Slashdot Mirror
Getting Serious About Fuel Cells
electroniceric writes "For those of us who moonlight as politics wonks as well as tech nerds, you may have noticed posts (1,2) in the Washington Monthly's blog pointing to interesting articles about the business community's new take on climate change, world oil supply predictions as well as a fascinating article about lower-cost ethanol together with a new fuel cell technology that can use impure hydrogen. Are we really about to turn a corner in global climate change response? Is this all vapor and breathless journalism about a world-saving new technology, or is it perhaps a brilliant investment strategy? Nobody knows (or claims to know) better than Slashdot..."
by big oil companies such as Exxon and Shell, so long as there is a Republican as president there shall be no alternative fuels.
http://codeus.info
All of this stuff about fuel cells is really nice for the future, but I see two much more simple ways to decrease dependence on foreign oil. First of all, why don't people drive diesel cars like they do in Europe? Diesel is not only more efficient, but most diesel technology is actually cleaner than gasoline. It also doesn't depend on a complete paradigm shift.
Secondly, why don't more people move back to city and thus not need cars as much? Before electric trolley cars used to be in place of buses. People could walk to work because of how close things used to be. American society has become too suburbanized and this is one of the biggest problems with regards to the fuel problem. Don't complain about fuel problems when you live 25 miles from your job and can't take the train!
Personally I've always leaned towards Biodiesel.
Why? Well, quite simply, using biodiesel not only are you saving money and the environment, but you boost the economy via the agriculture industry!
From what I hear they are using it a lot in the midwest states, but I really would like to see some mainstream biodiesel technology.
Fuel cells, meh, they have their place. But accident safety with a hydrogen bomb under your hood is an interesting diversion from the subject in itself...
Haven't we heard that enough recently? It should be up for most abused expression of the year by now.
I have heard that Washington University in Saint Louis is getting quite close to making a useable ethanol fuel cell that could potentially power a laptop for a month. I really just think that alcohol based fuel cells make more sense; ethanol can be easily made from corn, and we make enough of that to have our government pay farmers to not grow it for economic reasons. I say that ethanol fuel cells will change the world more dramatically than the internet, and that is a pretty powerful statement to make.
So, I really wonder if business week would have carried the same article if the price of oil have not been absolutely rediculous lately.
It is always like this - something goes wrong and people becomes concerned in it though the attention should have been paid to it a long time ago.
With the same mindset, it is curious how would we fare when we realize that in fact, we are totally f*ing up the weather and earth is turning into Venus. Would we be able to recover from it and survive as a species? Or maybe it's a limitation of the shortsightedness built into our neural pathways?
Even if there was a huge breakthrough in fuel-cell technology that was ready for use right now, it still would not have a huge impact, at least initially. Let's assume this story, however probable, wasn't overhyped; People still have to be weaned off of their current vehicles, which are mostly large and gas-powered. In the U.S., that could take decades.
It would be cool if it didn't suck.
It's a way to store and transport energy. Hydrogen has to come from someplace. It takes energy to produce hydrogen. Currently more energy goes into making hydrogen than is produced. But the previous poster brought up Biodiesel which is far more mature and cost effective for the state of the world economy. Use biodiesel as the tippy cup which well get us off the tit of fossil fuels and then we can move onward.
What could possibly go wrong?
With the recent oil prices it makes sense to spend a little to find a cheaper way to run different things.
The Iraq war doesn't look like it will end any time soon and who knows if America will attack another country again.
No one cares about the oil, they care about the money involved.
I like muppets.
Are we really about to turn a corner in global climate change response?
Please keep the science fiction your read separate from the universe you live in. I'm finding it difficult to parse your buzzwords, but it sounds like you think fuels cells will offer a tremendously lower impact on the environment. Sorry, that's not how it works.
I don't have to be a fuel cell chemist to understand that the energy doesn't come for free. While hydrogen is certainly less polluting than other fuels, it still takes more energy to place that hydrogen in your hands than the energy you're going to get out of it. Sheesh, Newton didn't know anything at all about cracking hydrogen and even he knew that!
Your convenient energy is going to cause pollution of some kind (smog, chemical or nuclear waste, etc). It might be less pollution, but it won't be enough to cause a "global climate change response". And it will probably result in a redirection of otherwise productive efforts, such as growing crops for ethanol instead of for food. Even cracking hydrogen via hydroelectic energy is still going mean damming up an awful lot of rivers, with an unknown effect on the weather. Oh, and there's also waste heat on both the production and consumption side of the equation.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not arguing against fuel cells. They sound extremely convenient, and I'll probably be one of the first customers. But don't imagine that it's going to solve all of our global climate problems. The only way to do that is to reduce our total energy consumption.
Don't blame me, I didn't vote for either of them!
really about to turn a corner
Hey the GOP called they want their cliche back. They quit using the phase when the realized that they were holding the plot upside down.
Maybe a bit off topic, but I've always wondered....
If some wars have been fought to gain control of the world's oil supply and there is less oil left, tanks , ships, planes, plastic (made from oil), and a whole slew of other resources needed to fight modern warfare will disapper. How are wars going to be fought in the future?
Where do you think the carbon in biodiesel comes from?
There is plenty of oil.
R TI CLE_ID=38645
l e= 44011&d=29&m=4&y=2004
The peak oil lie is being used to justify war and high prices, do some research.
Truth about oil
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?A
http://www.unlearning.org/editor30.htm
http://www.arabnews.com/?page=6§ion=0&artic
http://www.gasresources.net/
http://tinyurl.com/globalwarmingisascam
What's taken everyone so long to realize the huge crisis in the oil supply? Everybody knows that at any given time, there's only a 40 years' supply of oil in the world. It's been that way for decades!
don't understand why everyone is so down about fuel cells.
yes, pure hydrogen is hard/expensive to produce. but the next generation of fuel cells can use methane (or ethanol) for a source of fuel. ie, plug the fuel cell into the back end of a cow- suddenly wisconsin will be known for more than it's cheese.
for some reason, some are thinking fuel cells are going to replace gasoline engines in vechicles. well, ok. but what you really want to do is replace all the coal and oil burning power plants w/ fuel cells. so instead of acid rain and tons of greenhouse gases, you get H2O out, which you could use to water crops or drink. given that China seems to be building coal burning power plants as fast as they can, doesn't that sound like a good idea?
ok, fine, i might be biased. i am working on the next design of fuel cells (in particular solid oxide fuel cells- SOFC). but, still, the sooner we get to a place where producing energy is less harmful to the planet, i think we should. hell, we must.
First: Diesel is cheap because there is less demand than gasoline. Switch all the cars to diesel, and there go your savings. Poof.
Second: I am skeptical of both biodiesel and ethanol from argiculture. I do not believe either produces a net energy gain once ALL factors of production have been accounted for - this includes gas for the equipment to harvest, energy used in processing and refining, oil and energy used in the creation of fertilizers, etc etc etc ad nauseam. Biodiesel lowers the amount of waste in that you can recover energy from that which would have otherwise been thrown away. It is not an energy source. (although; I am welcome to be proven wrong)
The depressing problem is NOTHING comes even CLOSE to oil. Oil is basically free energy lying there to be scooped off/out of the ground. Or, at least, it was - the energy profit from a barrel of oil is falling. It's that energy profit - e.g. quantity energy you get from burning that is greater than the energy that it took to extract the oil.
I highly recommend spending some time on the peakoil.net site and look at WHO it is sounding the alarm bells; there are going to be rough times ahead. There does not appear to be ANYTHING even close.
We need to look at fusion and other nuclear energy sources, and we need to look seriously at other crazy ideas, like extracting energy from the vacuum itself. The question is if viable alternatives are going to arise in time.
Every car out there already has a "hydrogen bomb" under the hood. Contained in some cases by a fragile piece of rubber tubing. You do know gasoline is a "hydrocarbon", right?
..don't panic
Hate to be dullsville but,
It is the dull stuff that is easiest implemented. And reduction is the best way of adding more energy to the pie.
Fluorescent incandescents.
Wind power will not save us, and some birds will die, but from Oklahoma to Saskatchewan, quite cost effective means of supplementing. Yeah, the wind doesn't always blow, but then so Manitoba lost $436 million last year due to low water levels (hydro), the rains do returns as does the wind.
As far as solar, one of the easiest and most effective routes is for heating water. This should have happened in Arizona, southern California, etc. years ago. No, you don't have to do it all by solar, but you require a much smaller water heater that is used less often.
My friends off the grid via photovoltaics (over 10 years now) designed their houses - cabins to need as little electricity as possible. However photovolatiacs is tailor made to topping off banks of 12 volt batteries in third world countries for cell phones, computers, refrigerator (dc refrigerator). That is more where technology adding in a tiny bit more efficiency and lowering cost to manufacture could really have a big input.
You still have to store the hydrogen for fuel cells.
And you still have to figure out what you are going to run your tractors on and the energy sources for the fertilizer (lots of electricity to take N out of the air), farming chemicals, etc.
It isn't the flashy things that are going to do it. It is a lot of people doing dull things.
shalom,
mark
This is how you produce hydrogen. Notice the part about "electricity." That's right, in order to produce hydrogen you need the very same energy that we were trying to save in the first place. Your hydrogen-powered Prius may run as pure and clean as fresh snow, but if a coal-fired generator is supplying the electricity needed to electrolyze water and make hydrogen, then it's all for naught.
So let's stop beating around the bush: the only technology we have today that does not produce carbon and comes anywhere close to supplying Terra's present-day energy needs is good old nuclear. Or, nucular in the parlance of our current administration. Wind, water and/or solar simply don't. I think we need to bite the bullet, recognize this fact, and start building. The nuclear stigma is very unfortunate given the stakes of the global warming game we're playing. The fact is it can be done cheaply and safely, and few bad eggs seem to have spoiled the bunch... unless you have complete idiots at the helm, living in the proximity of a modern, well-managed nuclear power plant is probably a lot, lot safer than strapping into a rickety box of sheet metal and hurtling yourself down the freeway to work every morning in the presence of countless other drivers about whose skills and preoccupations you know nothing.
The depressing sticking point is that with a $100 billion, Manhattan-style research project we could probably get something like fusion power off the ground, thus solving our energy and pollution woes for basically forever.
By the way, that's about the same amount of money as we will be spending in Iraq in the coming years to ensure our oil supply and with it our ability to pump astronomical quantities of carbon into the air for the foreseeable future. Gallingly ironic.
I think there is a world market for maybe five personal web logs.
Truth about oil
R TI CLE_ID=38645
l e= 44011&d=29&m=4&y=2004
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?A
http://www.unlearning.org/editor30.htm
http://www.arabnews.com/?page=6§ion=0&artic
http://www.gasresources.net/
http://tinyurl.com/globalwarmingisascam
Check this page
http://hydrogenfuel.tripod.com/ . This man has managed to run a regular diesel engine on hydrogen in a completely safe manner, and there is enough evidence. Just that the big oil cartels wont let anything come up. I have pesonally seen this work, and give out only water vapour from the exhaust.
The man is very open and does not hold back details, and he holds patents for the valves that he holds. He is also pretty much an environmentalist, so maybe other/.s will take to asking him direct questions.
how many dicks in your life you suck?
Relax. Nobody is challenging your world record.
-- I could tell right away that she was impressed with my HUGE Slashdot Karma.
As usual, noone's reading the article before complaining about the unavailability of hydrogen.
Now, the article's a little pie-in-the-sky, but it gives and overview of some interesting new breakthroughs. First, is the economic production of ethanol from the wasted part of the corn crops, namely stalks. Second, the possiblity of farming other, more ethanol-friendly crops like switchgrass, which can be grown on land not useful for food crops. Third, is a new and cheap device capable of extracting the hydrogen molecules from ethanol, even ethanol with a bit of water, so it doesn't have to be as pure as is found in today's gasoline mixtures.
I'd say the final breakthrough isn't about science, its about being realistic. There are drawbacks to these other technologies, namely they still produce carbon-dioxide and carbon-monoxide. They're not pollution-free, but possibly their less polluting than what we currently have available. The last breakthrough is about accepting the
very good even if its not the best. That's an important point.
Taken together, these breakthroughs are a bit aways from the market, but proper investments would help them come about sooner. I'm not sure I see why the ethanol lobbies should object as they could still get the money and sell the corn, too.
I always get the shakes before a drop.
Before the 1940's, most of the gas consumed in big cities was manufactured at the local town gas works by heating coal, coke or charcoal to 1000 degrees or more in an airtight chamber, then steam was passed through the coal to produce hydrogen and carbon monoxide. The basic reaction is
C(s) + H20 = H2 + CO
The process for making gas from coal dates back to the late 1700's and early 1800's, but was gradually abandoned by the 1940's and 1950's as more and more natural gas wells were being drilled and pipelines were constructed across the country.
If a method of removing the carbon monoxide from water gas could be devised, hydrogen could then be made in vast amounts the way it used to be in the 1800's, except this time for use in fuel cells rather than in street lamps.
One of the prime attractions was the ability to keep going when the grid goes down. We host financial applications that need 5+ nines of availability and fuel cells appeared to be something that would help ensure that the TOS's were met.
Despite the vendor's promises, when the grid goes down, the fuel cells go down and we are stuck on diesel backup. This, in combination with high unforeseen costs and other glitches, is prompting the powers that be to consider ditching the fuel cells altogether.
always something new in the labs and not a single product we can go and buy and make our own...
the only people profitting from fuel cells and the technology are the fat cats running the companies and the speculative investors buying stock low and cashing out when the profit is there.
give us something we can buy and use and that's not so expensive that we need to get a loan for the money!
What's nice to see her is that global economic growth is leading us to cleaner technologies.
The oil price is so high because so many growing economies want access to energy.
Fuel scarcity is suddenly making cleaner alternatives economical, and once economies of scale kick in for them we won't be going back.
Demonstrating nicely once again that all the malthusians were (and are) full of crap.
We're not going to run out of things if we have flexible markets.
'There is a Light that never goes out.'
Is the term you're looking for. There was a slashdot article on it recently, which I believe about the construction of a prototype plant.
"...Is this all vapor and breathless journalism about a world-saving new technology, or is it perhaps a brilliant investment strategy?..."
-You have my vote that this IS journalism about a NEW technology, not necessarily one that is world-saving at all. If anything, it is a step toward something that is all electric, but we are far from it without a major crisis.
-The agricultural and biochemical processes to produce Ethanol or Ethyl Alcohol (CH3-CH2-OH or C2H5OH) from Maize (you call it Corn) is not too clean nor environmentally perfect. Sure it does not require oil refineries, but there is significant production of Carbon Dioxide (CO2)in ways not immediately apparent.
-For example, growing corn produces lots of waste (cornstalks, etc..) that rots and releases CO2 and/or methane. The fermentation of the carbohydrates (sugars) in corm by yeasts produces carbon dioxide as well. Additionally, Corn is a C4 metabolism plant and it requires significant irrigation for maximum yields, and irrigation requires the burning of fuels either at the electric plant or rurally to pump out an aquifer to water the crops. Fuels are also needed for the large tractors, combines, and other equipment used to grow the crop. Another important consideration is the significant government subsidies given to grow corn in the US. The market is artificial and controlled, fluctuating with the weather (crop yields), whether a Democrat or Republican votes to adjust the already high corn subsidies (at taxpayer expense), and there is added manpower, use of significant agricultural land for fuel production, etc..
-With modern Oil/Gas production the COSTS are not as high to yield fuels of sufficient energy density (as in how many BTU a gallon of liquid fuel contains..) After all, we are all burning (oxidation) ~something~ to release energy whether it induces electron flow in a fuel cell or releases high pressure gases pushing a turbine or piston to do work. Think about the point. Alcohol fuel cells are really cool, yes. Bet let's not thing this in any case solves the CO2 or wasted resources issues. If it were Hydrogen (H2) produced from electrolysis (electric current through water yielding Hydrogen (H2) and Oxygen (O2) [2(H2O) + electricity = 2(H2) + 1(02)]), and that electricity was from a solar, nuclear, or hydroelectric generation station, then I would say that the use of that Hydrogen in a fuel cell solves much of the CO2 emissions and reduces dependence on oil.
But, the use of ANY alcohol means that there is Carbon present in the fuel and you will either produce CO (carbon monoxide) or CO2. The US Space Shuttle uses a pure Hydrogen - Oxygen Fuel Cell yielding only electricity, heat, and water as by products. ANY fuel cell that uses any Carbon in its FUEL other than Oxygen and pure Hydrogen, will release CO or CO2.
-In another example, what original starting material do you think was used to make all of those little plastic keys on your keyboard (and nearly any plastics we use today)... that's right, they are made from hydrocarbons (mainly natural gas)?
Imagine the world without fossil fuels realizing that everything plastic is from fossil fuel as well as diesel and gas... They are here to say.
Besides, we are getting close to time for another Ice Age onset, some added CO2 may push that back a few centuries. -Zymergy
To talk about hydrogen-powered cars having a 'bomb under the hood' is a bit simplistic. If you have enough energy stored in a car to move that car, with passengers and cargo, from point A to point B 500 miles away, you have a 'bomb'. Big battery, flywheel, 12 gallons of gas, bunch of agitated gerbils, doesn't matter - there is enough energy in the vehicle to blow your ass up 'real good' if it gets released quickly! If you're incinerated, you probably don't care if the crispyness comes from petrol or H2. So relax, we all drive potential bombs around every day.
Most people, including minorities, want to move away from crime, drugs, low social standards, low education standards, ...
Diversity does not mean a thing when you get robbed, shot, or killed.
Helping in the development of a politically underrepresented energy-reducing technology like PRT, OTOH, might do more per dollar. Anything that gets more from less on a widespread scale, whether it's transportation or lighting or transistors, would drastically reduce energy use, and can be marketed without the same difficulties that energy production has. (a different set, but nonetheless probably a more easily surmounted one)
I see ethanol more as a replacement for MTBE than as a pure fuel, personally, as opposed to biodiesel, which works much better as a direct replacement, at least when it's warm.
----- Question authority, but not ours. Hate the man, but we're not him.
plenty of links to read In short, ethanol is getting better. At one time (early 80s) ethanol was energy negative, but currently ethanol is energy positive. One link also claims that gasoline is not energy positive!
None of this account for other uses that can be taken from corn before and after ethanol is made. Biodiesel can be made from corn, without much effect on ethanol production (corn oil doesn't convert to ethanol easily) corn to biodiesel alone has been estimated as high as 4 times as much energy extracted as went into production.
Little knowledge is more dangerous than none ...
According to you then we cannot move because only dino oil takes less energy to produce than what it can give out....
Guess what...how were we moving on our feet before rock oil....on animal power..and yes it it takes less energy to produce food than it gives out to us otherwise we would have been dead long ago...
All you need to do in to keep doing that in a modern fashion and yes its possible....sit down and do some calculation...instead of picking some incompleter numbers from oil executives
ultimately its the sun that's the big loser as we learn from second law of thermodynamics you cannnot decrease entropy....
1. it takes infrastructure to make more oil, you cant double supply, where are the people/pumps/stations
2. you cant double the oil tankers to transport the stuff, it takes time/money and steel to build another 1000 oil tankers
3. china is increasing its energy use 15% up each year, its going to need another 5000% more if everyone just buys 1 more light bulb, thats 1.2billion lightbulbs dude. 15% increase in demand each year with 0% inrease in supply is equal to 15% decrease each year.
4. human price/labor will go up, more people will want their share of the profits, prices will go up.
So its mute if there is even unlimited (10000 cubic kilometers of oil in the earth, even if our magma is 10% oil) It still takes ENERGY to take it up and process it and store it and transport it. You cannot double your infrastructure overnight what took 100 years to build.
KEY WORD, C H I N A + MASSIVE DEMAND = stress on supplies.
Got it man?
Liberty freedom are no1, not dicks in suits.
I love it -- Greens for nuclear! :o)
We are not running out of oil. In 1982, proven world oil reserves were 696 billion barrels. Since then the world has consumed 452 billion barrels, but proven world reserves are now over 1 trillion barrels. And we still have tremendous coal, natural gas, gas hydrates, and other energy alternatives available.
U.S. oil production is only declining because we have stopped looking and stopped drilling domestically over environmental concerns. Of course it may be our best interest not to drill now and save it for later, the oil deposits are not going anywhere. However, we need to explore how much oil we have now so that we know when best to start extracting. All of the recoverable oil on the planet will eventually be extracted. And if we don't buy Mid-east oil now, someone else will, and terrorism will still be fully funded. And it's probably best that we buy Mid-east oil. We have a real army and are the only country strong enough to get out of bed with the devil when the appropriate time comes.
Scientific advancement will most likely eventually end our oil dependence. There is no shortage of scientists working on the problem, the economic benefit to finding better energy than fossil fuel is enormous. But I don't think that any scientist who wants be a big hero and benefit from solving the world's oil problem is going to want to hear "You're not paying your fair share", "We're going to take things away from you on behalf of the common good" if they succeed.
Perhaps some of you should read up on how much pollution is caused by electronics manufacturing. Fighting entropy is costly.
Two of your websites refer to the kooky "studies", from the oil experts of the world: modern russia!
Wanna invest in empty, poor, russian steppes!? SURE YOU DO!
Read the nice article, American. Ignore the lack of Russian development of said oil for the last 50-80 years (which would easily have fixed many of their huge energy woes). Digging deeper was what they were good at! Someone's apparently selling us sheep oil.
Abiotic oil is not possible from imaginary methane underground. Methane is impossible to bond with unless you oxidize it (oxygen) or rip away its hydrogens in some other way (without letting them re-join the carbon) and it's very light (rises) and its very very likely *not* sitting in rock solution, as an unoxidized carbon source near the pure silica mantle.
Oil is not "cooled" methane or propane. Geesh! what a rip! You have to cook up long molecules from more complex carbon soup. Gases occur because they couldn't get cooked! The natural gas we pump out has risen above the oil because they were formed around the same time and don't slowly go from one form to the other. You'd never find them togther if fluid temperature changed one into the other.
Besides, the proportion of carbon in the unruly methane gas is much smaller than the goo that was buried under tar pits and other sedimentary formations. Methane is hydrogen-rich and carbon-poor compared to coal and crude oil. Ergo: one don't magically all change to the other over eons.
Simply said, we (made of carbon) are the scum of the earth: carbon forms and compounds of *every* type are light and do not flow anywhere but up when buried deep. Even when compressed over eons with silica compounds, they still always come from the surface. (Obviously shows in coal, more common than oil!) So there's no magic springs of texas tea going to appear from 10000 miles deep oil wells. All the oil that was formed 60 million years ago has risen as high as it can, or sprung out already as tar sands.
Okay. Here's a simple test: do endless methane flares spew out of deep-fault (or any) volcanos? Nice pictures in Nat'l Geographic? NO!
Methane was in the atmosphere like every other gaseous carbon compound when the earth was formed. Gooey carbon chains were formed when that carbon in methane stuck to rocks in the form of algae and stuff that ate it. Carbon is light stuff!
(sigh) End lecture.
Kids these days!
Believing anything if a buck ad from unproven science in spam tells them to believe Uncle Bush and the Happy Endless Drillers,
(hint: who are losing investment $$ due to no new reserves.)
[Crawls back into hut and straps on tinfoil hat
to prevent the TV from eating his brain too.]
Nietzsche is dead - God
I hear this come up a lot these days: "Ethanol is wildly inefficient," but I see nothing to back it up. Doing some quick research yields some wildly different results. Can you list some sources, maybe a study or two, that can back this claim up? I am very curious as to find out just how (in)efficient this stuff actually is.
According to you then we cannot move because only dino oil takes less energy to produce than what it can give out....
Only oil can provide the volumes of energy I am talking about above. That energy heats, powers, and moves industrial society. Also, you should follow the food chain; oil provides the means for mass agriculture and mass transport - both fertilizer and equipment - that feed you and make you move.
Guess what...how were we moving on our feet before rock oil....on animal power..and yes it it takes less energy to produce food than it gives out to us otherwise we would have been dead long ago...
Sure. With 200-300 million people total on the planet, living a primitive agriarian existance. The numbers are drastically different with 6 billion people, and only about 1/5th of those consume serious quantities of energy at all. Society as we know it is powered by oil.
..don't panic
it's a bitch keeping 250+ million cars in control. If the polution's being generated by a few fuel cell factories, we can concentrate our efforts there. Plus, the factories can be located outside of cities. No more breathing smog :).
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
Uh, no. The primary problem with your reasoning is that the issue isn't whether or not CO and or CO2 is produced when burning a fuel. The issue is the total amount of Carbon present in the active worldwide Carbon cycle. Burning BioDiesel or other plant based crops does release Carbon into the atmosphere; The exact same Carbon that the crop removed from the cycle a few months ago. The main problem with Fossil Fuels is that they take Carbon which was previously removed from active circulation and reintroduces it. This upsets the balance of the cycle and has long reaching effects on all of the other natural processes (weather and biodiversity come to mind).
In terms of forestalling "another Ice Age", excessive Carbon may in fact, be hastening it. There is evidence that Ice Ages are closely linked to the cold water conveyor currents in the Atlantic. Temperature changes caused by the additional Carbon we introduce may cause the collapse of the currents and cause and Ice Age.
Other than that, it was a very nice post.
The Revolution. Now available as a convienent six tape series from PBS.
Yes. More people are going to figure out that the UN and activists have been using junk science to present Global Warming as reality, rather than as a way to make the USA pay lots of money to dictators of UN countries.
After all, it's easier to replace coal burning generators than it is to replace everyone's car.
Hydrogen is a good first step because:
Interactive Visual Medical Dictionary
BioDiesel is THE number onealternative fuel in both US and Europe and is making hug inroads in developing nations like India.
It is a RENEWABLE resource, ie: biomass... growable fuel which converts solar energy into a very usable fuel, vegetable oil which can be used NOW by all diesel engines with NO modifications..
Less relevant emissions and even fewer when a catalytic converter is added (yes CATs are a problem for petrol based diesel but are NOT a problem for bio based diesel)... up to 50% less emissions and maybe more.
Better lubricant... less engine wear...
With increased production, costs will fall to less than current costs for petrol diesel, until then Federal subsidies bridge the gap to make BioDiesel equivalent in cost to petrol diesel.
Use soy, cotton, mustard and rape seed oils for what they are really good for, industrial energy - not food (BTW these cheap oils are being shoved down our throats as edible food products when in fact they are toxic poisons to all living creatures, only made edible by sleight of hand which is still only an illusion, except for when they are fermented as in Tofu...).
Go BioDiesel or GO Home! It's the best alternative to petroleum fuels... let nature harness the power of the sun and condense it into an oil that is perfect for generating energy.
A fool throws a stone into a well and a thousand sages can not remove it.
Even adding 10 - 20% ethanol to a lot of fuels would make this a feisable goal.
There is is one thing I've always thought, I live in Wisconsin, where sometimes winters can get to -30 in a good year.....what happens to the waste water from the fuel cell?
> If it [the Hindenberg] had helium instead of hydrogen, it still would have gone up in flames.
.au is nothing more than a big fscking desert? Get the feeling that maybe, just maybe the ozone hole has been around a lot longer than we think?
Debatable... once the helium was released from its envelope, it probably should have suppressed or eliminated the dope fuled fire.
> Biodiesel spews more pollution then oil cars, it burns so much more.
Yeah, but it smells better and makes the stoners hungry... and if the price of food has skyrocked because we've all switched to biodiesel to move our fat asses from home to work, well then, making serious $$s from the stoners who suggested the move in the first place seems fine and dandy.
>[hempcar.org] for a petrol vs hemp bio-diesel comparison.
From a stoner's prospective, the only thing better than a bio-diesel car would be a car fueled by somthing that can *ACTUALL* get you stoned... good to see they're working on it; best of luck.
> One barrel of oil has 78 million Btu, 42 gallons per barrel.
Bottom line, if you're consuming more energy than a Natative American's cooking fire (which is probably fueled with limbs shed from the trees of the forest in which they hunt), you're eventually going to run out... after all life on this planet hasn't been around *all* that long (and here I'm going to have to invoke the law of large numbers). I wonder if any knows that average carbon date of the energy we consume or has studied the aging of the energy carbon date over the last 30 or so years that we've been able to do this. There are ways to live in harmony with nature... and they all suck!
> Cars have/are "gasoline bombs"?
> [...]
> Earlier this week, a fuel truck backed up to far at Ballard Power's main office in Burnaby, BC.
Beyond industral accidents, if you want to hypothesize about what the modern hydrogen powered interstate will look like (and you really need to get those images of burned out hindenberg-esk unibody structures littering the highway every half kilo out of your head), you should probably look at accident/death/failure rates involving scuba tanks and industrial compressed gas transportation. Bottom line: compressed hydrogen *CAN* be engineered to be safe from the get-go.
> conversion from chemical energy to mechanical energy that's inefficient - engines waste most of their energy producing heat. Generators, I believe, are pretty efficient.
Finally, someone wrote something worth reading. I keep telling my musle-car, motor-head buddies that the fuel-celled powered hydrogen age is going to be a glorious time to be alive. I mean imagine 200hp on each tire and a fuel cell that weighs half as much as the internal combustion engine that would be required to produce that much horse power and then factor in a chassis that doesn't need the structural regidity required to transmit power from one end the car to the other.... oh yeah... smoky burnouts for the *ENTIRE* quarter mile, top fuel performance and you don't have to drive it home on a trailer.
> This is exactly what Australia needs right now [...] our ozone hole keeps getting bigger.
Ever wondered why
> Some of us still remember the gas crisis of the 70s. Those under 30 have only read about it. To them it isn't real
Yes, but fortunately, most folks under 30 have been raised on violent first person shooter and war strategy video games. Hence the moral legitimatcy of our Middle East foreign policy. Fsck, as long as there's oil *SOMEWHERE* on the planet, we'll never run out.
The EU is likely to pass a directive with the goal to increase the percentage of Biodiesel and Bioethanol being used to 5.75%.
AFAIK Germany will reduce the taxes for Biodiesel (which typically gets mixed with normal Diesel). It even considers to require a minimum percentage of Biodiesel to be mixed with all Diesel.
Note that even totally converting the agriculture of a state in the US or Europe would not provide enough Biodiesel to remove the need of fossil fuel.
to start off i would like to point out, that
...
...
uranium is just another form of coal. the
electricity produced is still based on heating
water to steam and turning a turbin and a generator
with it.
fuel cells are the future, but like many(smart)
posters have pointed out, you don't just get
hydrogen, like you get oil. you have to MAKE
hydrogen which takes an equvalent amount of energy
you get from reacting it. so hydrogen and fuel
cells are just another kind of battery.
the dilema is, that in our mindset we believe very
much in the 3 laws (not of robotics) but entropy.
everything needs to get hotter. else there is no
temp. differnet and hence no work can be done. so
it is obvious that we are heating up the planet.
it's def. going to get warmer and warmer,
according to theory
so instead of starting at the "bottom", say making
a temp. difference, why don't "sail" temp.
differences, which is exactely what wind-power
does or for that matter hydropower. we humans
don't make the heat but on a higher up level, see
the differnce and use natural differnces. the
problem is that we can't just get this anywhere
on the planets surface, but on certain places
only. (talk about geophysical energy spots).
with the current philosophical moral of the world
economy, this is never going to happen...
a country doesn't want to admit, that another
country might just be a better place to "sail"
this temp. differnces. no they want technology
to be able to start at the "bottom", e.g. make
heat
fusion is the way to go, but there's is no
incentive to acctually push for it, since many
many people are rich because we waste. this is
not going to last forever. maybe this and the next
generation will fare well with this global wasting
syndrom, but someday, we'll hit 10 billion people
and have no more resources to start at the bottom.
when these days come, this present situation of
expensive gasoline is going to look like
christmas.
there has to be a mayor global rethinking, economy
wise and on the individual human level.
we need better school and teachers that encourage
to *sigh* think differnet. we need the basic
human to understand calculus and higher math and
logic. only then will we as a human race harness
fusion, a truely green-blue planet and outer
space.
check out this article:
5 3. stm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/38697
why is global warming caused by ppl??? because we say so!!
personaly i would rather money be spent on digging wells in third world countries...or perhaps spending on aids relief...but hell if a bunch of racist white assholes from europe and libral america want to spend it on global warming who am i to argue.
stendec@gamil.com
World oil supply predictions haven't significantly changed in decades, ever since the invention of the Hubbert curve in 1956, which predicted that the oil supply would rise in a bell curve and then fall off at the same rate. Of course there is quite a bit of sugary optimism, but as of the 1980's all the major reserves have been located, meaning that today we know pretty much exactly how much oil there is, and how long it will last.
It turns out that we are nearing that peak now, and since oil use is increasing rapidly, the second half of the oil era will be over much quicker than the first.
The US, by the way, has basically exhausted its supply (heard anything about Pennsylvania or Texas oil lately?) and with the middling exceptions of Candada, Venezuela, and Russia, most of the really big oil is in Saudia Arabia, Kuwait, and Iraq.
The "business community" has known these figures for quite some time, because the entire world economy depends on it. But as long as it doesn't yet impact their quarterly balance sheets, they sure as hell aren't going to tell you, the clueless consumer or stock buyer.
It's important to understand that oil will never really run out completely, but will simply get more expensive until we are squeezing every drop of black crud out of every bit of shale. A good oil deposit will gush out of the ground with no effort at all. Thus the debate is really about cheap, readily-available oil. Expensive oil sucks as we all know.
If it makes you feel any better, the amount of coal in the world is basically unimaginable. We lost our appetite for coal well before we even found it all. In fact, WWI was lost partly because the machinery of the Central Powers was still running on coal, and the Axis struck out in WWII to get a piece of the oil action.
As for Bush and Kerry with regards to oil policy, you're basically looking at polar extremes (yes, Iraq really is about the oil...)
Lets face it. The only serious way to reduce pollution is population reduction. What is the point to reduce by 20% our pollution production on a per capita basis, if the overall population would increase by 50% in a few decades?
Societies should seriously start discouraging having more than 2 kids. People pollute. Reduce the population to a sustainable level.
I wonder how many people could the world sustain on the long term living with american standards?
Remember the year 2000? They promised us flying cars. They delivered the PT Cruiser...
I don't mean to play the antagonist here, but no, biodiesel is not a good alternative. It currently takes over one gallon of fossil fuels to produce a gallon of biodiesel due to the production overhead involved in planting, harvesting, etc. the crops required to make biodiesel.
Sorry, I don't have any statistics on this, but google does. It's also been mentioned here quite a few times on slashdot.
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
As mentioned previously, Fuel Cells are not an energy generation mechanism, rather an energy storage device, much like a battery, the suggested fuel to power said energy device being Hydrogen, Hydrogen, as has also been pointed out many times, does not exist in a harvestable form, the simplest method of getting hydrogen appears to be electrolysis of water.
So we do that, great, now we have this wonderful hydrogen, but hang on, didn't it just take us a bunch of oil to run this process of electrolysis on the hydrogen, doesn't that mean we're still dependant on oil?
Drats, foiled again.
Ok, so we've figured out though that hydrogen is a nice clean source of energy, just getting our hands on it is the tricky part, well how about Nuclear energy powering the electrolysis process to fill hydrogen fuel cells? OMG FUD Chernobyl argh are you crazy? nuclear energy is horrible! Ahh, *BUT* what if chernobyl was out in the middle of nowhere and largely automated using all the wonders of modern technology, rather than the soviet era tech that actually did handle it and the results of it, as such?
How about say, underwater, a really long way underwater, like, kilometers underwater, which puts the facility in easy range of an enormously abundant supply of the reagent required for hydrogen electrolysis, as well as puts it out of the way in case of catastrophic nuclear failure.
Seabed nuclear plant pouring out hydrogen fuel for fuel cells, or indeed directly hydrogen powered devices, such as cars, etc?
Is this at all practical?
I think that biodiesel certainly makes sense in the short term since it can be made from waste cooking oils, animal by-products etc which today are mostly put in dog food or simply sent down the drain - causing more environmental problems. Furthermore, it fits in quite well with current engine technologies and gas distribution infrastructure.
e /05.16.jpg), we are going to lose massive amounts of agricultural land making it more difficult to feed a growing population and we are already seeing more violent weather like heat waves in Europe, forest fires on North American West Coast etc. Not to mention all the animal habitats that will be lost. Anyhow, two final sites for good reading about climate change - http://www.sierraclub.ca/national/programs/atmosph ere-energy/climate-change/ten-myths.html and http://www.ipcc.ch/
My second comment regards hydrogen production in the future becuase of course there is pretty much no way we could grow enough crops to fuel all our bloody cars with biodiesel so moving to hydrogen produced using renewable (biomass, solar, wind etc) electricity is a good option. As fas fusion goes, it won't be ready for some time (if ever) and it still creates radioactive materials to be disposed of and uses large amounts of water for cooling which could be used, in places with poor water resources, for better things like keeping people alive! So if we spent the $100 billion on solar energy or wind, we could get (at $1/Wp solar and $0.3/Wp wind) about 200GWp installed which is something on the order of 2,000TWh/year - just to get an idea of how much that is, Canada uses about 0.5TWh/year (http://www.statcan.ca/english/Pgdb/prim71.htm).
And finally, climate change IS a problem, current temperature change is not within the natural variability (http://www.ipcc.ch/present/graphics/2001syr/larg
uh, how much of the oil production goes into making plastics?
I just bought a PDF instruction manual for building your own fuel cell at http://www.hsolar.com/.
:)
I've just been glancing through it. Looks good. It's certainly big - over 300 pages. And for $12, you can't really go wrong. Some damned serious work has gone into it.
For those interested in the technology, this is a great way to become more acquainted with it, and if your first project works out well, you can always build a whole stack of them and link them together.
The PDF I bought talks a little about using solar cells for electrolysis of water to charge the cells, and the site I bought it from also has another PDF book that specialises in this ( using solar panels ).
And for those thinking about buying it and uploading to to P2P - please don't. The asking price is very fair, and we really should support people doing cool stuff like this and making such a good product available to us for such a small price. Be nice
A better article is the (indirectly-linked to) "Independence Way" by Sam Jaffe. It discusses cellulosic ethanol and ethanol reconstituters. Promising stuff.
- David A. Wheeler (see my Secure Programming HOWTO)
Sigh....
Fuel cells are cool; I am looking forward to being able to run my laptop from one almost continuously. But what does that have to do with global warming? How many times does the C02 emission myth have to be debunked?
Since the start if the industrial revolution, the human race has contributed less than 1% of the green house gasses, in total.
Look up, the sun is getting hotter. Why is it so few find it odd that we are seeing aurora's so closer to the equator? The old news is that it is possible that we are entering a 1000-year solar maxim.
While admittedly, increase in greenhouse gasses contributes an additional 1 watt per square meter, nobody seems to be mentioning the 5 watt per square meter solar increase from the sun. (Redundant, I know)
Truth is not popular, so mod me to zero........
Furthermore the encouraging part of the article was the one CEO:
We accept that the science on global warming is overwhelming.
Sadly our current administration has lumped good science into the "liberal" and "elitist" part of their enemy smear lists.
It is the short sighted disdain for reason that will present the greater barrier to reducing our energy dependancy than shortcomings in technology.
When the people fear their government, there is tyranny; when the government fears the people, there is liberty.
Why just fuel cells?
Since we have an abundance of rooftops, why can't they all have solar panels that are charging batteries? When the batteries are getting low, you just drive into the "filling station" and trade them out. Even though solar panels are not super efficient, the amount of space available for them is enormous.
Why can't we add high speed flywheels to our vehicles to recapture energy with braking. You hit your brakes, and it starts spinning the flywheel faster.
Just one example which I remember from the article. To supply 10% of the current US energy consumption from solar cells, one would need enough collectors with an area equal to the state of Massachusetts. We need to rethink our whole life style. Low cost energy fueled the economic boom of the last two centuries. The party is over. We are near the worldwide peak in oil production. See Hubbert Peak. As this is happening, China, India and other developing countries are increasing thier consumption.
We have enough coal to last a century or so, but we cannnot afford to put that much carbon dioxide into the air with making global warming totally intolerable.
If you think this is far into the future, check the current price of oil. Not only in dollars but in instability. While I do not think that oil is our chief reason for being in Iraq, it is obvious that if Saddam Hussein's chief export had been pistachio nuts, we would not be there.
Vapor and hyperventilation are all that can be expected from the imbeciles who call themselves "journalists."
Not a "hydrogen bomb," but a chemical bomb, just like the gasoline (or diesel) in your fuel tank.
The differences are that hydrogen burns much faster (explosively so) and that gasoline and diesel are wet and stick to the things they burn, while hydrogen floats up and away, even as it's burning.
All this talk of CO2 emissions is no more than a martial arts type feint to distract you from the real action....
Yes, CO2 emissions *are* high, but then again oceanic absorbtion of CO2 is double what people have been predicting / expecting, and you'll find fuck all comment or investigation into that fact in the meedja, interesting when you are talking about by far the single largest CO2 absorbtion system on the planet.
The other thing everyone forgets is "recent human history" eg "the last hundred years" = "fuck all" on a global timescale.... or do you propose that the MASSIVE global warming at the end of the last ice age was caused by mammoths driving around in CFC leaving 25 litre V16 cars?
There are hippo bones buried in and around the Thames in the London area, something again caused that climate change, and it wasn't the hippos creating an extended nuclear winter.
You driving a biodiesel harley or a itchyfanny fuel cell smart car isn't going to alter sunspot activity.
No, the real issues here is per capita energy consumption, and per capita energy efficiency and per capita energy by products.
There is quite simply only one way forwards for the human race, and it is this.
In the short term, for the next 50 years, MASSIVE investment in traditional nuke plants to vastly increase electricity production.
Just as a huge proportion of Abu Dhabi's (United Arab Emirates) energy budget has gone for 30+ years into desalination of water to turn AD from a dusty desert town into a green and verdant city (human consumption of desalinated water is minute compared to the amounts used to water everything daily) then huge proportions of this future nuclear capacity will need to be used to recharge traditional traction type lead acid cells, crack water into hydrogen for new fuel cells, and power tram style over head power cables for urban heavies stuff.
In the meantime everyone needs to make a JFK style "do in within ten years, that's an order" style push to commercially viable fusion plants.
From the inidivdual's point of view we can reduce energy consumption (and therefore all the by-products of energy use) by running lighter and lower performance vehicles, ceiling fans instead of air-con in hot climates, reverse air-con instead of simple radiant electrical resistors in colder climates, and generally look at the overall efficiency of everything we use...
Simply switching all urban one person in a vehicle journeys to little 150 mpg (must be 4 stroke motors though) scooter would have a huge positive overall benefit, of which the total fuel saved would be only a small part, but you aren't going to get this or anything else when the total media output is pumping out the message that your big performance vehicle is a symbol of the size of your genitals.
And that brings us to the real problem, and it is by definition a greater problem in countries with a higher per capita energy use, so the US is the top of the pile.
The real problem is the profit motive inextricably bound to every joule of energy you use... there is no problem with there being a profit motive in there, but when the profit motive becomes the single over-riding force you have severe problems.
_EVERYTHING_ is geared to making you a larger net consumer of energy next year than this, because more energy = more product shifted = more profit.
In europe we have issues similar to these, but nowhere near as bad as america, which is literally a society built around the concept of universally available personal transport, the car is god, many americans simply do not have the option to live even as I do, motorcycle only, because the motorcycle will not carry the shopping etc etc etc, plus of course I can simply leave the bike parked, and walk the mile and half in the the centre of town, get my shopping and if I'm lazy get the (overpriced and expensive) every 15 minutes bus back for 3 bucks.
Americans (and I mean the United states, not south americans etc) like to
http://slashdot.org/~GuyFawkes/journal
Maybe there is something I am missing, but here in the USA we have quite a bit of desert area near the ocean. This seems logical to me:
-Set up a huge solar array in the desert
-Set up an ocean water pipeline (they can do it with oil) to pump water into the array area
-Set up a wave powerplant to power the pumps
-use the solar power to split the water into hydrogen and oxygen
-harness the hydrogen for fuel and the oxygen for other applications
-if possible, harness the resulting sea salt to sell
Problem solved.
It was just a record low last week here.
If you have the chance, look for a book called "The Exploding Metropolis" by William H. Whyte. It was written back in the 1950's when the US cities were first starting to expand, and suburbia hadn't yet formed.
Actually, the South of England is getting to feel rather crowded just now. With the "White Flight" taking place from London, David Blunkett seems to think that the UK can easily absorb 100,000 immigrants/year from third world countries. Meanwhile, none of the Scottish natives can afford a house/apartment in Scotland because of all the retired English refugees fleeing the Home counties.
If you do some research on the many of the other European countries, you will see that there is rural depopulation as all the young single people move into the cities - this is across Europe. Many of them are actually moving into London to escape the high taxation in their own countries; Sweden has a "luxury view tax" which is charged on houses with beautiful scenic view. It was meant to be targeted at luxury homes, but has hit fishermen who owned traditional houses beside lakes. Half the population of Greece now lives in Athens (4.5 million people).
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Yup, our horrible administration lowered the taxes on the rich folks funding the research that will create profitable usefull alternative fuel technologies, instead of raising taxes to pay university professors to create hype.
I took my first ride on a fuel cell bus in Stockholm on Thursday. They have started a trial here in the city, it's free to take a ride, and they take a route from outside my office, and through the city center.
;-)).
The bus is feels great to ride on, all the heavy stuff (cells, tanks etc) is up in the roof, so there is plenty of space inside. The design is modern, and it's a quiet ride.
There are a few other citys in Europe taking part, more info here.
Maybe one day even the good ole USA will start to catch up on ideas like this. (Low emission flames please
Offtopic, Inflammatory, Inappropriate, Illegal, or Offensive comments might be moderated up.
I wouldn't use "per weight". Per weight, a Ferrarri could be more fuel efficient than, say, a Cooper Mini. More reasonable, IMO, is a per person-mile comparison. No doubt that a train or passenger plane will be more efficient than most, if not all, passenger vehicles, though.
I'd only compare per weight if we're talking about transporting goods, and even then, I'd want to make it explicit that we're talking about cargo weight, not vehicle+cargo weight. Which is why trains will be more efficient - they can carry so much more despite the great weight of their own vehicles.
A press release from last year outlines a technique to create a dramatically improved catalyst to convert CO + H20 = H2 + CO2
The problem is that we don't have the *right* markets yet.
Right now, the markets are only for the fuel itself.
There are no serious markets for putting a realistic *value* on *pollution* so that *individual consumers* actually *give a damn* (i.e. it effects their pocketbook) how much they pollute.
Of course cleaner production of electricity costs more when you don't give a crap how much you foul up your environment.
And please don't tell me that fuel cells just push the pollution somewhere else in the fuel chain --- this principle of putting a *value* on how much pullution (or lack thereof) apples to the *entire chain*.
Zuh?
A lot of people blame oil for the war in Iraq, that the US is trying to get access to Iraqi oil. This is not quite true. Take a look online for the leaked "Wolfowitz Report" written in 1992 by Paul Wolfowitz (now deputy secretary of defense). In this Post Cold War Strategy Guide, Paul Wolfowitz presents different scenarios in which the US should go to war. One of the seven scenarios is an invasion of Iraq or Iran if the Middle East is getting too powerful due to oil production. If the war in Iraq was design to DISRUPT Iraqi oil production and create chaos to weaken the region, they have been successful.
This also present another reason why the US is resistant to alternative fuels. If they abandon fossil fuels the military complex temporary is made impotent. At which point other regions of the world that do not switch energy production (middle east, venezuela, russia) would experience a comparative rise in power. Similarily, none of the superpowers want to ratify the Kyoto Accord, because doing so would temporary stall their economic power. A similar parallel could be made with nuclear proliferation. This is all typical of a global power trying to maintain hegemonic rule over the world.
Wow! what a breath of fresh air. Someone who has come to the same conclusions I have. For the record, I live in the city - not in suburbia, and I have a 25 mile journey to work every day. I've worked for the same company for more than 25 years, and they have moved me from place to place as they've downsized, outsourced, offshored, relocated and just plain MOVED me. I could move again to try to keep up with them, but it wouldn't last more than a couple of years before they found me somewhere else to work. I ride a motorcycle to work every day, since public transport sucks, and I am on call. I can do some of my work at home, and I do; but so much of my life - where the stores are, how I shop, where I go to work, how I heat my home are all out of my hands. I would drive an electric vehicle, but there is no provision for recharging. I would drive a fuel cell vehicle, but I can't do more than lobby for the govenrment to take global warming and the dwindling suppy of oil seriously, and give us all the ability to use these alternatives. Thanks for your post; you've revived my passion.
I'm not so sure about your reasons for the English "fleeing" to Scotland. Johnny Foreigner isn't that bad, he's actually very important to this country, but that's for another time. You are absolutely correct, though, about the influx of English expats to Scotland. I happen to live in Edinburgh (the third most expensive city in Europe apparently) and I'm afraid that if I were to ever leave Edinburgh, it would be very difficult for me to afford to move back.
or do you propose that the MASSIVE global warming at the end of the last ice age was caused by mammoths driving around in CFC leaving 25 litre V16 cars?
:P
no, but all of those mammoth farts surely added to the mix
Who gives a flying fuck? We will all be long dead and burried before it matters. I care about my kids, I care about my grand kids. Beyond that, fuck em. I will never know them and I don't give a shit.
Studies Also Show Climate Models Break from Reality Says NCPA Scholar
There are a number of reasons why places like North America and Europe should be weaning themselves away from petrolium based fuels.
First, there is the economic reasons. Unless you are in a country that is a petro exporter, you have a financial reason. Why make some country overseas rich when you can grow your own fuel and keep the money in country? Any country that buys more than it sells from other countries is giving it's wealth away. Spending the money closer to home makes your economy better.
Second, there is the issue of security. If a counrty depends on imported energy, they are at the mercy of the countries that they import it from. A cartel of these exporting nations carries heavy political clout. They can in a sense control a much larger country by manipulating their production.
Third, By using agricultural products as feedstock, we are making the agricultural industry healthier and more profitable. In most first world nations, the agricultural industry has been hit hard. Many farms have failed and a "way of life" is in jepordy. What this means is that there is less diversity in that area of business which actually weakens it and makes it even more susecptible to grand scale failure.
We are at a place in our history where it appears practical to start moving away from a petro based economy (which when you think about it us what we really have today). We have successfully proven that E85 cars and trucks can and do work. Our governments can now safely mandate that internal combustion engines that run on E85 be built into all new cars and that all diesel engines be capable of burning "bio-diesel." If this is mandated, you can bet fuel producers will provide the traveling public with the fuel. Frankly, this would be less invasive than the switch to unleaded was in the 70's.
To do this in the United States, we will need a progressive leader who is not tied to the traditional oil-interests.
Think for a minute how much stronger our economy would be if we made our own fuel. Then think about how much more secure we would be if we did not have to import the lions share of our petro from oil exporting nations.
It is pretty obvious to me that this is something that needs to be started now. It will take perhaps twenty years to complete but the results will be worth it!
Well - there are lots of naive comments here. I was especially entertained by the ideas that since oil reserves have "increased" since 1971 that there is now no problem and there never will be one.
This is especially funny with oil approaching $50 bux per barrel and the peak of world production now estimated to be occuring within 5 years. Perhaps a better way to look at this however is by considering incresing demand. When you do this, it becomes clear that demand has already outpaced supply. Unless the supply side gets a considerable boost (which Saudi Arabia says it can do: 1.3 million bbls/day in fact) or the demand side dips, then we are already in the oil shortage senero that many have predicted for a long time now.
So it really doesn't matter what year the supply peaks.... the shortage is already here and probably will get worse from here on in... year after year... until by 2025 we are burning as much oil as was burned in the 1950's.
This is unless alternatives can be found. Nuclear fission is probably the only reasonable source of relief, but we would need to undertake a reactor building program that results in 1000 new reactors each in the gw(e) range. This is 10x the number of reactors presently in North American. It is a MAJOR undertaking.
Furthermore these reactors should probably be heavy water moderated natural uranium buring reactors like the Candu. Meanwhile fuel re-processing technology must be developed at break neck speed. This will solve the waste problem for the most part.
And what of the fuel cells?
I suspect they will not be viable for the foreseeable future for the simple reason that hydrogen is hard to transport. In fact, the easiest way I know of to handle hydrogen is to mix a little carbon into the molecules!!! Once we get the ratio of H:C into the 2:1 area we have nice, relatively safe and easy to use liquid fuels.
To do this we need a carbon source and one of the best I know of is the Tar Sands of Alberta. The upgrading facilities to do the chemistry are already built, being built or are in design. All we need to add are some rather large nuclear reactors and we are well on our way to making the fuels we need.
So lets start lobying the Alberta and Canadian governments and lets get some reactors underway.
The sooner we start the better!!!
Conservation is no longer an option with respect to stopping either global climate change or running out of oil.
The Third World will happily burn up any oil we conserve. They are industrializing rapidly. One reason why the price of oil isn't terrorism, it's that the oil nations are pumping at record levels to meet the new demand from places like India and China.
We need energy replacement strategies which are cheap enough that the Third World will adopt them in preference to buying oil from the Middle East.
Check my sig for info on the cheapest possible way to grow crude oil (algae biomass) and what's probably the cleanest way to meet electricity demand in the long run.
Tech Public Policy stuff
It has to be cheaper than growing fuel from food crops, algae can be grown from sewage, and the processing steps can probably be completely automated.
A no-cost fertilizer source and drastically reduced labor costs have to beat the usual process of growing crops, algae doesn't waste energy on making leaves, stalks, or roots and these items don't have to be processed as waste since they don't exist.
The farmers get cheaper fuel out of it.
Tech Public Policy stuff
You are absolutely correct, though, about the influx of English expats to Scotland. I happen to live in Edinburgh (the third most expensive city in Europe apparently) and I'm afraid that if I were to ever leave Edinburgh, it would be very difficult for me to afford to move back.
I'm in Edinburgh too. I don't object to anyone coming from abroad if they have unique skills to create their own employment, and don't depress the going wage rate for a particular profession, and as long as it is isn't my job they're taking. What I do object to is the inability of the city council to do anything to alleviate the housing shortage either by releasing land for new houses or to ugprade public transportation to outside the city.
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I agree with much of what you say. A massive nuclear program should be undertaken immediately. However I suspect this will not occur until after about 3 years of sky high oil prices and rather long lineups. Then there will be a 10 year wait while the plants are built.
Horrible prospect isn't it? Thank the Pollies and the anti-nuke tree huggers!
...or at least the fine blog.
No claim is being made about proven oil reserves. A very specific claim (which may or may not be true, according to the blog) is being made about the rate at which it can be pumped from the ground.
U.S. oil production has been declining for decades (as predicted by people who used a similar logic to the current predictors), long before environmental concerns had a big impact on drilling. The decline continued during the period during the 1980s when large offshore leases were made by the U.S. government and the Alaska oil came on-line. (Of course, this is not necessarily an indictment of those who argued in favor of those moves, since none of them were so stupid as to claim they would reverse the decline in U.S. production.) No serious observer claims that the U.S. "stopped looking" and surely no reasonable expert has ever made the case that the decline would be reversed if we "started looking again."
I would love to get Sybert in a room full of oilmen to see their reaction when they realize he doesn't know the difference between reserves and production. Indeed, one only need look at the problems of Shell Oil in the UAR to see that some of the recent drops in reserves have come from unanticipated problems in production.
Sybert ignores the article and the blog that points to the article. Then he spouts provably false propositions about a vaguely related issue. Then he spews pure ideological nonsense about military and scientific advancement on the oil front.
Other than that, it's a fine post.
Eternal vigilance only works if you look in every direction.
The thing about Edinburgh is that, although it's mostly a very expensive, middle-class city, there are still some pretty underdeveloped areas (craigmiller, sighthill etc). The council (and businesses) seem to be more interested in developing the innercity areas for better business opportunities (and houses for English expats) and not bothering so much about the areas which could show some huge benefits for just a fraction of what is being spent on these new developments. Everywhere I go in Edinburgh these days, I see new constructions. New houses are going up everywhere, except where they are most needed.
I suppose folks like Ken Lay and Andrew Fastow are the ideal individuals we want to foster in our society? Saying that putting more cash people like that's pockets is simply not real!
When the people fear their government, there is tyranny; when the government fears the people, there is liberty.
n/t
It's old. The more humans I meet, the more I like my cats. At least they are honest.
That's very much the pattern for North American cities as well. The middle-classes get pushed out into the suburbs, while only the extremely wealthy (who can afford to live anywhere) and poor (who live in subsidised housing). The problem is that if the council were to regenerate these deprived areas, they'd more than likely end up losing their electoral powerbase as the residents sought to continue to improve the quality of their neighbourhoods.
All the construction that I have seen being built is either "retirement flats", "executive homes" (only a very few), or "professional couple apartments". The unfortunate thing is that the retirees want to live in bungalows, so they don't have to climb stairs, professional couples really want houses, so they can prepare to start a family. I believe the phrase for the small apartments being built is "vasectomy housing", since they are deliberately designed to be unsuitable for children. This policy is mainly due to the PC goal of not building on the green belt but to regenerate brownfield sites.
Vintage computer adverts: http://www.vintageadbrowser.com/computers-and-software-ads
I agree with everything you said, except for your generalization of Americans as energy hogs. Not all of us are; indeed, there are millions of people in this country working on these problems all the way from passive energy reduction to active (fuel) reduction, and many of us, including me, who do everything we can to reduce what we consume.
:) and sooner or later the public-at-large is going to wake up. Cheap oil isn't going to help that. (not sure anything will at this point, there are too many sheep here, but one keeps grinding away :)
Please remember that what our idiot government/corporate/public_sheep sector does is not representative of all of us. We have a lot of ingenuity left yet
Anyway, cheers,
SB
PS I do disagree somewhat with your offhand dismissal of global warming, but that's a topic for another time.
It's old. The more humans I meet, the more I like my cats. At least they are honest.
Shell is the major source of funds for the agricultural waste to ethanol program in Canada. Better Shell than the obviously corrupt ADM.
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It seems to me that the quickest, easiest, and cheapest way to lessen America's dependence on foreign oil is to increase vehicle fuel efficiency standards. But the energy companies and automakers (Republican constituency) oppose higher CAFE standards, as does the automakers union (Democratic constituency), so it doesn't happen.
If we can't get something this simple done in this country, how are we ever going to have fuel cells, hydrogen, renewable fuels, etc?
What has happened to Americans? We no longer seem to just want something that will work smoothly, we want the MOST EXOTIC and COSTLY, R & D-intensive answers we can possibly eek out! Professor Abe Hertzberg of the University of Washington invented an engine that runs on compressed air. It didn't have a lot of power. It had a few design flaws. I figured out what they were and fixed it. www.newpath4.com/steamedheatengine.html is my earlier collection, but I've explained the process completely on this page: www.newpath4.com/icyhot.htm . It is entirely possible that the collision of hot steam moisture with liquid nitrogen -having a combined temperature spread of 640 degrees- may cause the creation of an energy plasma as the energies meet inside a cylinder. ABC News did reports on Hertzberg's engine but no one wants to do a report that I fixed it to have lots of power, nor that I also disposed of shocks & springs and replaced those with re-compression pistons. In other words, my solution engages the kinetic energies of a car in motion, stopping, starting, turning curves, to RECOMPRESS MORE NITROGEN BACK INTO LIQUID. The energy of the moving car (or truck) makes more fuel by imparting those kinetic energies back into more pressed nitrogen (stored potential energy). The engine and car work in a symbiotic relationship constituting a closed loop where power is not wasted. The temperatures inside such an engine balances out, and cancels out, so there is no need for the entire radiator-coolant system, hoses, water pump. The cold nitrogen cools its own self but the steam keeps it from overcooling (engine freezing), one of the points where I advanced Hertzberg's engine. Some of you /.'s are a bunch of freaks. You aren't satisfied to have a wonderful self-replenishing engine. You're a bunch of greedmongers who have to have a HYDROGEN engine. I guess you all want Star Wars and Princess Leai too eh? While you're at it try wishing for a light saber. Hydrogen is a bunch of phooey. Even if it can be made to work it's years down the pike, maybe even a decade. Have you even considered what the scientists are saying on all sides of the aisle?, that the CO2 and other engine contaminants are poised to go exponential? We don't HAVE a decade. The steam-nitrogen dual catalyst engine does just what it says. The hot steam acts as catalyst to force the liquid nitrogen into instantaneous expansion, and the nitrogen catalyzes the H2O in the steam into an instantaneous collapse, which creates an instantaneous VACUUM collapse AHEAD of the expanding nitrogen. The molecules never touch til long after their energies react to each other. It is in fact a rather exotic engine process itself, but you guys are so tunnel-vision damned you can't see straight. Let's say we get a hydrogen engine in 2 years. People won't buy it til their present car falls on its knees, so the environment still continues downhill another 15 years while people keep their old jalopy running. My engine process could be designed into existing engines, replacing plugs with nitrogen injectors and using the intake port for steam. And it would NOT take 15 years to see some real improvements in the environment. What it would do is get the OPEC's and J.Paul Getty's off our backs. Everyone who is pushing these other technologies down your throat are interested in one thing: YOUR MONEY. They're building cars so complex you HAVE TO PAY a company-trained technician, not a car mechanic. In a few years these people will be demanding, and getting, $40-$60 an hour. Do YOU make that kind of money??? My engine won't need a mechanic. It won't overheat. It never quits, and it never gives up. It doesn't even need a starter, instead using the compressed nitrogen to turn over, and at a light it will run so slow you won't even know it's running. It will be almost as quiet as a Zalman. Just think about it. No plugs, no carburetor. The comparison picture I made is on this page: www.newpath4.com/index.html#rocketscience . Meanwhile, while the nitrogen engine is saving us from OPEC we can
Atlanta is a special case, it's one of the top three fatest-growing cities in the country. I live near Boston, and previously in Providence, and in both cities there are housing shortages driving the rents and housing markets WAY up. Meanwhile you see very little urban development.
You would think that $800 for a bedroom would drive the market to large apartment complexes, but none seem to be going up. Instead of those, we have inflated rents and home prices, which are the easy, no-risk way to preserve the housing market while collecting the most money from the populace.
I had friends from PA visit me recently, and they were in awe of our housing prices. My pals paid $500 to rent a HOUSE with a LAWN in PA, I paid $650 for a delapidated basement in Pawtucket with one parking spot.
"Sometimes, I think Trent just needs a cup of hot chocolate and a blankie." -Tori Amos on Nine Inch Nails
after reading the messages I decided to provide some links on else one alternative solution to shortage of oil and oil dependency.
Let us consider natural gas.
1. the reserves
http://www.allyoucanread.com/rank_natural_gas_pro2. there is available technology to convert natural gas to liquid fuel. some links http://www.syntroleum.com/News/Articles/Synthetic% 20Diesel.PDF
http://www.energy.ca.gov/2003_energypolicy/documen ts/2003-08-21_hearing/2003-08-21_CORKADELL_CLAUDE. PDF
the estimated price for the fuel approx $12. barrel ( and no need to process crude oil)
3. the natural gas and Gas to Liquid converted fuel as well are less pollutant ( less CO2, sulfur etc) than oil based fuel.
designed to allow current "players" to keep their stranglehold on the energy / economy. Ethanol will come from where? (US's agricultural soil has already been raped for all it's worth. Ethanol from corn will rape it further and then we also have to deal with byproducts of ethanol-from-corn).
.etc. all want the ethanol / methanol route because they can easily control supplies and/or already have the technology. Agribusiness wants it as well (more monopoly opportunities).
.wonder why?
Biofuel = waste of time.
There's only one avenue - (guess why it hasn't been picked up big time?) Solar/wind/hydroelectric plus hydrogen. Large solar/wind/hydro plants generate elctricity & distribute it. People generate their own hydrogen for cars (essential use) by water-electrolyis, and pay for the electricity they use.
Exxon-Mobil, BPAmoco . .
At the end of the day, if there's CARBON in the energy cycle, that CARBON will end up as CARBON DIOXIDE in the atmosphere (I hate to shout, but nobody seems to be listening or paying attention).
Hello R&D and business "leaders" - are you paying attention? The f'n problem is the CO2 ! ! ! ! ! You can't use carbon-based fuels/processes anymore and claim to be solving global warming. Get rid of the "academics" who are really mouthpieces for the (commercial) sources of thir funding. Look at The Netherlands : they have a CO2 tax (yes, a tax on CO2). Bush hates that idea . .
Do your own Google searches for what the *rest* of the world is doing about fuels / hydrogen (Japan, Holland, Belgium). Then look to see that Bush's plan is (shove the arabs off the sand they placed on top of OUR oil (that's sarcasm for those who can't see it). Kerry's plan is little better, but at least he's not bush (score +10 for that one).
Many thanks to the slashdot community for your interest in my article. It's now available online at http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2004/040 7.jaffe.html
Here's a few quick responses to some of your comments:
*Ethanol is carbon neutral--By its very nature as a biological product, it's impossible to release more carbon into the air by burning ethanol than the carbon that was already absorbed by the plants that created the ethanol.
*Cellulosic ethanol is different from corn ethanol--if we can really make it economically viable, cellulosic ethanol uses waste products of the agricultural process to create energy for our cars. If more is needed, we can use land that is now unused (the great plains), to grow switchgrass without the need for any tilling, fertilizers or irrigation. Therefore it wouldn't add to the water shortage and soil erosion problems and it wouldn't have to replace food crops.
*Proton Exchange Membrane fuel cells require 100% pure hydrogen. They're finicky, expensive and tend to degrade quickly. Yet that's where most efforts are in automotive fuel cells. Solid state fuel cells can take very impure streams of hydrogen and turn them into electricity. Unfortunately, they operate at extremely high temperatures. The point in my article is that we should be concentrating our national fuel cell research budget on ways to make solid state fuel cells cooler and on materials research to find cheap building blocks that can withstand such temperatures. Just last week a University of Houston researcher reported a breakthrough that cuts the operating temperature of solid state fuel cells in half. That's a huge step.
*We're Not Anywhere Close to Being Ready for Fuel Cells--the technology is immature and may never be economically viable. My article puts forth a game plan to provide a halfway step (cellulosice ethanol to be burned in internal combustion engines) as a halfway step to a fuel cell transportation economy.
*Biodiesel Works Too--Biodiesel is a great technology that also makes a lot of sense to continue to research. Unfortunately it's nowhere near as close to being economically viable on a large-scale basis as ethanol. In addition, it requires the use of food-rearing agricultural land to grow energy crops (safflower, soybean). Future biodiesel might be harvested out of genetically engineered algae grown in seawater pools in deserts. Cellulosic ethanol is far more advanced.
*Kerry's Energy Plan--It is an extremely timid version of what I lay out in my article. He wants 20% of our fuel to come from renewable resources by 2020. That's easily achievable. A presidential candidate with some vision could make us petro-import-free (except for Canada and Mexico) in ten years.