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On Electricity (Generation)
Engineer-Poet wrote a piece a few months back that focuses on electricity production; or rather how or what we will need to do to keep pace with people's demands while balancing that with environmental and economic impact. Lengthy but well-reasoned and good reading.
The article is banned by the filter here at work but the answer is obvious - build more nuclear power plants.
As it so happens, Ethanol is being used as an ocatane-booster additive in the majority of gasoline today. In part, it's because it's safer than cleaner than most of the chemicals previously used to improve octane ratings. Another part of it, however, is that up to 10% Ethanol mixtures are helping to lower the cost of gasoline as the prices for gas surpass that of Ethanol.
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"Try telling any green environmental lefty that Ethanol is a bad thing and show them why, and they turn their nose saying, "But, but, but, but its GREEN!"
Wow, what an uninformed stereotype. Plenty of us green environmental lefties have serious issues with increasing society's reliance on industrial agriculture, and see the potential usurpation of the oil lobby by the corn lobby as a meaningless substitution. Our leaders keep trying to find new and exciting ways to supply our energy demand without examining the nature or utility of this demand. Sustainable energy will come from changing cultural attitudes regarding the worthy expenditures of energy, not a shuffling of environmental issues.
Tags != Comments, and -1 (Troll) != -1 (I Would Respond Angrily To This Poster So They Must Be Trolling)
Wrong wrong wrong.
Ethanol is being used to reduce emissions on that small fraction of badly running automobiles out there. It does not have any effect on modern engines except to lower their mileage. Modern engines don't even require the "higher" octane rating, as they can compensate as required for slightly lower octane ratings.
Ethanol actually reduces the specific energy of gasoline.
Lastly, ethanol's true cost is in growing and producing ethanol - namely, water use and the agricultural pollution.
Ethanol is not the answer. Neither is bio-diesel. Nothing that replaces the current liquid storage medium will be the answer. The true answer is either nuclear or solar (also nuclear:) or wind/tidal. The last 3 are all extra-planetary in their power source and thus not add to planetary heat as we're merely shifting energy from A to B: solar/wind are both driven by the sun, and tidal is mostly driven by the moon). Nuclear is still using "stored" power, thus can still have a net add to planetary heat.
The cesspool just got a check and balance.
because for all the work we do it won't amount to a hill of beans if China doesn't play along. Go look at many of their cities, they look even worse than the US did at its height for pollution.
:)
Hell, their only fix for good air during the Olympics will be to ban cars and shutdown nearby industries.
Still got to love this comment on his blog
"There is sufficient biomass energy to replace motor fuel and then some... if the energy is not wasted. "
Well duh. Thats the problem with his whole page, its all stuck on a BIG bunch of IFs.
but the biggest problem is turing grain crops into fuel, there are just so many uses for grain crops in everyday products that a slight increase in their pricing because of competition with fuels could force consumer prices up, masking the true cost of these new forms of power creation.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
Seriously, do you think energy conservation and looking for cleaner forms of energy are all in response to a hoax? if so you should consult your mental health professional and up your meds.
Sure coal could be used albeit not very cleanly, but do you think no one dies in mining coal?
Nothing wrong with ethanol.... that figuring out all the problems it has might solve ;)
Like the fact that transporting it more than a few miles to where it is produced removes most of the benefits
Corn is definitely a bad idea for this - the useful output is just far too small - about 5-10% of the biomass. Some interesting research has been done with certain kinds of bateria and soy plants (the whole plants stalk, roots leaves and all) managing to use 90-95% of the biomass as usable energy.
Your point is right though - if the total impact (carbon, polution, use of fossil fuels) to produce is more than the same impact it saves then doing it is worse environmentally than not doing it.
A lot of the advantages of things like ethanol don't deliver large sale benefits - need localised micro production (used sucessfully on farms for methane burning power generation) which in a lot of cases doesn't translate to real world uses.
Persoanlly my hopes are on a combination of tidal (the only non intermittant green energy source), solar where it makes sense (portugal yes, england no), hydro where possible, fision where we have to and fusion as soon as we can - the abington research looked quite promising - I just hope ITER manages to make the technology a net producer.
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We are paying tax money through subsidies for something that's not going to be a long term solution. It's a waste of money and resources that could be spent elsewhere.
There is no such thing as a long term solution. Only transitional solutions.
Even all our sources of uranium will be depleted so day in the next few hundred years.
(Of course to be even more fair we will have to leave the planet to find more sources of hydrogen for fusion in tens of thousand of years, but perhaps it will be a moot point)
That said... We are faced with a short term problem of running out of petroleum oil or at least to a point where it is more expensive to extract it in less than 50 years.
The boat is sinking and even though getting on a rubber raft is not a long term solution, it is better than just jumping in the water feet first because we haven't got a real boat to get into.
Same with oil and ethanol.
"I am the king of the Romans, and am superior to rules of grammar!"
-Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor (1368-1437)
The answer is sitting in the fucking sky.
Solar energy is there waiting to be harnessed.
The smart people will setup solar farms.
They're using their grammar skills there.
But I'd prefer we have 1,000 years to solve that problem than have 100 years or so to solve the current one.
Very well put. There's only one known solution to the problem at hand, and we need to start lighting up one of these plants every two months to get the carbon problem solved - nothing else has a chance of doing it (without 'killing off the human race' as an item on the table),
Besides, we only need enough time on fission to get fusion perfected. That should take less than a hundred years. Then we only need to wait until we, as a race, consider that we have lift into space as a reliable technology. Then we just take all that old fission waste and send it into the Sun for the next generation of solar system to enjoy. And that's assuming we don't have a better solution for it by then.
But, the current course is for nothing to get done and the problem to get worse. The "environmentalist" groups seem to think that's the best course of action (scare-quotes intended) and that implementing wishful thinking is a sufficient plan.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
Maybe I'm not typical.
I'm in the hole of the broadband donut.
Corn ethanol is not green. Greens aren't following your agenda.
Stop getting your perspective on "greens", "environmentalists", and "lefties" from the dirty energy meme-machine and you might find that there are some green environmentalists who know what they are talking about. Many of them are conservative (in the true sense of the term, not like the radical pro-monopoly big-government neo-cons who masquerade as conservatives).
Your statement is essentially the same kind of blind prejudice as "black people all like chitlins and watermelon"; it's a way to depersonalize a whole group of people so you can discount their value.
Our leaders keep trying to find new and exciting ways to supply our energy demand without examining the nature or utility of this demand.
"Nobody" gives a damn about energy. They care about keeping the cars running. The culture will gleefully accelerate toward ultimate destruction so long as this need is met in the short term.
Sustainable energy will come from changing cultural attitudes regarding the worthy expenditures of energy, not a shuffling of environmental issues.
Prepare to be accused of wanting to plunge us back to the stone age. Nevermind that the Hittites mastered iron in OT times and steel production began before the birth of Christ, all without a lick of petroleum.
And we'll have an awful lot of Chevy's lying around with nothing to do. Leaf springs make nice knives that can last for generations if you don't live in a throw away society. Maybe if we didn't toss most of our energy into the midden we'd have more of it go around.
KFG