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Producing Gasoline With Metabolically-Engineered Microorganisms
An anonymous reader writes "For many decades, we have been relying on fossil resources to produce liquid fuels such as gasoline, diesel, and many industrial and consumer chemicals for daily use. However, increasing strains on natural resources as well as environmental issues including global warming have triggered a strong interest in developing sustainable ways to obtain fuels and chemicals. A Korean research team led by Distinguished Professor Sang Yup Lee of the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) reported, for the first time, the development of a novel strategy for microbial gasoline production through metabolic engineering of E. coli."
My poop already comes out black and tarry. Turning it into crude oil is the next logical step.
No sig today...
And how will this will help global warming?
It does solve the big problem and several others. This is for a carbon neutral solution: plants take carbon from the air, this organism turns that into hydrocarbon fuel, which is then burned to return carbon to atmosphere.
Also, straight hydrocarbons rather than the carcinegenic cyclical ones can be produced, with no sulfur or other contamination. this would produce very "clean" fuel
Can you imagine if an invasive form of e.coli that produces large amounts of alkanes displaced e.coli normally occupying the lower bowels? Farts would become much more entertaining!
Bucket seats could take on a new meaning as well...
We can already make Butanol, a 1:1 replacement for gasoline, via the ABE process. The feedstock is any organic material. But we can't actually buy any, because Gevo and Butamax (a holding company owned by BP and Dupont) are fighting over the patents — which should have failed the test for obviousness.
Why would this process wind up any different?
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
And the volume expected from this process when it goes into widespread production, is what percentage of the world's consumption? I mean, is this viable in sufficient quantities, or is it another "coffee grounds into fuel" type deal? (See a slashdot article a couple years back.)
Although, mind you, this may appeal to survivalists. You may not be able to create enough gasoline for the entire countryside, but you might be able to eck out enough for a family.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
Although growing gasoline in a factory like facility certainly beats ripping up the world to have the fuel available it really does have a hidden curse. The idea is to get off of fuels like gasoline entirely and this could perpetuate the use of gasoline. I would prefer the research money be spent on batteries than on producing gasoline.
It would no longer be a fossil fuel if it's not produced by fossils. It would be carbon neutral since it takes carbon to make and is then released, via exothermic reaction, back into the atmosphere.
Is there anything you *can't* make with E.coli? ...
How about competent politicians?
We are currently facing a soil quality and agricultural water source crisis, using farmed plants to supplement our fuel source is not a sustainable process.
The article mentions that people have created hydrocarbons like this before. The problem is always scaling up from lab scale to industrial scale. If the price of oil doubles, this kind of technology might be cost competitive. If oil stays anywhere close to where it is now, I seriously doubt we'll see this make any impact.
It does solve the problem. Atoms are not create or destroyed thru normal chemical means, biology as we know it is pretty much all chemical. All the carbon in the gasoline has to come from somehwere; if you make the somewhere the same atmosphere you dump it into when the gasoline is burned than you don't net out any new carbon in the atmosphere. This is what people mean when they say "carbon neutral" not that carbon isn't part of the process, just that the overall process takes out as much as it puts in.
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We could use only plants that are relatively unchanged over millions of years and whose only close relatives are fossils. We could call it living fossil fuel!
The bacteria, or the material they consume will ultimately have extracted carbon from the air... If production and consumption are roughly equal then you end up with a closed loop. The only problem with fossil fuels is that production is much slower than consumption.
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we don't create more fossils. that's the main problem with fossil fuels.
hint: "fossil".
so either you're trolling the same as poster above you or you didn't think things through.
now the real problem is this: is this cheap enough or not? it has to be cheap enough to be self sustaining for it to be practical.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
yeah, another ignorant green reaction.
First, Fossil Fuel is what comes from the ground after millions of years of biological decay. Nothing today will create "fossil" fuel.
Second, taking CO2 that we have released into the atmosphere and turning it back into hydrocarbon fuel will close the loop so that things will at least not get worse. It might not do a lot to remove 100+ years of excessive burning of fossil fuels, but at least will help to reach a balance where we might be able to remove as much CO2 as we put into the air from burning fuels moving forward. If we reach a balance like that, then nature can do the rest to remove the excessive CO2.
Abandoning hydrocarbons is not a solution. Hydrocarbons are a highly concentrated and relatively easy to transport and store form of energy and ALL other forms of energy production are a lot less efficient in the long run to create the energy we need. That isn't going to change, ever. I would even suggest that being able to hook in solar or wind energy and having them produce hydrocarbons using some process is better than simply abandoning burning "fuel" and relying solely on something that only makes energy when the sun shines or the wind blows.
A system to create a closed cycle where CO2 is released but then pulled back to create fuel is what our civilization needs, not an ignorant reactionary myopic solution like "fossil fuel is bad" so ride a bike bullshit.
I haven't thought of anything clever to put here, but then again most of you haven't either.
Politicians always say that and always raise taxes.
/= tax.
Except it's not a tax, is it? It's not raising any revenue. What it does do is mandate people buy something and if they don't buy it, the government will forcibly extract the money from your account.
That money does not go to the government but rather to private companies. In other words, the government doesn't see penny one of this money, only private companies do.
Therefore, no revenue raising + money to private companies
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
Not true. The problem isn't that we're pumping co2 into the atmosphere, it's that we're pumping co2 into the atmosphere that was sequestered millions of years ago. If we had a process to remove carbon from the atmosphere today only to put it back a week from now, that's effectively a zero impact.
"Written on the pages is the answer to the never ending story..."
Is this going to be just used for replacing gas in our over-engineered ICE cars? If so, then this is potentially very unexciting. Battery tech is surely the future, especially as we're seeing at least 5% gains in energy density year after year.
Granted, if it's as an economical alternative for creating energy other than coal or nuclear for general use, then sure, full steam ahead!
Why OpalCalc is the best Windows calc
The Saudis will put the kibosh on this too.
Isn't that just going to delay the production of more oil? We need bodies in the ground to get the process started.
So you don't think the fact that the carbon from fossil fuels is way underground has some sort of effect? Say like, keeping that carbon out of the atmosphere?
Where does the carbon come from when you are "Using bugs to create more fossil fuels"? Are you expecting microbial alchemy?
So if someone does get a scheme that does a good job of making hydrocarbons using microbes what do you think the effect of pumping surplus back into the ground?
This is no different than car insurance.
For the same reason you should be required to have both. Not having it is simply you taxing me without my consent by using resources and making me pay for them.
There's so much carbon-rich waste that could theoretically be "fuel" for this process, it's about time that people are looking into this possibility.
In a sane competitive entrepreneurial world this would come out of the labs of the big oil companies, or from some "methane alley" start-up investment group. But seeing as how nearly every large tech-based corporation has repeated dropped the ball on follow-on technology and competition, I guess it's just more of the same.
Look, organically produced hydrocarbons, whether from poop, algae or [insert plant of your choice], are still either directly or indirectly dependent on the sun as an energy collector. As such, they are simply inefficient solar energy collection devices that produce a chemical as their output.
All still require infrastructure, water, sunlight and land, which would otherwise be used for human cropland or to support a natural ecology.
So, this might be great for something about the scale of a farm where the outputs weren't being put to any use, but don't expect to significantly add to civilization's energy budget.
Please do not read this sig. Thank you.
'cept that you only need to pay car insurance if you choose to own a car, and then only if you drive on regulated roads...
You need to pay this other insurance if you choose to continue to exist...
Stop being a dipwad pretending that PelosiCare is just like car insurance. It makes you look pathetic.
"His name was James Damore."
Fine, then make it so you can only enter a hospital if you have RomneyCare insurance.
The basic idea is the same. It forces a little personal responsibility. Instead of the current situation where the uninsured go the the ER and skip on the bill.
We can both make stupid names for the ACA, don't do that it makes you look pathetic.
Aren't we supposed to be trying to figure out ways to reduce our dependency on fossil fuels instead of figuring out ways to prolong such dependency?
By the way.... what's up with the new long delays that are required between postings? I used to be able to make another comment after waiting only a couple of minutes... now I have to wait 5.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
Towns have been drowned in pig shit when dams failed. There are plenty of sources of carbon at the moment, thank you. Of course, methane digesters are a proven technology that will also work on pig shit, so it'd be better to just get to work generating power with them, rather than waiting for this pipe dream to become a reality. When people figure out how to make gasoline digesters, we can probably upgrade the methane digesters.
Soil quality is extremely easy to solve. Everyone wants to use pesticides and herbicides out the ass, mostly petrol-based shit and chemical shit and dangerous plant derived shit etc. There are other ways.
Every time I open this argument, somebody comes along with the "Green Revolution" that started all of this heavily-scienced lab bullshit that apparently saved the world from starvation. That's all well and good, but that doesn't mean that's the only direction we can take science; it doesn't all have to happen in a beaker, and we've made great strides in natural science research since then. We know more about the biosphere, and thus can leverage various attributes in new ways.
Bad soil. Let's attack bad soil first.
Farmers have access to a lot of manure. Cow manure, sheep manure, goat shit, chicken shit, the like. They also have access to non-useful plant matter, although some of that goes to ethanol. Farmers will tend to plow manure into the land; good. Do that. Skip the petrol, do this more. We have a lot of regulations here about plowing "natural fertilizer" into the land: it all needs to be used at once in the beginning of the season; this is unsustainable because farmers will add more manure to the top of the land throughout the season, and don't know how much to use in the beginning. This is a real thing. We've had legislative arguments on it. The legislature wants to prevent run-off of cow-shit-based nitrogen sources into the bay here, because algae growth from fertilizer run-off is a real problem; unfortunately, they're encouraging farmers to use chemical nitrogen sources, which doesn't help.
So, drop the chemical fertilizers. Use more cow shit.
Step two: Worms. European Night Crawlers will dig deep into the soil. We bin them as an invasive species, but I don't believe the damage is as bad as people think. There's talk about how worms accelerate the nitrogen cycle in forests and will cause biosphere changes; but I believe that the research is too young to produce anything intelligent and that everything here is conjecture and knee-jerk reaction. I'll add mine to the pile: the forests aren't collapsing overnight and they won't. New seedlings that can handle the new nitrogen cycle better will out-compete new seedlings that can't; over time, the forests will shift toward plants that can better handle living with earthworms, and no major crisis will occur.
European Night Crawlers move through deeper soil, consuming soil and killing bacteria on the soil. They consume the bacteria as food and leave behind processed, crushed soil containing remaining bits of destroyed bacteria and crushed matter. The soil is better aerated, has a high nutrient availability, holds water better, drains better, and is easier for plant roots to take hold in. The soil is effectively cultivated (turned, tilled, etc.) and fertilized continuously. This means ENC greatly improve soil quality.
Red Wigglers are another type of worm. These feed on bacteria present in rotting matter--plant matter that's rotted and softened, or manure. Essentially, Red Wigglers process rotting (i.e. composting) matter into high-quality soil; ENC process soil into high-quality soil, and will further enrich the soil that Red Wigglers produce. Thus manure and hummus tilled into the top layer of soil provides a high-quality basis for a long-running enrichment process that produces and maintains extremely high-quality soil during the growing season.
Our industry is such that we can do this at home and get better quality farm land than farmers have. We have tiny little plots of land in our back yard gardens. There is not a massive, ginormous scale worm farming industry in our country; we can't supply the worms for this (although, given a big stacked worm bed and enough input feed, we could breed enough worms in under a year to support the whole farming industry; they breed fucking fast). Our farming industry also relies largely on petrol and chemical fertilizers; however w
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Farms already use microorganisms metabolize pig and cow waste into methane, in big vats. The resulting 'biogas', can be purified, and used much like natural gas.
Uh, 'fossil' fuels are bad. As would anything that takes something from 30 million years ago and dumps it into a current environment. It's not sustainable and is having undesired side effects.
Diesel is bad too - when produced from oil from fossils.
If we can make gasoline via green methods? Absofucking great. And while I highly doubt this is scalable to current demands, but if it can produce even a small fraction we're better off. Uses that do require the energy density and quick refuel time of hydrocarbon fuel (like the military or even perhaps long haul transport) can use this, while the rest of the population uses more 'modern' renewable fuels.
People in cars cause accidents....accidents in cars cause people
It depends on what the feedstock is. A good example of a bad feedstock is corn for ethanol, it takes a lot of land, water and fertilizer. The fertilizer itself takes a good deal of fuel to make and transport and really cuts into the effectiveness of reducing fuel consumption. But it's still economically viable because of the corn subsidies, so we still have it.
Some examples of better feedstock might be switch grass or algae, though I'm sure there are major concerns with those as well, or we'd be seeing more of them.
A micro-organism capable of producing oil... Wasn't that part of the plot of Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake?
You realize that those "conservatives" shit the bed over the fact that companies were bailed out, right? I like how every argument about socialized healthcare devolves to, "Oh, well, you just don't want people to be healthy. You hate your fellow citizens". No, I don't; and anyone who thinks that is a complete moron. I'm just not fool enough to believe that the world is built out of sunshine and rainbows. National healthcare is financially unfeasible. It cannot sustain itself. Neither can social security, and it never could. The only outcome for this is financial ruin; something that should have happened 3+ years ago. Instead, we've sunk over six trillion dollars, further, into debt. And hurr, hurr. Military bad...I haven't heard that before. You realize that the world is a terrible place, right? I honestly don't think you do. I also think you believe that slavery doesn't exist anymore, and that all the people in the world get along. And, before we debate budgets, let's honestly compare military spending vs. social spending. I'm dead serious, look it up. Fighting two wars doesn't even come close to social security, alone. Supporting Obamacare is so financially irresponsible that it stupefies me; coupled with the moronic holier-than-thou attitude, it's no wonder that people lose their god damn minds. Have you even run the numbers? Have you sat down and tried to see if it would even work? No? Because that's what responsible adults do. Listen, I'd like everyone to have health care. I'd like the world to be a better, perfect place. But I'd also like to have a twelve inch dick, and the capability to shit hundred dollar bills; but that's not going to happen. Wanting something to be true doesn't make it so.
Then stop over fertilizing/pesticide & fracking.
For more details on 'step e', where the fatty aldehyde is converted to the gasoline alkanes, look up the "cer1 enzyme": http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC161066/
This enzyme is used by plants to create waxy coating on their leaves.
I find this to be a great example of what can happen when people are looking cross-disciple for solutions!
It forces a little personal responsibility.
No it doesn't. It absolves people of personal responsibility because no matter what, someone else will be there to pick up the cost.
Smoker? No problem, keep sucking on those cancer sticks because someone else will pay for your medical care. Obese? Those Ho Hos sure do fill you up, don't they? Drug user? Here ya go, keep smoking, injecting and snorting to your heart's content.
This government mandate does absolutely nothing for personal responsibility because no one has to change their ways. You want personal responsibility? Double the cost for those mentioned above and I can guarantee you the medical costs will fall like a stone in a vacuum. As is, no one has to change because someone else gets the tab.
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
Do you know what scales nicely? A thousand different solutions where each won't scale.
If you convert your waste into fuel, you solve two problems: you get a bit of fuel, and you get ride of your waste. It does not need to scale beyond the waste supply for completely solving the second problem, and it will increase the efficiency of the inefficient solar energy collectors we use today.
Now, if you want to help at increasing the efficiency of the crop growing and harvest, go ahead. it'll add (or, more specifically - multiply) to this.
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You do know that Social Security is completely paid for, has always been, through the soc sec trust fund (simplifying here)? The government borrows from social security! Not is it not " financially unfeasible" as you seem to think, but is't been (very) solvent for over 60 years, and with some relatively small adjustments, will be that way for ever.
But I read the rest of your nonsense, and it wouldn't surprise me if you didn't know this.
66 This is no different than car insurance. 99
This is borne of the legal theory that converts birth certificates into motor vehicle titles. However, my body moves on muscular power, so it cannot be defined as a motor vehicle. Since 23 March 2010, You have become a CAR.
Now back to topic.
Everybody dies once. It's always expensive.
The cost to society is that those that die early don't keep paying taxes for their lost days.
So what we want it to encourage smoking, drug taking and obesity among the net takers (bottom 75% and already retired) and discourage it among the net payers (top 25%, still working).
Perverse economic incentives are everywhere. Careful what you wish for.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
WHO RUNS BARTERTOWN?!
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
Reagan's ERs must take everyone already did that.
Smokers are actually cheap, so are the obese. Those healthy bastards live forever and cost a fortune in care when they get old.
So no matter what, another source of energy is responsible for creating the gasoline molecules. If it's solar, why not just power the cars with electricity? Instead they're taking carbon and turning it into carbon dioxide in virtually unlimited amounts. Great idea!
This is exactly how Joules Energy is doing this, only with blue-green algae (cyanobacteria). The advantage of using cyanobacteria is that it uses the sun and our sewage for feed stock. OTOH, by doing e-coli, they will have to feed it corn and other energy expensive feedstock.
My guess is that since Joules Energy made the announcement 2 years ago about what they had worked towards for the previous 8 years, that South Korea is simply playing catch up.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Hydrocarbons aren't totally irreplaceable, batteries could match their energy density and replace them for cars. Turning battery power into kinetic energy is far more efficient than you could ever hope for with hydrocarbons.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
If the ACA is so bad and our HC system is so good, then why does the US pay more per capita and total than any other country by a factor of 2?
If we went to a single payer system, or -any- other system next to letting people die in the street unless they have an insurance transponder, we would be better off.
I've never understood this viewpoint. You say you are conservative, but let the US continue with the worst UHC system in the world, just because you don't like Obama.
Well, I guess you are a shill or have stock with the big health insurance companies, as it is the only rational reason for this viewpoint.
Fine, then make it so you can only enter a hospital if you have RomneyCare insurance.
I have Major Medical you ignorant twat. Unfortunately PelosiCare is about to make my responsible plan where I completely cover my own ass illegal.
Meanwhile the insurance that you have apparently been carrying covers those "surprise" annual visits to the doctor. What a surprise that you get your yearly physical.. lets package that unexpected event into an insurance premiuym and give some fuckwad middle-man a cut...
You people are complete morons. Seriously. Insurance is not for fucking 100% predictable events like your years physical... but there you are... crying that other people arent in your stupid-assed "risk" pool... excuse me if I dont consider it a risk to get an annual checkup.... retard.
"His name was James Damore."
That's some pretty good delusion there.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_density#Energy_densities_of_common_energy_storage_materials
Let us know when batteries get a 60x improvement in energy density.
There are two types of people in the world: Those who crave closure
It'll still get worse without a solar carbon sink.
If they make this stuff, and it works, , , , just think? We can pour it into the ocean!
:O
And then we'll have OCEANS of gasoline!
The other side of the problem is labor costs. Youre talking about sophisticated management practices, which I am specially qualified for. I studied botany and ecology in college, but I havent done any work in,the field because my life is easier as a waiter. Plus the pay is better. Give me a compelling reason to work my ass off getting paid less than what I get now to produce luxury quality food and ill start talking to those farms.
Thats the other problem. Youre concerned with producing high end food products. I want to see a real analysis of the viability of that kind of food production for a nation as large and disbursed as the USA. Do you honestly think that style of economy is even compatible with the American psyche?
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Ever wonder why that is?
Because catching diseases early is cheaper. If annual visits were not covered folks would skip them and more diseases would go untreated until they were much more expensive to deal with.
How about you spend a little less time thinking up insults and a little more contemplating why things might be the way they are.
If bleeding-edge tech counts, how about negative 17 months?
http://hardware.slashdot.org/story/12/04/20/1344223/ibm-creates-breathing-high-density-lithium-air-battery
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
Bad soil. Let's attack bad soil first.
Farmers have access to a lot of manure. Cow manure, sheep manure, goat shit, chicken shit, the like. They also have access to non-useful plant matter, although some of that goes to ethanol. Farmers will tend to plow manure into the land; good. Do that. Skip the petrol, do this more. We have a lot of regulations here about plowing "natural fertilizer" into the land: it all needs to be used at once in the beginning of the season; this is unsustainable because farmers will add more manure to the top of the land throughout the season, and don't know how much to use in the beginning. This is a real thing. We've had legislative arguments on it. The legislature wants to prevent run-off of cow-shit-based nitrogen sources into the bay here, because algae growth from fertilizer run-off is a real problem; unfortunately, they're encouraging farmers to use chemical nitrogen sources, which doesn't help.
So, drop the chemical fertilizers. Use more cow shit.
That sounds just great in a hippy-dippy communish sort of way... There are a lot of practical issues with it, however. The largest being specialization in the areas of farming. The farmers that grow a thousand acres of corn/soybeans are not the same farmers that have heards of cows/pigs. The cow/pig farms generally are not the farmers that have thousands of acres of crops. So, unlike Slashdot, there is just not enough shit to go around.. at least with the farmers that need it.
Much to the mods discredit, you're more ignorant than the GP.
Hydrocarbons are a highly concentrated and relatively easy to transport and store form of energy and ALL other forms of energy production are a lot less efficient in the long run to create the energy we need.
You seem to have driving range confused with efficiency. I should also note that what comes out of the tailpipe is polluting in ways other than CO2 emissions.
And "TheSkepticalOptimist" doth protest too much about CO2. Here is a sample of your concern over global warming:
OMG, Ice is 6th lowest since we decided to give a rat's ass about it. But hey, it was lower 5 more times than now but the green alarmists won't consider that an upward trend.
Recorded history is only 0.00000000625% total of actual history, give or take a few zillionths of a percentage.
GP's confusion at least seems honest compared with the way you keep taking cheap shots at "greens"... even if they're peer-reviewed scientists.
Yeah, the dude is crazy. The same people that would have forced my wife to give birth to a vegetable (and literally spend millions of dollars of my insurer's funds in the process of keeping it somewhat 'alive') somehow can't understand that maybe health care can be sustainable if we stop doing the stupid shit we're stuck with. Why shouldn't we do health maintenance for society and do health insurance for, you know, like insurable events? Sorry, gunshot wound, no insurance means you die, but at least you got vaccinations, physicals, screenings etc while you were alive.
Somehow a huge percentage of drivers manage to comply with near-universal auto insurance coverage requirements- maybe that's because they aren't insuring against empty gas tanks and oil changes.
The cost to society is that those that die early don't keep paying taxes for their lost days.
Which has what to do with this mandate? It's not a tax and their death has no effect on me because I'm still forced to pay my money to a private company, remember? The government doesn't see a penny of this money.
Further, when someone dies early, there is no obligation to society from them. They certainly aren't using the roads any more, don't need military protection, won't collect unemployment if they're laid off, and so on.
Effectively what you're arguing is people need to pay, and pay, and pay, and pay some more, just because. There doesn't need to be a benefit, just so long as they keep paying.
So tell me, how much extra money do you give the government when you pay your taxes? Do you send in a few dollars now and then, above and beyond what you normally pay, to help pay down the debt?
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
That's a 15x improvement.
Good, but still 1/4 of gasoline.
And obviously not out of the lab yet. Even years later.
There are two types of people in the world: Those who crave closure
The problem is mass-manufacturing. You can't make cheap machinery that runs efficiently on whatever fuel happens to be made locally.
Back in the late 1800's and early 1900's, production of fuel oil used for lighting and heating was leaving behind a flammable byproduct which was being dumped into water courses. There were cities where the rivers were flammable due to the pollution. Someone saw this and got the bright idea that, hey, we could put that byproduct to use in something where nobody else cares or makes money from it. So they began using it to power their new automobiles. And just like that, the gasoline engine was born. And then an industry was born, making engines that burn a variant of the byproduct from lamp oil production. And then the lamp oil industry bit the green weenie and changed over to producing gasoline for these fancy new horseless carriages.
Why can't we have engines that run on whatever? Because designing, testing, building, and repairing those engines makes it too expensive. If there's only one type of engine that has to be maintained, mechanics can keep up. But when there are a bunch of different engines for different fuels, the maintenance costs go up, the replacement costs go up, the economies of scale get shot to hell, and everyone ends up paying out the ass for a slightly inferior product to what we have now. Basically, it locks out the little guys.
Then again, that's not a lot different from what we have now, since the oil companies have everyone by the balls and lock out the little guy just because they can.
1/4 of gasoline is actually pretty close in terms of range since electric motors are over 3x, possibly close to 4x as efficient as an ICE. A 1:1 match in energy density would allow an EV to carry 3x as much energy.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
Internal combustion engines are, on average, less than 20% efficient. Motors used in electric cars are around 80% efficient. Probably what the GP was referring to.
The gas may contain 60x more energy, but you're getting at most 15x more to the wheels. And electric systems are smaller so you can stick in a bigger battery to reduce that discrepancy further. Battery tech seems to be improving a lot faster than engine tech, so it's not entirely unreasonable to think batteries may eventually equal or surpass gasoline.
There is so much chicken shit to go around that we carve mountain passes with it. ANFO explosive can cut down a pass in a huge mountain with unbelievable efficacy; one of the more popular ways to generate ANFO is to pump a hole full of chicken shit and then pour in fuel oil (Kerosene, diesel, any grade of Jet Fuel, etc.).
Here on the east coast, farmers have access to enough cow, horse, and chicken manure to fertilize their entire growing season's worth of crops. There are regulations in the way for any addition of "organic fertilizer" after the beginning of the growing season--everything needs to be done on the first application, and the farmers complain that they just can't estimate how much fertilizer they need and must apply more later and so must use chemical fertilizer.
It may be different in the midwest; however, here we have such an abundance of natural fertilizer that it's given away for free in some municipalities where waste is controlled by composting.
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Yeah, but electric motors are 4x more efficient than internal combustion engines, so if it's 1/4 the energy density in storage, it's actually equal once used.
Plus, since electric motors are generally smaller than internal combustion engines, you can stick in more batteries. A 15x improvement in battery storage would actually give you a greater range with an EV than a gas engine...although you still have to figure out a better way to charge the things.
It's not so much that as soil viability. We already manage soil by round-up treating the field, tilling everything over, planting seeds, repeated round-up treatment from time to time if the crop is round-up ready, etc. We also till organic fertilizer (cow shit) into the soil at the first run, and later add chemical fertilizer as needed. We also apply pesticides by air spraying.
We do this for crop density, but it's not a great practice to keep the soil viable. Too much chemical herbicide treatment and soil depletion. The soil is kept viable by the addition of chemical fertilizers and a lesser addition of organic matter. My suggestion is merely that we could greatly improve soil viability by using more organic fertilizer (manure, compost, etc.) between crops and applying worms for continuous enrichment; this has the advantage of improving soil quality continuously in many ways beyond simple nutrient content, but the caveat that use of chemical herbicides and pesticides could harm the worms to a point that compromises their viability for this use. That means we would also need to grow food with worm-safe weed and pest control practice--either alternate practices or restriction to chemicals which do not harm worm viability.
It appears Round-Up may be toxic to red worms. From this paper the author conjectures that it may only kill smaller red worms; I conjecture that it could be killing a random subset (variation in tolerance), sterilizing (breeding problems), killing eggs, or killing young worms. A random subset would be the best possible outcome here, as a 20% higher mortality rate at random would still retain viability. Propagation problems (breeding, egg destruction, or death of juveniles) would be the worst, as this would cause a steady population decline.
Pesticides will likely kill worms. Pyrethrin will, for example.
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"one of the more popular ways to generate ANFO is to pump a hole full of chicken shit and then pour in fuel oil"
What are you smoking? ANFO is ammonium nitrate with 6% fuel oil added. Bird droppings don't contain any significant amount of AN.
Avantslash: low-bandwidth mobile slashdot.
http://newscenter.lbl.gov/news-releases/2010/01/27/microbes-produce-biofuels/
All that gasoline will seriously harm, all the GMO transposed poor little flora and fauna - and cells - that are turning my guts into inflamed mush. Just when I was getting sorta accustomed to it, too. This must be backlash from the oil cartels. Some sort of gut-colonizing male envy, or something like that. .... thars a gonna be a rrrrrummmble!
They'll get apically sued, though, good and thorough. Tuoblasfemo considers anything colonized by "its" genes as its own "personal" property. When the gasoline damages them
How much money do you think is in the Social Security trust fund?
Having watched a Discovery Channel special where they actually piped chicken manure and fuel oil into a cavity carved into a stone outcropping to blast a passage for a roadway, I can say that you're wrong. This is common practice here.
Short version: It happens to actually work in real life and gets used on an industrial scale. That makes it a real thing.
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Even with today's technology, cost is the only thing keeping your average Joe from driving an electric car. A 400 mile range and quick recharges would be great, but there are a whole lot of us in families with 2 cars where one is used primarily to commute. My wife only needs to go 10 miles every day. A 100 mile range would give here a ridiculous margin of safety.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
Here the private insurance companies actively encourage and pay for the yearly checkups because prevention is way cheaper than medication and early problem recognition is also cheaper than healing an advanced stadium of any illness. Who is the complete moron now, retard?
"It's such a fine line between stupid and clever" -- David St. Hubbins, Spinal Tap
Your the one who suggested taxing those who are going to put themselves into an early grave more. Do they have a lifetime tax obligation?
A Holy roller who lives a life of misery and self denial is going to cost more for lifetime healthcare then a reprobate who will die before 50. Add in the misery that they put on those around them and they should surely be taxed more.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
A few days ago I saw an interesting comment about alternative fuels that re-cast the issue for me.
Namely: they're a distraction. By focusing on the "greenness" of the fuel for cars, be it gas, ethanol, hydrogen, CNG, electricity...we ignore the problem of operation space and storage space (not to mention, the inefficiency, energy-wise, of moving 2 tons of metal just to move one person.) As population grows, we don't have space for everyone to bop around by themselves in their car, nor do we have the space to put them when they're not in use. Bloomberg figured this out a couple of years ago, for example, and hence his strong push of cycle infrastructure in NYC, to great result.
Sure, more cars = not a problem in the middle of Nebraska. But in any metropolitan area, traffic is an enormous burden, and we cannot just throw more pavement at the problem. It's well known that adding lanes doesn't add capacity. We also don't have room for all these cars to park, at least not without paving every square inch in sight.
We need to get people out of their cars. That means higher gas taxes (which haven't been adjusted in decades), car-sharing systems, legal protection for pedestrians and cyclists, and infrastructure spending on pedestrian walkways, cycleways, usable long distance/regional/local public transit (and ending the insistence that public transit pay for itself, something "private" road/infrastructure users aren't expected to do). For example: it is *idiotic* that you cannot take luggage or a bicycle with you on the entire Amtrak northeast corridor.
Funding alternative fuels is fine, but don't do it if you won't fund alternative transportation infrastructure as well. Imagine what $2BN (what Obama wants to spend on "alternative fuels") can buy in terms of cycling and pedestrian infrastructure.
Please help metamoderate.
In other words, path dependence.
This government mandate does absolutely nothing for personal responsibility because no one has to change their ways.
GP meant personal responsibility in terms of having insurance and not skipping out on the bill, which was a major problem before the mandate, driving everyone's healthcare costs up.
He didn't mean personal responsibility in general.
The obesity epidemic has nothing to do with health insurance. People clearly don't make choices as to what they eat based on whether it's going to give them health problems, it's even more ludicrous to think they will change their eating habits based on health insurance premiums.
For that matter, people aren't skipping healthcare based on not having insurance. They might skip preventative care, raising healthcare costs in general, but if they have a heart attack, they go to the hospital. If they have your insurance, your premiums go up to cover it. If they don't, they likely don't have assets to cover it, they go into bankrupcy, the hospital raises its fees to cover the lost money, your insurance premiums go up to cover paying those increased fees. You pay for it either way, everyone having insurance is just more efficient and avoids people losing their houses, which is good for no one besides banks.
Why can't we have engines that run on whatever
Because 'whatever' is harder to control and, above all else, tax. Bach when bio-diesel (from used cooking oil) was just becoming popular, the state practically shit itself to round up all the source stock and run it through its own licensed reprocessors. Just to protect the road tax revenue that might have been lost to a couple of hippies processing their own restaurant grease.
Diesels are less popular in the USA (and diesel fuel doesn't have the same tax breaks it does in the EU) because the use of petrol in passenger vehicles and diesel in commercial/military vehicles makes it easier to curtail passenger car use when we go to war with our fuel sources again. By directing refineries to change their product mix, the government can throttle the private sector market without adversely affecting commercial and military operations. Thus reducing the overall demand for scarce crude.
Have gnu, will travel.
The dinosaurs already had this technology, but it got out of hand and melted them down into oil and pretty much wiped them out.
Hydrocarbons may be inefficient to produce "from poop, algae or [insert plant of your choice]", but they are a nifty way to store energy. They're fairly energy dense, easy to transport and store well for reasonably long durations.
Until commercially available batteries approach their power density, hydrocarbon fuels aren't going away.
Just sayin'.
This. Driving a car on a public road is a privilege, not a right. Existing is a right, not a privilege.
Being human only has a 93% mortality rate.
7% of all humans who have ever lived are still alive today.
http://what-if.xkcd.com/27/
"The max energy density of lithium-air batteries is theorized to be around 12 kWh/kg"
In other words, that's precisely what they didn't achieve. Moreover, 12kWh/kg is 43MJ/kg, which matches the energy density of pure lithium as listed on http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_density. So not only is this the theoretical energy density of lithium without all the parts that make it a battery, it also ignores the fact that lithium peroxide has about 3.5 times the weight of the lithium, so the theoretical energy density per kg of "ash", which has to be carried around, is again 3.5 times lower.
So, please let us know when batteries get a 60x improvement in energy density and a 3x improvement in theoretically possible energy density, OK?
Is chicken poop + fuel oil explosive? Probably.
Is chicken poop + fuel oil ANFO? No.
It's not a traditional lithium battery...hint: why don't ICE cars need to carry their own oxygen?
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
The purchase price of a new electric is pretty much in line of other new cars. So either a new car is afordable or it isn't.
You can lease the basic model of a Nissan Leaf (which gets about 90 miles on a full charge if you drive it in "granny mode") for about $240/mo after taxes, and fully charge it to the extent of the lease mileage for $20/mo in electricity. That's $260/mo for 1000 miles. 26 cents a mile might not be worth it to replace your current car (unless you only get 14mpg), but electric cars with (near) 100 mile range aren't expensive.
Purchaing? About $25,000 after the tax credit -- which if you can afford a new car, you'll likely qualify for. Pretty competitive for new cars.
The purchase price of a new electric is pretty much in line of other new cars. So either a new car is afordable or it isn't.
No it isn't. There aren't very many electrics available, but they are all pretty pricey compared to their gasoline competition. A Leaf is about $21,000 (subsidized!). A Versa is about $7000 less than that... $9000 if you don't need the hatchback. If you think the Leaf is nicer than a Versa, then use the Sentra, which is still $5000 less than a Leaf. The electric Focus is a somewhat astonishing $27,500 (subsidized!). This is a car that starts at $16,000. You have to get up into the Tesla price range before the battery pack becomes less of an issue, and at that point why are you even looking at the gas mileage?
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
"Metabolically engineered"? Why not just use the usual name? These are GMO. And while I have concern with disseminating GMO crop outside, those one will live in a factory, no problem for me.
so we should use plants that grow on scrubland unsuitable for growing food, that has trememdous biomass per acre like switchgrass. we have a lot of scrubland in the USA
If the ACA is so good, why doesn't Congress beta-test it first and let us know how they like it in a year?
Why? Because it is a huge turd, and they know it. It was written by a committee of lawyers and insurance companies, and then patch-worked by Senators in closed door meetings. Then it was voted on, without being completely read or understood (because it was yet another crisis that just had to be solved NOW), and then only after bribing certain wavering Senators with special exemptions for their states.
So it kills jobs, raises prices, reduces coverage, and essentially eliminates marketplace competition. Not to mention the complete elimination of privacy between you and the government. I mean, they are SO good at keeping private data - private, right?
What could possibly go wrong with that?
Why not start with say, Doctors - to write a healthcare bill?
They would do things like - limit malpractice, so they don't have to run every test in the book to avoid being sued for missing something. They would tell you to ditch insurance all-together for non catastrophic events, so they can again practice medicine, instead of medical billing.
No, that would make sense - and not line the pockets of politicians, trial lawyers, and favored insurance companies. We can't have that... can we?
Actually the problem is that 3rd world nations burn a lot of wood (bad since it both pollutes AND reduces a carbon sink - trees), coal, and animal dung with no pollution control equipment at all. On the other hand, our cars and power plants here put out so much less pollution than we did 50 years ago, that there is not much more we can do to make them cleaner. In fact, today's diesel engines actually clean up the air since what goes out the tailpipes is cleaner than what goes into the engine.
So - want to get rid of bulk CO2 sources? Wipe out 3rd world nations. Problem solved.
Yes - that is harsh, but that is the simple truth.
Compared to current solar photovoltaics and solar CO2 reduction, they're actually really efficient devices that produce a chemical as their output.
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
Admittedly, the term ANFO is often abused. On the other hand, chicken crap contains a LOT of ammonium nitrate, so will contain a significant amount of ANFO if mixed with fuel oil. The ammonia comes from urine and the nitrogen comes from a high amount of nitrogen present in chicken manure; bacteria ferment urea into ammonia and then nitrates, and can and do fixate ammonium nitrate from resultant compounds eventually.
I guess it's like how ground, wet barley that's fermented is not beer, because it's a messy pile of muck that happens to contain fermented barley (alcohol, basically beer).
Technically, in this case, you could say you manufactured and detonated ANFO--it works, it does exactly that, and it's effective--but you can't can this shit and call it ANFO. So whatever.
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If annual visits were not covered folks would skip them and more diseases would go untreated
If you want to bring the whole self-interest of the individuals and its-larger-effects into it, then you just trashed every talking point that you had because the self-interest will always be to pay as little as possible for the most service. The problem is that when annual checkups are handled by a middle-man, that middle-man gets a cut and therefore this cannot ever then fall under the "as little as possible" metric.
So what people will not do is go without insurance entirely and then pick up a plan on the way to the hospital. Its amazing how you folks can point out existing effects that self-interested people introduce but completely fail to see what effects those same self-interested people will introduce under your proposed new frameworks meant to prevent the previous effects.
You always make it worse because resources cannot be centrally managed as efficiently as distributed management, but you just don't get that. You folks no longer believe in God, but still want there to be a God-like entity that takes care of you. Thats now how reality really is. There is no God and there is no replacement for God. You need to be responsible for your own shit.
"His name was James Damore."
Here the private insurance companies actively encourage and pay for the yearly checkups
To be quite precise they want the rate of yearly physicals under their plans to be higher than the rate of yearly physicals under their competitors plans, so that they can offer a better price than their competitors for the same plans.
This in no way means that its rational to have the insurance company be a middle-man in the annual-physical transaction. The insurance company has not added any value with regards to annual checkups. They didnt make the checkup more efficient.. they still made it less efficient regardless of how much they push for you to get one.
The fact that you thought that you had a valid point as to why insurance companies should be a middle-man when paying for your annual checkup makes YOU the retard.
"His name was James Damore."
Making gasoline is not the activity that causes global warming, it's burning the stuff that does that, innit?
Dude, you are calling other idiots and retards, but at the same time you are talking about a higher rate of yearly checkups. I guess it is the Dunning-Kruger effect at work here.
"It's such a fine line between stupid and clever" -- David St. Hubbins, Spinal Tap
but at the same time you are talking about a higher rate of yearly checkups.
The rate is of people who get them, idiot.
3 out of 10 get an annual checkup, vs 5 out of 10 get an anual checkup. One is a higher rate than the other. What everyone here can now conclude about you is that you dont even have a basic grasp of the terminology used in industry, yet are pretending to be an expert about shit.
You arent an expert. You are ignorant. A complete lack of knowledge in which to form an informed opinion about anything.
"His name was James Damore."
Yup, definitely Dunning-Kruger. And instead of admitting your error you are trying to make excuses about you using some professional jargon.
I don't need to be an expert to tell that you are full of yourself. It is sort of obvious to even a layman.
"It's such a fine line between stupid and clever" -- David St. Hubbins, Spinal Tap