The point of the article though is that the range would extend to 3560 km, if that is how you want to use the batteries. Otherwise you need ten times less mass in batteries for the same (oops slightly greater) range.
I think your point about continued use of batteries after they are no longer transportation grade is very important. This model is already being commercialized using Tesla Motors' batteries. I estimate here that these used batteries would provide storage of about a half a day's worth of our total generation if our transporation sector were converted to plug in hybrids. With a 45% wind, 45% solar and 10% hydro grid, this would be most or all of the storage we would need. This would allow us to concentrate on the power sources with the highest EROEI and thus increase prosperity as oil depletes.
Nuclear actually has a pretty poor energy return on energy invested. I think we can point more towards oil and hydro as boosting available energy in the last century. One is renewable and one will run out. Fortunately, wind and solar power can scale and not be a drag the way nuclear power is. With these high quality energy sources, meeting our irreducible needs for liquid fuels should be fairly easy.
CR should be doing more installations beyond the TV ones this quarter, but they will be using panels from other manufacturers. These will be systems that will be used to test the billing software and installation methods. So far as I know, the factory has still not been started.
I was hoping more for a hint on the energy requirements for CO2 collection in your neck of the woods, but your point about doing small scale F-T are pretty strong. I would say that one reason for doing it on an industrial scale is that the feedstocks are concentrated. Using atmospheric feedstocks provides a somewhat different situation. In terms of tracking lots of small sources, I think that there are some cost issues involved, though the infrastructure to manage this already exist since we deliver to all those small storage tanks already. The issue of maintaining product quality should be an engineering problem and one would wish for something that just works but it might be necessary to include an array of sensors and controls to provide a feedback loop to handle this. I agree that there might be other ways to use the F-T heat. Chicken houses come to mind. But, I'm not sure that the energy use scale would be such a good match. In any case, the realization that we are better than plants at collecting carbon from the air should be something we all keep in mind going forward because we do need to lay off the ecosystem and there seems to be no good reason not to.
Nice post. Something I've been thinking about is what is our irreducible need for liquid fuels and I think that it really comes down to aviation. Because of this, I'm looking in the direction of using the waste heat from Fischer-Tropsch for home heating and producing aviation fuel using renewable
energy in the home and resuing the current oil/gas delivery system to collect the fuel for delivery to airports. The scale of energy use is similar between home heating and aviation. I've given an outline using zeolite to capture CO2 as a feedstock but I'd be happy to hear from you or Klaus about the potential for using the GRT method in this application. The outline is here: http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/12/jet-fuel.html
I'm interested in ways to produce carbon monoxide to feed the Fischer-Tropsch reaction but I'm not sure that you get away from the need to produce hydrogen. If they gave up on hydrogen, then perhaps they are running into inefficiencies. The temperatures they want for the solar furnace seems high. One can get part of the way to methanol using the Sabatier reaction and skip the formation of carbon monoxide: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sabatier_reaction. So, I'd expect that this will be more common since hydrolysis can be pretty efficient.
With a 25 year guarantee, in a typical US site where the average annual solar resource is 4.5 kWh/m^2/day assuming peak insolation is 1 kW/m^2 so that you have 4.5 hours per day of peak equivilent then at $1/watt the cost of power is $1000/(4.5*365*25 hours)=$0.024/kWh. For large installations, inverters likely run about $0.60/watt over 25 years and putting the panels in place could cost $1.50/watt (including land) so your looking at about $0.075/kWh. This is under the average retail price near $0.11/kWh so that installations with low transmission costs should help to stabilize the cost of electricity with a pretty good return on investment. Things are even more favorable when you compare with daytime electricity sources which tend to be gas rather than coal. Installations in the Southwest probably justify transmission to the Southeast which is probably why some Southwestern senators voted against the energy bill. They can prevent the Southeast from developing their own resource and thus corner the power market. The cost of power in the southwest would be about $0.036/kWh given the low cost of land there. -- Rent solar power for your home: http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/slashdot-users-selling-solar.html
James Hansen recieved a letter from the executive of the National Mining Association trying to ding him for using the Holocaust as a metaphor for species extinction. http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/NMAletters_20071121.pdf. This has gotten some play in the media.
One of those responses objects to his use of the word "creation":
Jim: As a Jew, who is sensitive about misuse of references to the holocaust, I found no problem with your metaphor... nor to your response to the CEO...except for the reference to "creation"!
To me, it seems that scientists should reclaim the word. The biosphere renews itself through on going acts of creation. By defining creation as life on Earth as we know it, it seems to me that ID loses some of its power to persuade those who feel that science does not connect with their religious reading.
Actually, no, the wildlife go into Chernobyl, but they don't come out, at least towards the center. The breeding success of migratory birds that settle there
is poor. So, it is a bit of a blackhole that way.
A bit of detail on deaths in Hiroshima:
Among civilians, possibly 44,000 to 59,000 were killed the day of the bombing, with another 17,000 missing. Subsequent deaths include about 25,000 through the end of August 1945, 9,000 in September 1945, 2,000 in October-December 1945, and 2,500 in 1946. Many of these subsequent deaths involved radiation injuries.
I guess my point about permanence is that once a good wind site is developed you are going to stick with it while a nuclear of coal plant will not outlast the fuel supply. A number of nuclear plants may not make it past sea level rise either: http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/08/cliffhanger.html
It is your concepts of baseload and peak which are hindering your thinking. It is obvious that wind is forecastable and has slow variations in availability when many regions are connected. Thus, fuel based plants such as coal plants can be used as infrequent additions to the system but not
necessarily as spinning reserve. But, if you think about it, hydro plays a role in flood control, so we don't get all uptight if we happen to let water out of a dam without generating some power. We paid for the dam, not the rain. Similarly, increasing wind capacity to the point where we throw 15% away is not a big deal especially if it is done in a way that extends the life of turbines and towers, just as hydro works to preserve dams. But, the situation with wind is even better than hydro. If you look at Fig. 3, as you mentioned, meeting a constant demand, as can be estimated from the hatched areas, greater geographical diversity leads to substantially less "wasted" generation. Comparison with the up time of a single coal or nuclear plant is entirely appropriate in the context of the exercise. It is just the baseload concept that is limiting because it is so closely associated with fuel use now that is causes us to think backwards. One ought to be using fuel as sparingly as possible rather than wasting it on loads that can be covered without fuel use. -- Rent solar power for your home and save: http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/slashdot-users-selling-solar.html
Only North Korea had been a signatory of the NPT. Had other nuclear powers followed the US example in halting reprocessing, the NPT might have been strengthened and greater pressure brought on non-signatories. As it it, there is a percieved lack of commitment among nuclear powers to implement portions of the NPT as written. This situation is so dire now that only complete denuclearization, including ending civilian use of nucelar power, will suffice to end the risk of nuclear war. The risk to US and global security at this point is too great to continue. Over a billion people around the world would die as a consequence of a war between India and Pakistan: http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn12728. The history of nuclear power is a history of proliferation and it is now completely clear that it cannot be used responsibly.
Ummm... Cooling is often done partly by evaporation, just not entirely.
Yes, radioactive iodine is extremely dangerous, very hot. It takes very very little to kill you. Radiation sickness is horrible.
I found your link on cement interesting. It suggests that crushing concrete might help with absorbing CO2. However, you did not read my statement fully. I said that there were irreducible emissions. There are also other emissions which might be reduced through the use of renewable energy but are currently occuring. At present, emissions from nuclear power are about a factor of 5 lower than from coal power. This might reduce somewhat as the method of fuel enrichment changes.
If the world displaces coal with nuclear power, then even your 200 year estimate gives 33 years of fuel. That is not much time to get your breeder program going especially since breeders are not considered commercially viable. Nuclear power is not a real option but rather a dangerous distraction that beguiles some pie-in-the-sky folks who accept nuclear industry propoganda and deception because they think the stuff is cool. It is, rather, hazardous and parasitic. At this point, denuclearization is about our only option since atoms-for-peace is such an abject failure. Throwing breeders into the mix is as foolhardy as it gets.
It does not much matter when you add carbon dioxide to the atmosphere, just that you do it. Waiting for nuclear power means more coal burning in addition to the emissions associated with nuclear power. Wind in the US looks like it will have 4 GW added in 2007, up 60% from 2006. Within a couple of years it start to displace fossil fuels and it does so faster and faster. In the ten or eleven years it would take to bring one new nucelar plant on line, we'll likely see at least 2 shut down, Vermont Yankee and Indian Point so there will be no net nuclear gain. In the year that first new nuclear plant comes on line, wind would add 700 GW of capacity compared to -1 GW for nuclear. Wind also provides a permanent power infrastructure rather than a stop-gap. Solar also has rapid growth potential. Both can be done with essentially zero emissions because they don't require nuclear rated concrete and can use alternatives such as geopolymeric cement for their base support.
The idea is to shut down coal and nuclear power because both are bad. Remember that a nuclear accident makes land permanently unusable. It also leads to many other forms of cancer, not just thyroid.
I'd like to point out a few problems with what you've written:
You argue that coal power plants warm surrounding waters, which is correct, but so do nuclear plants. One on the Tennessee River had to shut down this Summer because it was over heating the water.
You argue that coal mining has killed a lot of people and so it has, but urianium mining and milling is also unsafe.
You say that uranium found in coal produces more radioactive emissions that nuclear power. If you consider that the concentration of uranium in coal ash is pretty much the same as in wood ash (as it must be) then you are really stretching things. And, you've neglected emissions from nuclear accidents in your comparison, which include radioactive iodine.
You negelect further that there are irreducible carbon emissions associated with nuclear power because of the large amount of concrete involved in the construction of nuclear plants.
Nuclear power has many other problems that coal does not have. One of them is that there is only 85 years of fuel left at the present rate of use. Replacing coal with nuclear power would see the fuel run out before the end of the new plants' design lifetimes. Coal will run out as well, but
not at such an added expense.
Coal plants do need to be shut down, but so do nuclear plants, and most immediately those close to the ocean since decommisioning takes time and the London Dumping Convention does not allow nuclear waste to be dumped at sea. With sea level rise possibly near 5 meters this century, those old reactors are going to have to be moved.
Seems to me that the committee that should be looking into the VP is the Senate Ethics Committee. The VP is also President of the Senate, and he seems to consort with criminals.
That is just right. Usually figures are given for tracking concentrators or latitude tilt panels. You can find US maps here: http://www.nrel.gov/gis/solar.html. The units are in kWh/m^2/day which I divide by a kW/m^2 to get hours per day. You'll
notice that in New York, panels do better than tracking concentrators. This is owing to clouds being a bigger problem for concentrators. Tracking panels should do better than latitude tip panels though by something close to but not quite the fraction that tracking concentrators beat latitude tilt panels in the southwest. For worldwide resources you can look here: http://swera.unep.net/.
Hope IBM is not planning on patenting their method. This kind of thing has been studied already to understand the energy savings from recycling solar cells. Recycling solar cells requires about one third the energy of making new cells: http://www.solarworld.de/solarmaterial/english/press/8AV.3.14.pdf. And, basically, you scrape off what was on the waffer before and then start again. Note that in the link, they assume about 2.7 peak equivilent sun hours per day. A typical value for the US is 5 so that the energy payback time would be about 2 years for a new panel and 8 months for a recycled panel. For 40 years of use you get EROEIs of 20 and 60 for new and recycled respectively. But, you have to wait 40 years to start getting the cheaper deal;-) -- Rent solar and save: http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/slashdot-users-selling-solar.html
You presume to much. The transportation cost for moving coal to a power plant is 200 times higher for the amount of energy produced than the transportation cost of taking a solar panel from a factory to your roof. Solar beat nuclear in this measure as well if you consider that uranium is mined in Austraia and enriched in France. Of course it makes sense to make panels where there is hydro power. But, there is hydro power in a lot of places so why the globalization jab? Shipping solar panels a long way is less stupid that shipping coal a long way or uranium a long way, but with the latter two, you don't have much choice, with solar panels you can set up factories in a distributed manner, so you save even more. -- Save with solar power: http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/slashdot-users-selling-solar.html
Congress, by using the capitol police to abrogate the First Amendment right to petition, is responsible for giving the FBI the opening to misuse
the database. Here is an example: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qiradcejA6o.
I had a chance to go into the hearing room of the Justice Committee last spring, and see the staff offices and law books. They were working on the same issue then and were thinking of sending federal marshals to bring in Harriet Miers. The paintings on the walls of past chairpeople showed a sense of seriousness about the business of the committee. Nearly all of these folks are lawyers and have a duty to observe due process. Having this happen is about as large a breach as I can think of without malice playing a role. I would not be too surprised if some one ends up being disbarred over this.
Slashdot Mirror
EPA political appointee #1: "Ford is offering 0.5 billion in campaign contributions if we say no to California..."
EPA political appointee #2: "I'll check with GM to see it they'll raise their offer."
The point of the article though is that the range would extend to 3560 km, if that is how you want to use the batteries. Otherwise you need ten times less mass in batteries for the same (oops slightly greater) range.
I think your point about continued use of batteries after they are no longer transportation grade is very important. This model is already being commercialized using Tesla Motors' batteries. I estimate here that these used batteries would provide storage of about a half a day's worth of our total generation if our transporation sector were converted to plug in hybrids. With a 45% wind, 45% solar and 10% hydro grid, this would be most or all of the storage we would need. This would allow us to concentrate on the power sources with the highest EROEI and thus increase prosperity as oil depletes.
Nuclear actually has a pretty poor energy return on energy invested. I think we can point more towards oil and hydro as boosting available energy in the last century. One is renewable and one will run out. Fortunately, wind and solar power can scale and not be a drag the way nuclear power is. With these high quality energy sources, meeting our irreducible needs for liquid fuels should be fairly easy.
CR should be doing more installations beyond the TV ones this quarter, but they will be using panels from other manufacturers. These will be systems that will be used to test the billing software and installation methods. So far as I know, the factory has still not been started.
I was hoping more for a hint on the energy requirements for CO2 collection in your neck of the woods, but your point about doing small scale F-T are pretty strong. I would say that one reason for doing it on an industrial scale is that the feedstocks are concentrated. Using atmospheric feedstocks provides a somewhat different situation. In terms of tracking lots of small sources, I think that there are some cost issues involved, though the infrastructure to manage this already exist since we deliver to all those small storage tanks already. The issue of maintaining product quality should be an engineering problem and one would wish for something that just works but it might be necessary to include an array of sensors and controls to provide a feedback loop to handle this. I agree that there might be other ways to use the F-T heat. Chicken houses come to mind. But, I'm not sure that the energy use scale would be such a good match. In any case, the realization that we are better than plants at collecting carbon from the air should be something we all keep in mind going forward because we do need to lay off the ecosystem and there seems to be no good reason not to.
Christopher,
Nice post. Something I've been thinking about is what is our irreducible need for liquid fuels and I think that it really comes down to aviation. Because of this, I'm looking in the direction of using the waste heat from Fischer-Tropsch for home heating and producing aviation fuel using renewable energy in the home and resuing the current oil/gas delivery system to collect the fuel for delivery to airports. The scale of energy use is similar between home heating and aviation. I've given an outline using zeolite to capture CO2 as a feedstock but I'd be happy to hear from you or Klaus about the potential for using the GRT method in this application. The outline is here: http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/12/jet-fuel.html
I'm interested in ways to produce carbon monoxide to feed the Fischer-Tropsch reaction but I'm not sure that you get away from the need to produce hydrogen. If they gave up on hydrogen, then perhaps they are running into inefficiencies. The temperatures they want for the solar furnace seems high. One can get part of the way to methanol using the Sabatier reaction and skip the formation of carbon monoxide: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sabatier_reaction. So, I'd expect that this will be more common since hydrolysis can be pretty efficient.
I think that pulling cabon dioxide directly from the atmosphere makes sense in some applications: http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/12/jet-fuel.html
With a 25 year guarantee, in a typical US site where the average annual solar resource is 4.5 kWh/m^2/day assuming peak insolation is 1 kW/m^2 so that you have 4.5 hours per day of peak equivilent then at $1/watt the cost of power is $1000/(4.5*365*25 hours)=$0.024/kWh. For large installations, inverters likely run about $0.60/watt over 25 years and putting the panels in place could cost $1.50/watt (including land) so your looking at about $0.075/kWh. This is under the average retail price near $0.11/kWh so that installations with low transmission costs should help to stabilize the cost of electricity with a pretty good return on investment. Things are even more favorable when you compare with daytime electricity sources which tend to be gas rather than coal. Installations in the Southwest probably justify transmission to the Southeast which is probably why some Southwestern senators voted against the energy bill. They can prevent the Southeast from developing their own resource and thus corner the power market. The cost of power in the southwest would be about $0.036/kWh given the low cost of land there.
--
Rent solar power for your home: http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/slashdot-users-selling-solar.html
In Andrew Revkin's dot earth blog, Hansen lists some responses to the use of that metaphor http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/11/28/averting-our-eyes-james-hansens-new-call-for-climate-action/.
One of those responses objects to his use of the word "creation": To me, it seems that scientists should reclaim the word. The biosphere renews itself through on going acts of creation. By defining creation as life on Earth as we know it, it seems to me that ID loses some of its power to persuade those who feel that science does not connect with their religious reading.
A bit of detail on deaths in Hiroshima: http://www.johnstonsarchive.net/nuclear/radevents/1945JAP1.html
This book chapter makes it quite clear that radiation deaths were substantial: http://www.nap.edu/openbook.php?record_id=940&page=233
It is difficult to see how the article could be so misleading without it being intentionally so.
I guess my point about permanence is that once a good wind site is developed you are going to stick with it while a nuclear of coal plant will not outlast the fuel supply. A number of nuclear plants may not make it past sea level rise either: http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/08/cliffhanger.html
Actually you have not quite got it. Continent scale wind can provide 60% of demand before you have to figure out what to do with excess generation: http://www.belfercenter.org/files/uploads/Continental_Wind_web_Nov07_opt.pdf.
It is your concepts of baseload and peak which are hindering your thinking. It is obvious that wind is forecastable and has slow variations in availability when many regions are connected. Thus, fuel based plants such as coal plants can be used as infrequent additions to the system but not necessarily as spinning reserve. But, if you think about it, hydro plays a role in flood control, so we don't get all uptight if we happen to let water out of a dam without generating some power. We paid for the dam, not the rain. Similarly, increasing wind capacity to the point where we throw 15% away is not a big deal especially if it is done in a way that extends the life of turbines and towers, just as hydro works to preserve dams. But, the situation with wind is even better than hydro. If you look at Fig. 3, as you mentioned, meeting a constant demand, as can be estimated from the hatched areas, greater geographical diversity leads to substantially less "wasted" generation. Comparison with the up time of a single coal or nuclear plant is entirely appropriate in the context of the exercise. It is just the baseload concept that is limiting because it is so closely associated with fuel use now that is causes us to think backwards. One ought to be using fuel as sparingly as possible rather than wasting it on loads that can be covered without fuel use.
--
Rent solar power for your home and save: http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/slashdot-users-selling-solar.html
Only North Korea had been a signatory of the NPT. Had other nuclear powers followed the US example in halting reprocessing, the NPT might have been strengthened and greater pressure brought on non-signatories. As it it, there is a percieved lack of commitment among nuclear powers to implement portions of the NPT as written. This situation is so dire now that only complete denuclearization, including ending civilian use of nucelar power, will suffice to end the risk of nuclear war. The risk to US and global security at this point is too great to continue. Over a billion people around the world would die as a consequence of a war between India and Pakistan: http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn12728. The history of nuclear power is a history of proliferation and it is now completely clear that it cannot be used responsibly.
Ummm... Cooling is often done partly by evaporation, just not entirely.
Yes, radioactive iodine is extremely dangerous, very hot. It takes very very little to kill you. Radiation sickness is horrible.
I found your link on cement interesting. It suggests that crushing concrete might help with absorbing CO2. However, you did not read my statement fully. I said that there were irreducible emissions. There are also other emissions which might be reduced through the use of renewable energy but are currently occuring. At present, emissions from nuclear power are about a factor of 5 lower than from coal power. This might reduce somewhat as the method of fuel enrichment changes.
If the world displaces coal with nuclear power, then even your 200 year estimate gives 33 years of fuel. That is not much time to get your breeder program going especially since breeders are not considered commercially viable. Nuclear power is not a real option but rather a dangerous distraction that beguiles some pie-in-the-sky folks who accept nuclear industry propoganda and deception because they think the stuff is cool. It is, rather, hazardous and parasitic. At this point, denuclearization is about our only option since atoms-for-peace is such an abject failure. Throwing breeders into the mix is as foolhardy as it gets.
There is very little energy to be had from reprocessing. There are also big problems with proliferation.
It does not much matter when you add carbon dioxide to the atmosphere, just that you do it. Waiting for nuclear power means more coal burning in addition to the emissions associated with nuclear power. Wind in the US looks like it will have 4 GW added in 2007, up 60% from 2006. Within a couple of years it start to displace fossil fuels and it does so faster and faster. In the ten or eleven years it would take to bring one new nucelar plant on line, we'll likely see at least 2 shut down, Vermont Yankee and Indian Point so there will be no net nuclear gain. In the year that first new nuclear plant comes on line, wind would add 700 GW of capacity compared to -1 GW for nuclear. Wind also provides a permanent power infrastructure rather than a stop-gap. Solar also has rapid growth potential. Both can be done with essentially zero emissions because they don't require nuclear rated concrete and can use alternatives such as geopolymeric cement for their base support.
The idea is to shut down coal and nuclear power because both are bad. Remember that a nuclear accident makes land permanently unusable. It also leads to many other forms of cancer, not just thyroid.
I'd like to point out a few problems with what you've written:
You argue that coal power plants warm surrounding waters, which is correct, but so do nuclear plants. One on the Tennessee River had to shut down this Summer because it was over heating the water.
You argue that coal mining has killed a lot of people and so it has, but urianium mining and milling is also unsafe.
You say that uranium found in coal produces more radioactive emissions that nuclear power. If you consider that the concentration of uranium in coal ash is pretty much the same as in wood ash (as it must be) then you are really stretching things. And, you've neglected emissions from nuclear accidents in your comparison, which include radioactive iodine.
You negelect further that there are irreducible carbon emissions associated with nuclear power because of the large amount of concrete involved in the construction of nuclear plants.
Nuclear power has many other problems that coal does not have. One of them is that there is only 85 years of fuel left at the present rate of use. Replacing coal with nuclear power would see the fuel run out before the end of the new plants' design lifetimes. Coal will run out as well, but not at such an added expense.
Coal plants do need to be shut down, but so do nuclear plants, and most immediately those close to the ocean since decommisioning takes time and the London Dumping Convention does not allow nuclear waste to be dumped at sea. With sea level rise possibly near 5 meters this century, those old reactors are going to have to be moved.
Seems to me that the committee that should be looking into the VP is the Senate Ethics Committee. The VP is also President of the Senate, and he seems to consort with criminals.
That is just right. Usually figures are given for tracking concentrators or latitude tilt panels. You can find US maps here: http://www.nrel.gov/gis/solar.html. The units are in kWh/m^2/day which I divide by a kW/m^2 to get hours per day. You'll notice that in New York, panels do better than tracking concentrators. This is owing to clouds being a bigger problem for concentrators. Tracking panels should do better than latitude tip panels though by something close to but not quite the fraction that tracking concentrators beat latitude tilt panels in the southwest. For worldwide resources you can look here: http://swera.unep.net/.
Hope IBM is not planning on patenting their method. This kind of thing has been studied already to understand the energy savings from recycling solar cells. Recycling solar cells requires about one third the energy of making new cells: http://www.solarworld.de/solarmaterial/english/press/8AV.3.14.pdf. And, basically, you scrape off what was on the waffer before and then start again. Note that in the link, they assume about 2.7 peak equivilent sun hours per day. A typical value for the US is 5 so that the energy payback time would be about 2 years for a new panel and 8 months for a recycled panel. For 40 years of use you get EROEIs of 20 and 60 for new and recycled respectively. But, you have to wait 40 years to start getting the cheaper deal ;-)
--
Rent solar and save: http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/slashdot-users-selling-solar.html
You presume to much. The transportation cost for moving coal to a power plant is 200 times higher for the amount of energy produced than the transportation cost of taking a solar panel from a factory to your roof. Solar beat nuclear in this measure as well if you consider that uranium is mined in Austraia and enriched in France. Of course it makes sense to make panels where there is hydro power. But, there is hydro power in a lot of places so why the globalization jab? Shipping solar panels a long way is less stupid that shipping coal a long way or uranium a long way, but with the latter two, you don't have much choice, with solar panels you can set up factories in a distributed manner, so you save even more.
--
Save with solar power: http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/slashdot-users-selling-solar.html
Congress, by using the capitol police to abrogate the First Amendment right to petition, is responsible for giving the FBI the opening to misuse the database. Here is an example: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qiradcejA6o.
Past performance is not an indicator?...
I had a chance to go into the hearing room of the Justice Committee last spring, and see the staff offices and law books. They were working on the same issue then and were thinking of sending federal marshals to bring in Harriet Miers. The paintings on the walls of past chairpeople showed a sense of seriousness about the business of the committee. Nearly all of these folks are lawyers and have a duty to observe due process. Having this happen is about as large a breach as I can think of without malice playing a role. I would not be too surprised if some one ends up being disbarred over this.
The summary metions Red Sox pitcher Curt Schilling. Jeff Francis, pitcher for the Rockies is a Physics Major: http://www.usatoday.com/sports/baseball/columnist/bodley/2007-10-23-bodley-column_N.htm.