for being undependable, and I really cannot see the point in them. Nuclear is not a non-green power source. It is boiling or pressurizing water with a radioactive byproduct. The radioactivity can be safely stored behind a couple feet of concrete or lead, and it's contained. Inconvenient for naysayers that want to fear monger with "radioactivity," but true nonetheless.

Also, for the Harstville SC plant, the coal plant is their first unit, not necessarily their primary unit. At 5,000 acres, it very well may be that the coal plant is actually the largest part of the plant.

The numbers are sort of available here:

http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/electricity/esr/table5.html

(There might be a better page available here, I didn't look much:

http://www.eia.doe.gov/fuelelectric.html

)

Anyway, backing out the averages (for the U.S. as a whole) for residential, commercial and industrial, average monthly usage is (about) 116 billion kilowatt hours for residential, 111 billion kilowatt hours for commercial, and 85 billion kilowatt hours for industrial.

The numbers are sort of available here:

http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/electricity/esr/table5.html

(There might be a better page available here, I didn't look much:

http://www.eia.doe.gov/fuelelectric.html

)

Anyway, backing out the averages (for the U.S. as a whole) for residential, commercial and industrial, average monthly usage is (about) 116 billion kilowatt hours for residential, 111 billion kilowatt hours for commercial, and 85 billion kilowatt hours for industrial.

Maybe what the GP is trying to say, is that, by mining, some fields were leveled?

Nothing makes me happier than to realize we are taking the lead, by plundering 36 thousand acres to put up some windmills that can only serve 150 thousand houses (WHEN THERE IS WIND), and will pay for it to a foreign government down the road.

Build a nuke plant. That will bring money to America, and it will create real jobs, take up far less area, and provide for more houses.

This nuclear plant in Ohio is on a 953-acre plot, which uses 733 acres as a wildlife refuge. Therefore, (953 - 733 = 220) acres are used for the actual nuclear plant, and it provides 879 MW, which is (879 - 600 = 279) MW more power than the wind mills. For (36,000 - 220 = 35,780) fewer acres, you can provide for more houses in a reliable manner, as well as a clean one (nuclear plants are just glorified boiling water plants with a radioactive byproduct that can be safely stored on, or off site in a place smaller than the size of a football field for all plants across the US; also, the byproduct could be reused if the government would rewrite a law that blocks that very act).

So, one is going to destroy a huge amount of the planet to make (hint: wind turbines), and one will be better in ever other way, except the production of a byproduct that can be easily stored in a very small location.

I agree, the number is surprising. Said so in the post. The article claiming that energy intensity is from 2004, but even then computers were pretty cheap for 5000 kwh of energy to be put into them.

For what it's worth, electricity prices for industry are about half of the local residential rate. Source. Not all actors in the supply chain for computers will pay the industrial rate, though.

There are many places where electricity rates are "unavailable", and industrial rates may be low in Asia. I doubt it's a huge difference (Taipei is $0.059 - U.S. is $0.064), but it's possible. There are jurisdictions where electricity costs less than in the U.S.

It's also worth noting that the majority of the energy comes from fossil fuels, according to the linked article. They cost about $0.05 to $0.10 per kwh in any manufacturing centre. (Price at the pump for me is about US$1 per liter, 35 MJ ~= 10 kwh in a liter of gas.) It's also a little unfair to compare fossil fuel use with electricity use, since a lot of electricity is generated by burning coal and the transformation introduces losses.

When you do this analysis on most products, the EROI payback is shorter than the ROI payback. It seems that for computers, it's not so simple as that.

Ontario pretty much has one the cheapest electricity rate in North America.

http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/electricity/epm/table5_6_a.html

Our electricity rate is subsidized by the government. If we pay for the actual cost of producing electricity, it would be comparable to what other jurisdictions pay.

Energy to build a new computer: 18,100 MJ ~= 5,000 kwh. Source. Fossil fuels assumed to be 45 MJ per kg, the value for gasoline.

Proposed ROI payback period is $300/$70 ~= 4 years, saving $70 per year. Electricity cost in the US for residential customers is $0.104 per kwh. Source. This means he expects energy savings of around 675 kwh per year.

Expected EROI payback period is: 5,000 / 675 ~= 7.4 years.

I have to admit to being pretty surprised by that number. Usually, energy to manufacture is a fairly small portion of the retail price. Not so for computers, I guess.

You have oil. Canada is the largest exporters of oil to the US.

Aye! We, the USA, must invade Canada and bring Democracy to your backward ways and of course to pay for that liberation, we'll have to run your oil fields.

You know, it's just not as funny with Obama as President.

He has nothing on a tank. An M1 Abrams takes ten gallons of fuel just to start. Of course, that's not all that much when you have a 500 gallon tank.

An M1, at current market prices, would cost $1300 to fill up. Compared to that, a Hummer looks like a scooter.

There is no link that says that we put out 10 times as much CO2 as volcanoes, because that statement is wrong, but not in the way that you think. The difference is much, much higher.

A 1991 study[1] put the annual volcanic contribution of atmospheric CO2 at 4E12 mol/year, or 176 million tons. Annual worldwide carbon dioxide emissions are around 27 billion metric tons; the US power industry alone produces more than 2.4 billion tons.[2] The factor between worldwide volcanic and human emissions of CO2 is actually around 150.

[1] Gerlach, T.M., 1991, Present-day CO2 emissions from volcanoes: Transactions of the American Geophysical Union (EOS))
[2] http://www.eia.doe.gov/oiaf/1605/ggrpt/carbon.html

The weather had been reported satisfactory earlier in the day over Kokura Arsenal, but by the time the B-29 finally arrived there, the target was obscured by smoke and haze. Two more passes over the target still produced no sightings of the aiming point. As an aircraft crewman, Jacob Beser, later recalled, Japanese fighters and bursts of antiaircraft fire were by this time starting to make things "a little hairy." Kokura no longer appeared to be an option, and there was only enough fuel on board to return to the secondary airfield on Okinawa, making one hurried pass as they went over their secondary target, the city of Nagasaki. As Beser later put it, "there was no sense dragging the bomb home or dropping it in the ocean."

Fat Man at Tinian Island, August 1945 As it turned out, cloud cover obscured Nagasaki as well. Sweeney reluctantly approved a much less accurate radar approach on the target. At the last moment the bombardier, Captain Kermit K. Beahan, caught a brief glimpse of the city's stadium through the clouds and dropped the bomb. At 11:02 a.m., at an altitude of 1,650 feet, Fat Man (right) exploded over Nagasaki. The yield of the explosion was later estimated at 21 kilotons, 40 percent greater than that of the Hiroshima bomb.

Nagasaki was an industrial center and major port on the western coast of Kyushu. As had happened at Hiroshima, the "all-clear" from an early morning air raid alert had long been given by the time theMitsubishi-Urakami Torpedo Works, 1,400 feet north of ground zero, Nagasaki. Torpedoes used in the attack on Pearl Harbor were built here. B-29 had begun its bombing run. A small conventional raid on Nagasaki on August 1st had resulted in a partial evacuation of the city, especially of school children. There were still almost 200,000 people in the city below the bomb when it exploded. The hurriedly-targeted weapon ended up detonating almost exactly between two of the principal targets in the city, the Mitsubishi Steel and Arms Works to the south, and the Mitsubishi-Urakami Torpedo Works (right) to the north. Had the bomb exploded farther south the residential and commercial heart of the city would have suffered much greater damage.

http://www.cfo.doe.gov/me70/manhattan/nagasaki.htm

You do realize that New Jersey already gets more than 50% of its electricity from nuclear. http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/nuclear/page/at_a_glance/states/statesnj.html The national average is 20%. BTW, largely as the result of nuclear we have some of the highest electric rates in the country. Why then does NJ have an air pollution problem. Well it seems our neighbors to the south and west like to burn coal and get really cheap electricity while we get to breathe in what those plants belch out.

Correct. NJ gets 1914 MW from 4 Nuclear Power reactors, which is about 50% of the state's power. They get 30% from Natural gas and 15% from Coal, and 5% from alternative sources.

Source: http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/nuclear/page/at_a_glance/states/statesnj.html

Replying to myself because I was still looking for this when I posted. Year-to-date (to June), there have been 16,920 thousand megawatthours of electricity from nuclear out of 29,244 - almost 58%.

Replying to myself because I was still looking for this when I posted. Year-to-date (to June), there have been 16,920 thousand megawatthours of electricity from nuclear out of 29,244 - almost 58%.

Nuclear contamination is not easy to deal with. If it were, do you really think a facility as sophisticated as Yucca mountain would be necessary?

Who says a hole in the ground that you put huge metal canisters into on a rail system is sophisticated? Furthermore, only the EPA said it was necessary. Much less sophisticated means are fully capable of keeping dangerous radiation levels out of the surrounding area for billions of years.

If all of the batteries are properly recycled, the nuclear solution is probably better. but what happens then the owner of the nuclear battery falls overboard and he and his hearing aid are eaten by fishes?

If the batteries are sleeved in a corrosion-resistant canister which is well-reinforced (say, continuous carbon fiber weave), then the fish will crap out a battery.

For your example situation that hasn't happened to me in my lifetime, the longest time I've been powerless is during the 2003 north america blackout. I'm more worried about being attacked by ninja's than having regular power outages after 9hour drives such that it'd effect my life.

You have been lucky then. Well, that or you live in an area with a relatively timid climate.

2-5 days at a time is common??? I've been to place up north where bears and moose walk the streets and that would never happen

2-5 days at least once per winter. Generally it's during an ice storm but we have a lot of utility poles that travel through farm land and sometimes access to those lines is difficult. I remember last year, I had two bucket trucks and a bulldozer stuck on my property from where we got a heavy snow (about 5 inches) that turned to freezing rain which snapped the power lines, and then a warm up the very next day with about 40 degree F weather and rain for a week. It took a crane, another dozer and a crap load of steal cable and 02 stone to get them out.

There are probably years it doesn't happen but it's a reality enough to expect it.

Electric cars will likely roll out faster in 1st world conditions. I doubt wherever you live where you need candles and oil lamps.... has the electrical infrastructure to support electric cars. Seriously where do you live? 1920's Alaska?

I live in Central Ohio. But I live in the country about 6 miles to the nearest city. The electric utility is some local coop but when they are having problems the larger ones like AEP is too. Shit just gets messy here fast. Here is a link to an article about the wind storm we had last year. Basically it was the storm system of hurricane Ike that hit the gulf and somehow picked up steam around Ohio and gave us 75mph winds for a day or two.

I know places where there arent roads to and you have to take a helicopter to reach... and they would be insulted if you thought they used oil lamps, though their internet sucks which is almost as bad as not having flashlights yet.

Don't act like it's that bad of a deal. People along the gulf and southeaster seaboard are in the same situation much of the year. Oklahoma and tornado alley have the same problems. This type of infrastructure problem is more common in the US and first world countries then you might know. Here is a list of some of the larger outages as tracked by the government. It's only for 2009 and up to mid june. Here is last year. These aren't all of the power outages, just the larger ones where it was considered an emergency. Quite a bit of the US experiences those for various periods of time.

For your example situation that hasn't happened to me in my lifetime, the longest time I've been powerless is during the 2003 north america blackout. I'm more worried about being attacked by ninja's than having regular power outages after 9hour drives such that it'd effect my life.

You have been lucky then. Well, that or you live in an area with a relatively timid climate.

2-5 days at a time is common??? I've been to place up north where bears and moose walk the streets and that would never happen

2-5 days at least once per winter. Generally it's during an ice storm but we have a lot of utility poles that travel through farm land and sometimes access to those lines is difficult. I remember last year, I had two bucket trucks and a bulldozer stuck on my property from where we got a heavy snow (about 5 inches) that turned to freezing rain which snapped the power lines, and then a warm up the very next day with about 40 degree F weather and rain for a week. It took a crane, another dozer and a crap load of steal cable and 02 stone to get them out.

There are probably years it doesn't happen but it's a reality enough to expect it.

Electric cars will likely roll out faster in 1st world conditions. I doubt wherever you live where you need candles and oil lamps.... has the electrical infrastructure to support electric cars. Seriously where do you live? 1920's Alaska?

I live in Central Ohio. But I live in the country about 6 miles to the nearest city. The electric utility is some local coop but when they are having problems the larger ones like AEP is too. Shit just gets messy here fast. Here is a link to an article about the wind storm we had last year. Basically it was the storm system of hurricane Ike that hit the gulf and somehow picked up steam around Ohio and gave us 75mph winds for a day or two.

I know places where there arent roads to and you have to take a helicopter to reach... and they would be insulted if you thought they used oil lamps, though their internet sucks which is almost as bad as not having flashlights yet.

Don't act like it's that bad of a deal. People along the gulf and southeaster seaboard are in the same situation much of the year. Oklahoma and tornado alley have the same problems. This type of infrastructure problem is more common in the US and first world countries then you might know. Here is a list of some of the larger outages as tracked by the government. It's only for 2009 and up to mid june. Here is last year. These aren't all of the power outages, just the larger ones where it was considered an emergency. Quite a bit of the US experiences those for various periods of time.

Please allow me to enlighten you on the origins of cancer.

Background: Cancer is an uncontrolled growth of cells in the body. There is, and I am oversimplifying here for the sake of explanation, one reason that this occurs: mutation. When cells divide, a lot of very complicated things need to happen. If any of those things go wrong, a mutated cell can appear. Cells are supposed to destroy themselves if they detect that something is wrong, but sometimes the mutation affects this controlled cell death, so they don't. Combine that mutation with one that causes the cell to divide very rapidly, and you have a cancerous cell. You can read more about the specifics of these kinds of mutations in this wikipedia article.

Statistics: Cells have a lot of safeguards in place to protect them against mutation, so the odds are extremely small that any one particular cell will become cancerous. However, there are a lot of cells in your body. Estimates differ, but most seem to be on the order of 10^13 (a multiple of 10 trillion). So while the odds of one particular cell becoming cancerous are not very good, the odds of one of those trillions of cells becoming cancerous are much better. One "hit" (cancer-related mutation) against a cell might not make that cell cancerous; recall from the previous section that the two mutations needed are (1) the inability to self-destruct and (2) a propensity for rapid division. However, once a cell has a "hit" against it, it becomes more likely that such a cell (or its progeny, since they inherit the "hit") will become cancerous later on. This is why some people are predisposed to develop certain kinds of cancer: some of their cells already have one "hit" against them.

Cancer and Longevity: Over time, those odds become more significant for more people. When people lived shorter lives, cancer was not as great a concern, because few people lived long enough to develop a life-threatening form of cancer. With life expectancies increased into the 70s and 80s for many people, the possibility of developing a life-threatening form of cancer has increased commensurately.

Cancer in Men: This brings us to the most common form of cancer in men, prostate cancer. If they live long enough, most men will develop prostate cancer. This is because prostate cancer rates are primarily linked to age. However, and there are more details in the link, most men never even know they have it; you are more likely to die from other causes (including just plain old age) than from prostate cancer. That is why the fact that "in excess of 50 percent of just the male population will develop some form of cancer" exists: most men will develop prostate cancer.

Personal Electronics and Mutation: The concern that radiation emitted by personal electronic devices causes cancer is still a point of much dispute and ongoing investigation. It is known that radiation damages a cell's DNA, potentially causing cancerous mutations. However, there are a variety of sources of such radiation, as documented on this Idaho State University webpage. This webpage from the Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste Management further documents our greater exposure to natural forms of radiation (cosmic rays, etc) than consumer devices.

So if the implication in your statement is that "from somewhere" must include the radiation from personal electronics, that can't be ruled out. But your statement is constructed in such a way as to suggest that the rates of cancer you mention are tied to the forms of radiation under discussion. Tha

could a 99% efficient solar cell even provide enough electricity to cool/warm/light my home? Of course, but how large of a setup would one need?

Let's see.

according to http://www.wunderground.com/calculators/solar.html I have no idea what I'm talking about.

How much electricity do I need in my home? http://tonto.eia.doe.gov/ask/electricity_faqs.asp says the 2007 average was 936 kWh per month. I'll say I'm average in that respect with a gas furnace and clothes dryer.

that's 11,232 kWhs per year?

At my location, upstate NY on a line from Buffalo to Albany, at 99% efficiency, I would need one 10'x10' panel to generate 13,938 kWhr/year.

So, there you go, Yes, I would like one 12'x12' 99% efficient solar cell (larger than I need, to cover for growth and storing for a rainy day), and really, the cost is important so I would like it for free.

Lets add some numbers together and see what the difference between costs and savings might actually look like.

In my neck of the woods, the electricity is something like 9 cents per kilowatt hour. In California, according to the DOE, the average residential consumer rates are 15.01 cents per kw. At 220w, the first tier reducing energy consumption by 33%. That turns the power consumption into about 147 watts with roughly 72 in savings. Now lets say you (your family) watch the TV for 3 -4 hours a day on average. 4 times 365 days would be 1460 hours a year at 72 watts (105120 watt hours 105.12kw hours)on 8 cents a kilowatt hour. This gives me a savings of about $8.40 per year. In CA, it works out to about $10.62

Not knowing your brand of TV or anything more then the size of the screen, I can't get exact but I can find 40 inch LCDs for between $775 and $899 at various places on the internet. Of course 10% of that would add $77.50 and $89.90 respectively to the costs. At this 10% increase in costs, your TV will have to last a little over 9.2 years and 10.7 years respectfully in order for the savings to pay for the increased costs if they are sold in my area and 7.6-8.4 years in California.

That is of course, if it only adds 10% to the costs and electric rates do not change. How they arrive at the $18.48 savings per household per year is beyond me unless they are attempting to calculate different usage pasterns or multiple TVs. A Samsung LN40B750 40 inch TV that already meets the California requirements retails for about $1,899.99. The model UN40B6000VF, another Samsung 40 inch TV which doesn't meet the California requirements (PDF) retails for $1,599.99. A difference of about $300 which comes out to about an 18% increase in costs assuming nothing else is radically different between the two TVs. That would require about 28 years for the savings to pay for the costs in CA. I think your right, the TV will not last long enough to cover the increased costs by saving electricity.

What are the components of the retail price of gasoline?

Are you a troll, or are you just gullible? Either way, shame on you.

That link is one of the stupidest things I have read, and I am now a little stupider for having suffered through reading it.

Uranium ore comes from mines carried on trucks -- trucks emit CO2! And truck tires hurt Mother Earth also!!! And so on and so on. And then, just to take a turn for the bizarre, it starts to have pictures of scary military people and vehicles; I think the idea was that since nuclear waste is dangerous, it needs to be guarded, oh no nuclear stuff is scary.

Well, we could also look at solar panel production, and I'll bet it involves a few trucks as well. (Solar panels are made in factories. Factories are staffed by humans! Humans eat food that is carried on trucks -- trucks emit CO2! And truck tires hurt Mother Earth also!!!)

It's stupid to worry about the CO2 emitted by trucks with respect to either solar panels or nuclear power. A solar panel produces no greenhouse gases while it is operating -- and neither does the nuclear power plant.

So, I just did a couple of Google searches. The average power produced by a nuclear power plant is about 12.4 billion kilowatt-hours in a year. The amount of CO2 emitted by a coal power plant is 1.341 pounds of CO2 per kilowatthour. That means that using a nuclear power plant instead of a coal plant saves, on average, 16.6 billion pounds of CO2 per year.

But wait! Coal gets hauled on trucks, too! Then it gets put on trains! And you need billions of pounds of coal to burn to make those billions of pounds of CO2, so that's a lot of trucks and trains! But wait! Burned coal makes ashes, and the ashes need to be hauled off and disposed of! Millions of pounds of ashes! Hauled on trucks!! With tires!!!

I may not be a scientist, but it sure looks to me like a nuclear power plant has a tremendously smaller CO2 footprint than a coal plant. If you are serious about reducing CO2, you had better plan on building lots of nuclear power plants.

Just to be crystal clear: the GP post said nuclear power plants produce no CO2 as a side effect of operating. This is completely correct. The link you cited shows that the total CO2 footprint cannot be said to be zero. This is true, but stupid.

Are you a troll, or are you just gullible? Either way, shame on you.

That link is one of the stupidest things I have read, and I am now a little stupider for having suffered through reading it.

Uranium ore comes from mines carried on trucks -- trucks emit CO2! And truck tires hurt Mother Earth also!!! And so on and so on. And then, just to take a turn for the bizarre, it starts to have pictures of scary military people and vehicles; I think the idea was that since nuclear waste is dangerous, it needs to be guarded, oh no nuclear stuff is scary.

Well, we could also look at solar panel production, and I'll bet it involves a few trucks as well. (Solar panels are made in factories. Factories are staffed by humans! Humans eat food that is carried on trucks -- trucks emit CO2! And truck tires hurt Mother Earth also!!!)

It's stupid to worry about the CO2 emitted by trucks with respect to either solar panels or nuclear power. A solar panel produces no greenhouse gases while it is operating -- and neither does the nuclear power plant.

So, I just did a couple of Google searches. The average power produced by a nuclear power plant is about 12.4 billion kilowatt-hours in a year. The amount of CO2 emitted by a coal power plant is 1.341 pounds of CO2 per kilowatthour. That means that using a nuclear power plant instead of a coal plant saves, on average, 16.6 billion pounds of CO2 per year.

But wait! Coal gets hauled on trucks, too! Then it gets put on trains! And you need billions of pounds of coal to burn to make those billions of pounds of CO2, so that's a lot of trucks and trains! But wait! Burned coal makes ashes, and the ashes need to be hauled off and disposed of! Millions of pounds of ashes! Hauled on trucks!! With tires!!!

I may not be a scientist, but it sure looks to me like a nuclear power plant has a tremendously smaller CO2 footprint than a coal plant. If you are serious about reducing CO2, you had better plan on building lots of nuclear power plants.

Just to be crystal clear: the GP post said nuclear power plants produce no CO2 as a side effect of operating. This is completely correct. The link you cited shows that the total CO2 footprint cannot be said to be zero. This is true, but stupid.