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if you account for externalities like pollution, risk, defense, and so on. See Amory Lovins' research. That has been an economic tragedy from market failure of the last few decades. Markets don't work well when people don't pay the true price up front but can instead privatize benefits for themselves and socialize costs to other people. For example, some companies in the Midwest got cheaper electricity from coal, but I can't eat fish around where I live because they are contaminated with mercury from Midwestern coal pollution.

More evidence: http://www.pri.org/stories/201...
"A new report from the International Monetary Fund says global use of fossil fuels costs taxpayers and consumers $5.3 trillion year. Thatâ(TM)s trillion â" with a T. "
http://loe.org/shows/segments....
"The report's co-author, IMF economist David Coady tells host Steve Curwood how they calculated fossil fuels subsidies worldwide annually cost taxpayers and consumers $5.3 trillion."

The cost in human lives from wars in the Middle East over oil profits is another enormous part of this as is the consequences to geopolitics. How do you factor in the risk of (ironic) nuclear war over oil profits into the cost of oil? See also:
http://www.iags.org/costofoil.... (lowball)
http://www.energyandcapital.co... (highball)

It's shocking to discover that the government can actually accomplish anything, as opposed to wasting $800 million in taxpayer money with nothing to show for it.

Assuming they are telling the truth about 50+ plots being foiled, then another way to look at it is that it costs them around $16 million per foiled plot. That sounds like a big number but in light of September 11 that is comparitively cheap to the $100 billion plus finaincal impact.

And just how were those 50+ plots foiled? Was anyone arrested? How is it that nowhere was it mentioned in any media that those arrests happened?

It's shocking to discover that the government can actually accomplish anything, as opposed to wasting $800 million in taxpayer money with nothing to show for it.

Assuming they are telling the truth about 50+ plots being foiled, then another way to look at it is that it costs them around $16 million per foiled plot. That sounds like a big number but in light of September 11 that is comparitively cheap to the $100 billion plus finaincal impact.

You argument is a fine example of the Moving the goalposts" fallacy.

Here is the conversation we are having:
From AC:

The oil industry is heavily subsidized by the US taxpayer via our massive military presence and operations in the Middle East.

From Me:

I think the $0.31 per gallon that I pay should cover it.

From h4rr4r:

That $0.31 does not cover it. It is cute that you think it should, but it does not. Your taxes do not cover it either, note the deficit.

From Me:

Um... Given the numbers above, it appears that it really DOES cover it and then some. It's cute that you are so quick to call me ignorant

From h4rr4r:

The tax you pay is for roads, numbnuts.

From Me:

My roads are funded through my state

And finally, from you:

so this $43,675,900,000 per year doesn't cover the cost of the wars.

So now we are talking about the wars? First, the fact that we have not stolen Iraq's oil is proof that neither Iraq war was not a war for oil. Go there, spend a bit of time with the people there, visit the mass grave sites and speak with a few of the people who were literally tortured themselves or had their family members tortured. The only role oil played was that it would fund Hussein's activities. But, like I said, I'm not here to argue the wars in the middle east any more than I am here to debate Operation Just Cause.

The OP stated the oil industry is heavily subsidized to pay for our peace keeping efforts in the middle east. I proved that gasoline taxes alone cover the cost. I didn't include the costs the oil companies pay to lease land, taxes private landowners pay, taxes the oil companies pay themselves, or the taxes paid by those in the oil industry. Then someone moved the goal posts and said that the taxes are needed to pay for roads and threw in an insult for good measure. That's a sure sign someone is frustrated they have been proven wrong. I pointed out that roads are the responsibility of the states, with the exception of interstates. Local roads are local responsibility and they should be paid for by the states. The fact that the feds subsidize state road projects is not the point. That's pork paid for out of the general fund and is not what we are discussing here.

This is where you also commit the "Move the goal posts" fallacy. You said:

You're application of the numbers is laughable ignorant.
I also like how you try to twist his argument from paying for war, to patrolling.

and

You do know we have spent over 1.3Trillion dollar in about 10 years, right?

First, I was responding to "massive military presence and operations in the Middle East." That costs about $50 billion a year. You called it "... normal peace time operations, as in keep a fleet there." No one mentioned the wars until you got here.
Next, my numbers are spot on. If you have a problem with them, I refer you to my link.

The cost of securing our access to Middle East oil - deploying U.S. forces in the Persian Gulf, patrolling its water and supplying military assistance to Middle East countries - is estimated at $50 billion per year, which adds additional dimes to each gallon of

For starters, not all of our interests in the Middle East are oil based. For example, Bahrain has no oil. Bahrain exports things like aluminum. The US Navy's 5th Fleet is also based there. That fleet costs the US taxpayer 10s of billions of dollars. The US Navy 5th Fleet is that massive naval force you allude to that protects our interests in the Middle East. Note the cost; 10's of billions of dollars.

The US uses roughly 386,000,000 gallons of gasoline a day. At a tax of $0.31/gallon, that is $119,660,000 in tax revenue. Multiply that by 365 days a year and the US receives $43,675,900,000 per year from gasoline taxes. The US also uses about 60 billion gallons of diesel each year which calculate to roughly $18 billion in tax revenue per year ($0.30/gallon). So the US receives about $62 billion per year from gasoline taxes alone, which is plenty to fund the 5th Fleet, especially when you consider the taxes paid when cars are sold, various taxes paid by the companies that make cars and components. And, of course, all those "leases" you hear about where "big oil" wants to drill on government land are not free. The government gets a percentage per barrel. Now, granted, the domestic oil production is not in the Middle East, but like you said, "The middle east has to be controlled to keep world market prices stable".

So, yeah! The cost of patrolling the waters of the Mid East is more than covered by our gasoline and diesel taxes alone. Also note that oil is not the only interest we have in the region. It's a big one, sure, but not the only one.

Don't like my numbers? THIS site says the following:

The cost of securing our access to Middle East oil - deploying U.S. forces in the Persian Gulf, patrolling its water and supplying military assistance to Middle East countries - is estimated at $50 billion per year, which adds additional dimes to each gallon of gasoline we purchase.

But you say:

That $0.31 does not cover it. It is cute that you think it should, but it does not. Your taxes do not cover it either, note the deficit.

Um... Given the numbers above, it appears that it really DOES cover it and then some. It's cute that you are so quick to call me ignorant.

Moose are not found in those areas as pipe lines are not normally built over the swamps and in the forests they prefer.

It appears they "prefer" the pipelines.

Again we see your ignorance. Those refuges only hold enough oil for months of US use. They should be kept until we actually need them.

Well, for starters, we won't extract and refine it all at once. And to be fair, I'm fully aware of the impact drilling will have on prices. If I had it my way, we'd tax it as a condition of permission to drill there and use the money to invest in renewables. For example, a $10/barrel tax times the billions of barrels in ANWR alone would be more than enough to not just fund, but INCREASE the amount of money funding our fusion research.

Remember, the USA helped create bin Laden by funding and training and arming him to fight against the USSR...

Yes, I agree on the need to switch to alternative energy and energy efficiency. The total US military budget is somewhere around US$1 trillion per year (or more with interest). That's a lot of solar panels and wind turbines and home insulation. Amory Lovins (IIRC) suggested decades ago that just the operating cost for two years of the US Persian Gulf deployment force would be enough to imporve US energy efficiency to the point where we did not need the oil from the Persian Gulf. So, yet more irony. On that, see:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brittle_Power

The state of the art in Germany is now to build houses without furnaces, they are so well-built, well-insulated, and have air-to-air heat exchangers for fresh air without much energy loss.
http://www.enn.com/lifestyle/article/38940

Electric cars apparently use less energy per mile then it takes just to refine the oil into gasoline to go the same distance:
http://www.evnut.com/gasoline_oil.htm

Another irony is that in the 1940s and 1950s nuclear physcisits realzied the thorium-based nuclear power would be inherently safer and more abundant than uranium and plutonium based nuclear power (you can't easily make bombs from thorium and it can't melt down easily because it is used already in the molten state and can be drained easily into cooling tanks) but thorium power was discarded precisely because it was safer (you could not make bombs from it). So, instead of cheap, abundant, safe thorium power, we got lots of nuclear bombs to fight over middle east oil fields and other resource rich areas we would not need to access if we had cheap power.

I wonder that will come out of this press conference tomorrow (still not sure if it is a scam or confusion or not):
http://pesn.com/2011/06/17/9501849_Defkalion_Announces_Energy_Catalyzer_Press_Conference/
"By now, most people following exotic energy breakthroughs have read about Andrea Rossi's E-Cat (Energy Catalyzer) cold fusion technology. It utilizes nickel powder, hydrogen gas, an undisclosed catalyst, heat, and pressure to produce large amounts of energy. The technology is capable of producing over 4 kilowatts of thermal power from a reactor vessel only fifty cubic centimeters in volume (about he size of your fist). Cold fusion research has been ongoing for two decades, and there have been thousands of successful experiments. However, Andrea Rossi's technology is the most promising cold fusion technology yet to emerge.
Andrea Rossi's company Leonardo Corporation has licensed the technology to the Greek company Defkalion Green Technologies Inc., with sole purpose to sell, license, and manufacture industrialized commercially applicable products using the Andrea Rossi Energy Catalyzer with global exclusivity rights; except the Americas. Defkalion has recently sent out invitations to certain individuals to attend a press conference about the technology on June 23, 2011. The invitation is self explanatory, and is posted below. "

But in any case, we'll probably have dirt-cheap solar panels in twenty years through nanotechnology or similar improvements in materials. We'd have had cheaper solar a lot sooner if either we had more government-funded R&D on them or if US consumers had to pay the true cost of fossil fuels up front (including defense expenditures and health costs and pollution costs and war risk).
http://www.iags.org/costofoil.html
http://www.energyandcapital.com/article

How did you come up with that figure and what sorts of hard data can you use to back up that claim?

I read estimates like this (total per gallon price of $5.60 to $15.14.) and this (a total price of $5.28/gallon if only foreign policy costs are accounted for) and this ($1 to $6 a gallon in subsidies).

I'm not married to the $5/gallon figure specifically; the specifics are, as the range of figures shows, debatable. But it seems about right to me, and it's what was put on the table upthread.

The only reason you are suggesting to "gradually" implement a tax of this nature is that you know full well that if it was introduced at once that enough people would be so ticked off that any politician suggesting something this bold would be voted out of office immediately.

No, I'm saying that people have made choices based on cheap gas, and we need to give them time to make better choices.

I'm talking about what's necessary, not what's politically expedient. If we want to avoid catastrophe, we have to move off of fossil fuels; sadly, it seems the odds are good that my fellow Americans will continue to elect politicians who will tell them that everything is just fine, that they need not make the slightest changes in their gluttonous lifestyles, that all our problems are caused by brown-skinned people and can be solved by pointing more guns at such people.

You also haven't accounted for already existing taxes of close to a dollar a gallon anyway,

A few seconds with Google can often keep you from looking like an ass. The federal tax is only 18.4 cents per gallon, and the average state tax is 27.2 cents, a total of 45.6 cents a gallon. State fuel taxes are generally a way to collect a road use tax anyway, and don't enter into this issue.

The problem is that alternatives are not (yet) economical, and will never be until they get economies of scale (which is a chicken and egg problem), or until cheap oil runs out.

Some allege that cheap oil is an illusion:

http://www.iags.org/costofoil.html

2 trillion not including the cost of wars nor any losses to global economy.

But if we were to generate our energy locally, with renewable resources, not only would we leave a nicer place for our kids, grandkids, and their offspring, we'd also improve our national sovereignty. Rather than fund deadly radicals, we'd fund the nice guy down the street. Rather than ship our cash to entities who threaten us at every turn, we'd fund your next-door neighbors. No matter where you live, no matter who you are, no matter how wealthy you happen to be, this is a good idea.

Hear, hear. I suggest you forward your post to Senator Edward Kennedy and RFK2 and the Cape Cod liberals who, while saying that we need to embrace alternative energy sources, actively blocked a wind farm project because, partly, the 400 foot turbines placed 6 miles offshore would "steal the stars and nighttime views".

It seems that the high priests of the "green movement," led by such illuminaries as Gore and Kennedy, fully embrace the "do as I say, not as I do" principle of life.

Queue in 10 million "global warming is a scam", "don't look at me, people didna doit" and "Al Gore is a weenie" comments.

But all of these comments on the legitimacy of global warming/cooling/climate change all ignore one very simple, inescapable fact: Most "carbon-neutral" energy forms can be generated locally. Windmills use the wind in your area. Solar panels use the sunlight from your roof. This is also true for geothermal, ocean-wave, and bio-fueled energy. All can be generated locally, with local resources.

Only oil and nuclear have limited supply.

So if, for example, you were a wealthy, North-American country with a severe foreign-debt problem, you might consider the actual costs of oil in lost lives, civil liberties, currency devaluation, and raw wealth shipped oversees to fund a petroleum addiction. This cost is so huge and multi-faceted it baffles the mind. Average people just cannot even begin to understand wealth drain and cost of this magnitude.

But if we were to generate our energy locally, with renewable resources, not only would we leave a nicer place for our kids, grandkids, and their offspring, we'd also improve our national sovereignty. Rather than fund deadly radicals, we'd fund the nice guy down the street. Rather than ship our cash to entities who threaten us at every turn, we'd fund your next-door neighbors. No matter where you live, no matter who you are, no matter how wealthy you happen to be, this is a good idea.

Ignore the matter of global warming, because there's a much more immediate reason to "go green". And it has nothing to do with carbon footprint, it has to do with the green bits of paper in your back pocket. It will be expensive in the short term. It will pay and pay and pay for generations thereafter.

Which would you rather be remembered as: the generation that ignored the problem until it was too late, or the generation that set your state/country/civilization on a long-term course of prosperity?

I choose the latter, thank you.

This is going to cost me karma, but goddammit it has to be said.

"If SUVs are too expensive to own, people will stop buying them and trade to more fuel-efficient vehicles."

What your short sighted mind doesn't seem to comprehend is the regulatory function of the government. It can define the rules and
levels out the playing field when the free market fails to regulate itself.
SUV's are the epitome of consumer irresponsibility with these behemoths causing problems related to pollution as well as road safety and Political Instability

With the "free market" continuously failing to address these "externalities" it is a surprise to me that no action has been taken before in the past. These asshole vehicles should have been taxed the fuck out of ages ago to make them as expensive and unattractive as possible

Sure can:

Sugar Ethanol
http://www.heritage.org/Research/EnergyandEnvironm ent/wm1074.cfm
http://forums.wsj.com/viewtopic.php?t=247http://fo rums.wsj.com/viewtopic.php?t=247
http://gregmankiw.blogspot.com/2006/09/sugar-ethan ol.htmlhttp://www.newyorker.com/archive/2006/11/27 /061127ta_talk_surowiecki
http://blog.tomevslin.com/2007/03/tax_gasoline_im. html
http://www.iags.org/es82905.htm
http://www.forbes.com/2005/11/15/energy-ethanol-br azil_cx_1116energy_adams.html
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/8769619/site/newsweek
(there are tons more links all over)

USA Gas Mileage Standards:
http://www.fueleconomy.gov/
http://www.nhtsa.dot.gov/cars/rules/cafe/overview. htm
http://zfacts.com/p/414.html
http://www.epa.gov/fueleconomy/
http://www.fueleconomy.gov/feg/FEG2007_GasolineVeh icles.pdf [Warning: PDF]

There are tons and tons and tons of links, data, charts, .pdf files and things you can pour over if you research the topic via Google, local library, watch CSpan, etc.

And to the AC earlier: Yes, corn farmers helped influence the decision, as did domestic sugar producers, but, oil companies are also to blame for this, as they don't want competition from ethanol PERIOD.

Ironically this game is proof of that. See also War on Drugs, RIAA, Oil Business.
Basically power corrupts both morality and the ability to learn.

If the Saudi claims are debunked sufficiently to affect the general consensus, there will be a panic that will send prices through the roof. Let us hope the worst does not happen.

Kuwait's largest oil field has peaked and is now in decline,

And...

there is serious speculation that Saudi Arabia's giant Ghawar oil field is either at peak or is very close,

And...

Global warming is clearly a fact,

And...

The antarctic is melting off at an uncomfortable clip not to mention Greenland

And...

Population growth continues unabated

And...

The freakin' idiots in TFA want to go merrily galumphing about the galaxy like a bunch of wide-eyed disease ridden nuclear weaponed kindergartners. All they need to do is SNEEZE on a foreign planet and they could wipe the whole place out and turn it into one giant slimy stromatolite. That's my idea of being a good will ambassador. As if we have enough stored solar power (petroleum) to fuel such silliness.

On a daily basis I battle the darkest nihilists - whether of the Olduvai Theory Peak Oil variety or the Eco-Catastrophe Variety. And when a clueless bunch of science geeks go prancing about like some fourth grade ninnies playing "Star Trek" and cheerfully yapping about the intricacies of hyperdrives, when most of the world can barely feed itself and the privileged fat few use Microsoft Windows... well... it makes the case of the doom-mongers that much stronger.

Hyperdrive, my ass. It's this same inane idiocy that cut jillions out of the NASA science budget so we can send some space cowboys somewhere they don't really belong.

RS

Of course I fully expect the clueless technological fan boys who all to often spend their sad empty lives begging for mod points will give me a -1 Flamebait, regardless of the fundamental merits of my argument.

..."It seems obvious that bin Laden wants to do serious damage to the American economy, ..." I give up.. why does it seem obvious?

Bin Laden has stated that economic disruption is his goal, and American intelligence analysts haven't argued otherwise. He could be playing a sophisticated game of misdirection, but his propaganda is intended for would-be suicide bombers as much as it is intended for our consumption. It wouldn't suit his cause to misdirect his own followers.

We "bled Russia for ten years until it went bankrupt and was forced to withdraw in defeat," bin Laden boasted in his October 2004 videotape.

The October video, released just before the U.S. election, offers a glimpse into the jihadist strategy. "We are continuing in the same policy to make America bleed profusely to the point of bankruptcy," said bin Laden. His logic is simple: To bring the U.S. to suffer a fate similar to that of the Soviet Union, the terrorists need to drain America's resources and bring it to the point it can no longer afford to preserve its military and economic dominance. As the U.S. loses standing in the Middle East, the jihadists can gain ground and remove from power regimes they view as corrupt and illegitimate while defeating other infidels who inhabit the land of Islam.

- - - -

He said the September 11 attacks have "shaken the throne of America and hit hard the American economy at its heart and its core." Bin Laden said that if the U.S. economy suffers enough, Americans will withdraw from those countries mentioned.

- - - -

According to bin Laden's math, each $1 al Qaeda has spent on strikes has cost the United States $1 million in economic fallout and military spending, including emergency funding for Iraq and Afghanistan.

"As for the size of the economic deficit, it has reached record astronomical numbers," bin Laden said, estimating the deficit at more than $1 trillion.

Al Qaeda has long made a point of hitting economic targets. The World Trade Center was likely targeted on Sept. 11 both because attacking it would kill thousands and because the twin towers were symbols of America's economic power. In a video that surfaced in December 2001, bin Laden said the Sept. 11 attackers struck the American economy "in the heart."

There is enough oil in Saudi, UAE, Iraq, etc to last more than 50 years at the current consumption rate.

That is if you believe the rosey estimates that the Saudi royal family wants to believe in. This article raises doubts. In addition the keyword is at present consuption rates

Apart from that there is increasing evidence that we are running out of atmosphere as fast as we we are running out of fossil fuel. Since the industrial revolution the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has increased from 290 ppb to 370 ppm. If the trend continues, (which will which is the tragedy of the commons) the atmospheric carbon count will reach 800-1,000 ppm by the end of the century.

.

.

.
marie sharps is hot

You're probably mistaken about generator companies. There probably won't be all that many, unless they are maintaining the panels on the roofs of buildings and carports. If you put the generation right next to the points of use, you don't need any more transmission and distribution equipment and your capital costs go way, way down; the companies which sell power along with a contract to maintain a roof are going to beat the other guys, because they'll get their real-estate for free.

Note also that if the cost target can be hit (note that Nanosolar doesn't have any recent press releases, so take carefully) the cost minimum for electricity will not be late at night, but in the mid-morning when the panels hit their full output but demand for e.g. A/C hasn't come up yet. Expect new markets to come out of the opportunities for arbitrage.

And as long as morning juice is cheap, why not charge your car and replace some motor fuel?

YOu got a magic wand that'll turn all of our current coal, gas, and oil generators into something else?

The DOE has a "magic wand" (called Integrated Gasification Combined Cycle) which effectively converts coal-fired plants to (synthetic) gas plants at about 3x the output and 20% greater efficiency. If we got an economical source of non-fossil hydrogen (like the "green algae" trick) gas-fired plants could be converted to burn it at minimal cost. And oil's share of electric power generation is minimal. It's about half the share of hydroelectric, and "other renewables" are going to overtake it shortly (they are already 20% ahead of oil's 1995 minimum)

If I wanted to do something personally and I had a plug-in hybrid, I could just put solar on my roof to offset the electricity used by the car. At 250 Wh/mile, a 20-mile commute would use about 5 kWH/day. A 1 kW solar system would feed this with some extra, and cost around $5000 at today's retail, uninstalled. Today's panels have 25-year warranties, so they'd be expiring about the time I replaced my current car... for the third time.

If it was really that simple, why isn't it done? Answer: it's not that simple. Our economy would crash right now if we all suddenly stopped driving our cars and walked to work.

Yeah, if America sent its Excursions, Durangos, Escalades and Hummers to the crusher and commuted in Priuses, Neons and Focuses instead, we'd all die.

Oh wait, no we wouldn't.

Nuke power (while I'm all over it, really, I am) is still relatively unstable. I'd rate it right at the level of stability of Windows XP.

Today's PWR's were built in the 1970's or earlier, but I don't see you comparing them to Windows 95. Strange... or maybe not.

Then wind. While there are some very nice designs, some excellent prototypes, and even some small-scale deployments that have worked well, wind still isn't up to production-level.

3.6 megawatt wind turbines are in production. The prototype of a 5 megawatt turbine is on the grid.

Solar failed already. It's not environmentally friendly, it's as simple as that.

Your evidence for this assertion is? Are you repeating the fallacy of associating the waste from chip-making processes with the roll-to-roll process used to make thin-film silicon cells? How about titanium dioxide cells, are you going to argue that TiO2 (used in paint, don't forget that) is an environmental hazard?

You're funny.

"Want to move away from oil" isn't the problem. We all want to.

The first step in moving away from oil is just to avoid wasting it, but I don't seem to see anyone holding a "sledgehammer the Hummer for charity" affair. Plenty of Hummers on the road around me (overgrown things, nobody ever parks one right), and I'd be happy to pay a couple bucks a swing with a ten-pounder, but nobody's volunteering their guzzler for the honors. I guess there are some people who just don't want to.

I bet another $2/gallon in gas taxes would get most of them to want to, though. It would barely affect me; the difference between today's $2/gallon and a hypothetical $4/gallon is about $100 for a fairly serious road trip. I couldn't get a hybrid this time around, but if I had the difference would have been even smaller.

Ask anybody on the street "If I had a better way for you to get around car that didn't require gas, would you do it?" Most would probably say "Yes, if I can be as free as I can with a car" or something to that affect.

They're called plug-in hybrids, and they are al

Average mileage on freeways cruising at 65 MPH is closer to 39 MPG. At 55 MPH, indicated mileage is only about 50-55 MPG (45-50 actual).

If we really wanted to eliminate the need for oil (and carbon-based fuels in general) we'd move as many vehicles as possible from pure internal combustion to plug-in hybrid and make it easy to get energy from the grid. Even if the vehicle gets only 25 MPG when burning fuel, if it runs 80% of its mileage on grid power the effective mileage would be a whopping 125 MPG. The extra grid power could come from nukes, wind, solar... it wouldn't matter, as long as it wasn't coal or gas.

They're now making diesel hybrids, anyway. As well as plug-in hybrids, allowing you to plug in and charge the battery overnight, which is not a big modification, and results in a car which can run almost always run on electric-only, for city use. Diesel hybrids can by modified to run on used kitchen grease, like the Google bus, so you'll get a used-kitchen-grease-hybrid-electric, which runs for nearly $0/mile, nearly no pollutants, and gets high mileage per gallon, to boot. I never had a car, at 38. At first for principle, but I really do prefer walking now, when possible. Living in in New York, or San Francisco, I used walk out of the subway and past the grocery anyway, and just buy whatever I wanted. Or just walk a block back and get it. Easier than driving, in fact! Here in Brazil, I do the same, but it's two blocks.

Why should taxpayers pay for hybrid research? Let the car companies do that.

Who's paying for this delay in government progress toward freedom from terrorist-loving oil producers? The US taxpayer, that's who. In the mean time, GM and DMC have gotten with the program and decided to produce hybrid drivetrains, and most if not all hybrid systems can be adapted to become partially grid-powered plug-in hybrids with the addition of bigger batteries, different energy-management algorithms and a charging system. Such cars would not require wiring beyond a standard extension cord until their all-electric range got upwards of 30 miles, while even short all-electric range could eliminate an enormous fraction of motor fuel consumption.

In other words, industry is about to do incrementally what the current administration appears to be trying to prevent by demanding all-or-nothing leaps.

Sigh, I remember watching this film:

http://www.endofsuburbia.com/ (There audio plus a transcript of the interview that inspired it available.)

I remember some guy in it saying how hard it would be to have a war over oil because all it takes is five pound of plastic explosive and a camel to blow up an oil rig.

Now I'm thinking how hard it is to fight for our freedoms. It seems to take so little for the U.S. Gubment to do something really atrocious like this. All it takes is a couple of guys with airplane tickets and a few phone calls.

Confident?
Secure?
Empowered?

I think I'm browsing different web sites that the test subjects.

• We will never consume all the oil in the ground; if we tried, we'd be dead from global warming before we managed to burn it all.
• Electricity and hydrogen are not energy sources, they are energy currencies (or carriers).
• Electricity and hydrogen are complementary:
  1. Electricity can be transmitted over distance efficiently, can be used by data processing equipment, can be converted to physical work (motors). Electricity can be converted into hydrogen (with a conversion cost).
  2. Hydrogen can be stored (eg: for use in airplanes). Hydrogen can be converted into electricity (with a conversion cost).
• Fuel cells don't require hydrogen; you can use any fuel in a fuel cell.
• What makes fuel cells great is they are not limited by the Carnot cycle. Internal combustion engines are heat engines. All heat engines have an efficiency upper bound converting energy into work. Fuel cells are not limited by the carnot cycle and therefore have higher theoretical maximum efficiency.
• Nuclear is an energy source - one of the only energy sources not involving the carbon cycle.
• Nuclear is expensive.
• Clean, non-nuclear energy sources (wind, solar, tidal, etc) collectively cannot provide enough energy to satisfy our needs, making nuclear an eventuality, not an option.

I was watching Motorweek the other day on PBS, and they were running a segment on hybrids. Several companies were designing heavy trucks (think diesel platforms for garbage trucks and buses) that used high and low pressure hydraulic tanks to store and then release energy generated by the engine during operation. This enables the truck to avoid idling the engine at stops (similar to an electric hybrid) and allows the truck to get up to speed (hydraulic launch assist) based on the hydraulic pump (which is coupled to the driveshaft, similar to a motor) before kicking in the diesel engine. When operating or braking, fluid stored in the low pressure tank is pumped back into the high pressure tank (each tank is filled with nitrogen gas - that's what is being compressed to store energy.) When starting up from a stop or accelerating, the gas is used to shunt hydraulic fluid through the pump to spin the driveshaft.

Hydraulic hybrids.

30 miles a day is not realistic...

At current rates it makes no sense to try to power one's car 100% by solar electricity, but if you want to make the first 20 miles every day (or every trip) be sun-powered you could do that. Read the EPRI study link off this page (big download, long but informative read). If you did something as simple as putting solar panels over covered parking at workplaces (make covered parking a perk for EV or PIH drivers) you could get a substantial amount of range out of that. If the parking space is 9 feet wide by 17 feet long (roughly 14 square meters), you assume 1000 W/m^2 normal insolation at an angle that gives you 80% of that on a flat surface (probably pessimistic for LA) and 15% efficiency, I get 14 m^2 * 0.8 KW/m^2 * 6 hr * 0.15 ~= 10 KWH/day. At 340 WH/mile you'd get your 20 miles of battery range out of that plus some excess. If you postulate 50% conversion efficiency the production increases to 33.6 KWH/day, roughly 100 miles worth.

If the car is 5.5 feet wide and 15 feet long (roughly 7.5 m^2) and you cover it with 50% efficient cells, given the same assumptions above you would get 18 KWH/day just out of the light falling on the car. If the car used 340 WH/mile you'd get more than 50 miles/day out of the sun falling on the car (the tzero would get ~100 miles). Not so trivial any more, is it?

Isn't that the same as solar cells, given that they require massive amounts of energy to make, output feeble amounts of energy on a per-cell basis (and at most 0.707 of that is harnessable as alternating current), and have a finite lifespan (primarily to cracking caused by heating/cooling cycles)?

What solar cells are those? The ones I'm familiar with pay back their invested energy in 2-4 years, and last 15-25 years at a minimum. They don't crack unless they are abused, such as by overheating with concentrated light.

Their output is also convertible to AC at 90+% efficiency, using modern inverters. Where'd you get this sqrt(.5) nonsense?

Actually, ethanol/methanol is a great step toward solar-powered cars; capture the solar energy with plants, store it as chemical energy, release it as heat energy within an internal combustion engine.

The problem is efficiency. There are many more losses with the conversion to plant matter and back, so you need a lot more capture area. As long as you're effectively getting it for free (as a byproduct of something you're growing anyway) you're fine, but if you have to pay for the acreage with the fuel production alone your costs just went through the roof. Speaking of roofs, the average house's roof can capture more than enough sunlight to power the average household's daily driving even if you're only using solar cells. If you assume 340 WH/mile and 20 miles/vehicle/day, you need 6.8 KWH/vehicle/day. If you get good sunlight for 6 hours/day, you need a bit over 1 KW(peak) of solar panels to supply this. At 10% efficiency this is only about 10-14 square meters of roof. Your typical ranch house has upwards of 100 square meters of roof.

Enthanol/methanol are a far better automotive fuel than electricity, so if this replaces the (misguided) efforts to produce electric cars, that would be excellent.

You're half right.

1. Ethanol and methanol have far higher energy density than the batteries required to use externally-supplied electricity in a vehicle; you can get many more miles of range into a liter of space with alcohol than batteries.
2. Batteries require no heat engine to convert their stored energy to a useful form (electricity can be converted to motion with efficiency well above 80%), and most useful batteries have a pretty high power density (W/kg) as well. Many electric cars are extremely quick.

The optimal solution for current (cheap) batteries is the plug-in hybrid; the batteries store power for short trips and surge acceleration, and the sustainer engine burns fuel for longer trips. The efficiency of such a vehicle can easily be twice that of a non-hybrid. I recall seeing a figure of 17% which works with other calculations I've done, but Chevron has published a figure claiming that the average is closer to 12%. That's probably where your Ram is hovering around.

If either lithium-ion cells or the recent NEC resin-based battery hit an inflection point in their production cost curve and start heading down, it won't be long before we see all-electric cars with 300+ mile ranges and sub-5-second 0-60 performance. This can already be done with laptop Li-ion cells, but the cost is about ten times too high for bulk production. I don't see anything which forces this to remain so.

I have two big worries with electric cars. The biggest being the batteries - by necessity, the greater the energy density of the battery, the nastier the chemicals inside it have to be. Weird things happen to cars - accidents, ditched in lakes, etc. - so it doesn't seem like a good idea to be carrying around hazmats which make gasoline look benign.

Lithium is not exactly a toxic substance; for some people, it's medicine. The electrolyte of NEC's proton polymer bat

One good link deserves another. See this EPRI study which I found linked from this page. I warn you in advance, that EPRI paper can keep you busy for days.

Let's compare Microsoft to September 11th. September 11th cost the US economy $100 billion. Microsoft born worms have cost the US many billions as well. Code Red alone cost $2 billion. Sobig cost one billion. If we were to add up the costs of every dinky Microsoft worm all the way back to 1984, I'm sure we could arrive at $100 billion in documented costs. The documented costs, of course, pale by compairson with the undocumented costs of lost work. Those costs further pale when you consider the intentional waste of the upgrade cycle which forces users to ditch their hardware every three years. I just love walking into a 8 year old set up of Unix on PCs and see it working just as well as the day it was made without any adminisrtation. I hate walking into the typical Microsoft nightmare, which has not been "rebuilt" for a few years.

Is this killing anyone? Yes, it is. People in hospitals, cars and subways died in the big blackout a few months ago. It all points back to software that failed in the midwest, and I'm 95% sure that was a Microsoft failure. If we were to look at all the deaths caused by software failure, attributable to a mistaken use of Micfosoft software, I'm sure we could find more than 3,000 people and exceed the 9/11 toll.

Call me a zealot if you like. It does not change the truth.

Keep using that Microsoft junk. Just don't come whining to me when it cost you time, money and heartache. Especially stay away from me if you want to use it in a power plant or to operate traffic lights or some other place it does not belong. Someone will sue you for such negligence.