Obama's EPA just gave several food-based biofuels failing emissions standards and disqualified them from funding. I live Des Moines, IA . Some pretty seriously butthurt farmers in the Des Moines Register online comments on Tuesday over that.
Sure you won't get the state level politicians to dump soy diesel and corn ethanol, but if you get the national ones to do it then eventually it will be untenable for the state to keep supporting it.
Corn ethanol is still a good anti-knocking fuel additive to my knowledge.
there is very little water lost, it's a closed loop system. and I'm as enviromentally friendly as you come without going full-stupid greenpeace or PETA style. You're acting as if we have to pave over the entire area for this infrastructure. You don't.
PS: since it's a closed loop system and even deserts have aquifers you don't have to "truck in water". As for "trucking out product" it's a lot shorter of a trip than Middle East->Texas.
i know the phtysics of UV degrading plastics, but then again most of the applications im seeing aren't using your normal plastics. They seem perfectly capable of turning a profit.
As for yuor "blah blah combine" combines don't exactly work on HYDROPONIC CROPS...
Yes you have some valid points about wear and tear, but apparently all analysts and people experimenting with it think that at $50/barrel that Algal Oil is perfectly economically viable.
And "charge packs" that stay permanently attached then "flood charge" EV packs also stabilize the grid [more reliably than EVs] because they're permanent fixtures. They can soak up excess production and compensate for excess load.
Yes the grid needs some improvements for Green energy [especially solar and wind] but it's not that hard. Hydrogen engines are an interesting idea, but if we can get better energy storage technology like EEStor not being full of crap then Hydrogen engines will be obsolete before seeing mass production.
now you're asking leading questions with false information in the lead.
You just tossed academic honesty out the window and proved that you are not worth trying to discuss this topic with as you have your conclusion and are trying to find facts to support it. Not drawing a conclusion from the facts.
Hence why I said "modern energy" was trying to imply technological energy.. or whatever we want to call it - not "food energy" for consumption by life forms:D
Hydroponic Algae is several orders of Magnitude less complex than Hydroponic food crops.
Algae is a free floating aquatic plant so a lot of the labor intensities go away in the blink of an eye, and it has a higher plant density than hydroponic corn.
Hydroponic Wheat/Corn/etc is more expensive because it's wasteful and increases the energy costs associated.
Need to separate your Algae from the water? Sieve.. isn't so simply for corn, etc as they have to sit in racks and only their roots are being bathed and all kinds of other complexities.
All you need to grow hydroponic algae is water circulation, sunlight, carbon dioxide and some nutrients in the water [clean up fertilizer polluted water anyone?]
and the "wear and tear" on transparent plastic tubes that simply have algae-bearing water running through them isn't going to be nearly as bad as other hydroponics.
I wouldn't be suprised. I'd have to look more into it but i still think bison probably in the long run end up being better economics - but it would have to *gasp* go back in time effectively to the old cattle ranching style.
Aglae can produce oil instead of ethanol. Oil that can be treated just like light sweet crude at the refinery, with a lot less impurities [so it's easier to refine].
So to not do something stupid like Algae Ethanol and do Algae Oil the biggest advantage is it's a potentially carbon neutral drop in replacement that can be used in existing gasoline and diesel engines.
If you can get efficient storage of electricity (like hopefully EEStor isn't full of it) a pure-eletric system will be better - but at the same time we can cut our greenhouse gas emissions massively by using Algal Oil as a drop in replacement for fossil oil.
Now as gas/diesel demand drops down in about 50 years we can do other things with that algae production infrastructure I'd imagine.
I said "Food crops as energy sources was never a good idea" and then talked about a vastly more viable alternative.... i'm confused as to what you're trying to say.
Agreed... pump em full of Algal Oil produceed biodiesel... instant carbon neutrality [assuming all energy used for pumps, etc in the production plant is carbon neutral which can be done]
That's the nice thing about using Algal Oil as a drop in replacement for fossil oil - it's chemically identical but all that carbon in it was sucked out of the atmosphere.
Food crops as energy sources was never a good idea, we didn't breed them for their modern harvestable energy content, and even if we did we'd be offsetting fuel crops. Algal Oil is a MUCH better biofuel solution as it can be build anywhere you have the following things:
A) Land [cheaper the better] B) Source of Water [doesn't neccesarily need to be fresh or particularly clean, in fact fertilizer polluted water might even be a good thing] C) Source of Carbon Dioxide [clean CO2.. so cannot pull it straight from the air, have to filter it.. but pretty much everywhere] D) Sunlight
And it already works, we have "pilot plants" already cranking it out.
Don't have to offset prime forest or prime agricultural - vast stretches of the semidesert southwest would be usuable.
Sun's energy output has been at a cyclic low for an unusual amount of time since early 2008, global average temperature still increase. CO2 raising the temperature causes more H2O vapor which then raises the temperature - so it is a self-amplification.
We know pretty well how CO2 load in the atmosphere relates to temperature as we have pretty freaking good geological records that can tell us quite a lot.
As one Farscape character would say "The Imperfection is yours".
I shouldn't have to teach you 9th grade rudimentary earth science. Guess you came from one of the bottom 25 education states.
don't confuse an error of recollection with intentional revisionism. Anyway the real period of laissez-faire/libertarianism was late 1800s through early 1900s.. probably 1880 to 1920 [at the latest]
You don't have to remove all of a regulation to weaken them enough to start causing problems - the world isn't binary, it's analog.
You might say the most prosperous, the majority of Americans at the time would have lynched you for it - because they were being raped [figuratively] by the robber barons every day.
As for "socialism having failed" except for the fact that those policies did indeed have measurable positive effect on the economy. IF you want a first hand source I will call my relatives who are old enough to have lived through it. Just because a depression is long doesn't mean its the fault of the policies trying to bring us out of it - you could have a policy of the purest win but still take a long time to undo the damage. Building things always takes longer than tearing them down.
I clearly can see that I'm not going to get through your Rosy-Glasses of Shortsightedness -10 [Cursed] when it comes to economic policy.
I have a proposal - why don't all the libertarians in the United States move to Texas and Texas withdraw from the union. We'll take back all our nationally owned hardware (all of NASA stuff, military assets, etc) and do what Zeddicus Zuu'l Zorander did the Midlands: let you suffer from the consequences of your own actions.
Texas is already pretty crappy on a lot of measures [education anyone?] because of their libertarian/republican crap government. Without the rest of the United States to come save you from your own policies where do you think they'd be?
A) Um... how exactly do you claim I said the exact opposite of what I said in regards to the economists
B) Hoover changed policies mid-flight when it was clear his initial ones where wrong. atleast if i remember my history correctly
C) I brought up the Laffer Curve preemptively - most libertarians and republicans like to toss it around as if it says "cutting taxes is always the right thing to do!"
D) Yes because it couldn't possibly be that we made banks not be idiots, they did it all on their own. The sudden return to bank stupidity when those regulations were gutted is just completely a coincidence.
Sorry buckoo. However you want to try to cut it we've TRIED libertarianism before. It doesn't work. It cannot work in a modern society.
Yes because they're too busy believing that it's a "vast liberal conspiracy" since their corporate-fellating information sources feed them that, and since climate science is so complex that things that to a layman seem like counter-evidence actually are evidence.
Like Antarctica getting more snow a year is actually a sign of a warming climate in Antarctica.
Henry Wallace was right. The American fascist does work by polluting the streams of information.
read the entire thread, I've posted a number of pieces of information with source citations.
like the fact that the atmospheric carbon load is the highest it's been in 20myr and that it's growing at the fastest rate in the last.4 Ma. Oh how about the tidbit that the steady state carbon load in the atmosphere has increased 50% since the start of the industrial revolution.
The simple fact is you're flat wrong, the evidence is all around you: we could literally beat you over the head with a college-phsyics-textbook sized tome detailing the evidence and you still wouldn't believe it. Because you don't care about evidence, you only care about politics./Al Gore is a hypocrite.
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Obama's EPA just gave several food-based biofuels failing emissions standards and disqualified them from funding. I live Des Moines, IA . Some pretty seriously butthurt farmers in the Des Moines Register online comments on Tuesday over that.
Sure you won't get the state level politicians to dump soy diesel and corn ethanol, but if you get the national ones to do it then eventually it will be untenable for the state to keep supporting it.
Corn ethanol is still a good anti-knocking fuel additive to my knowledge.
there is very little water lost, it's a closed loop system. and I'm as enviromentally friendly as you come without going full-stupid greenpeace or PETA style. You're acting as if we have to pave over the entire area for this infrastructure. You don't.
PS: since it's a closed loop system and even deserts have aquifers you don't have to "truck in water". As for "trucking out product" it's a lot shorter of a trip than Middle East->Texas.
i know the phtysics of UV degrading plastics, but then again most of the applications im seeing aren't using your normal plastics. They seem perfectly capable of turning a profit.
As for yuor "blah blah combine" combines don't exactly work on HYDROPONIC CROPS...
Yes you have some valid points about wear and tear, but apparently all analysts and people experimenting with it think that at $50/barrel that Algal Oil is perfectly economically viable.
BTW: bioplastics.
And "charge packs" that stay permanently attached then "flood charge" EV packs also stabilize the grid [more reliably than EVs] because they're permanent fixtures. They can soak up excess production and compensate for excess load.
Yes the grid needs some improvements for Green energy [especially solar and wind] but it's not that hard. Hydrogen engines are an interesting idea, but if we can get better energy storage technology like EEStor not being full of crap then Hydrogen engines will be obsolete before seeing mass production.
now you're asking leading questions with false information in the lead.
You just tossed academic honesty out the window and proved that you are not worth trying to discuss this topic with as you have your conclusion and are trying to find facts to support it. Not drawing a conclusion from the facts.
Hence why I said "modern energy" was trying to imply technological energy.. or whatever we want to call it - not "food energy" for consumption by life forms :D
Hydroponic Algae is several orders of Magnitude less complex than Hydroponic food crops.
Algae is a free floating aquatic plant so a lot of the labor intensities go away in the blink of an eye, and it has a higher plant density than hydroponic corn.
Hydroponic Wheat/Corn/etc is more expensive because it's wasteful and increases the energy costs associated.
Need to separate your Algae from the water? Sieve.. isn't so simply for corn, etc as they have to sit in racks and only their roots are being bathed and all kinds of other complexities.
All you need to grow hydroponic algae is water circulation, sunlight, carbon dioxide and some nutrients in the water [clean up fertilizer polluted water anyone?]
and the "wear and tear" on transparent plastic tubes that simply have algae-bearing water running through them isn't going to be nearly as bad as other hydroponics.
In short: bad comparison.
I wouldn't be suprised. I'd have to look more into it but i still think bison probably in the long run end up being better economics - but it would have to *gasp* go back in time effectively to the old cattle ranching style.
Gas can be renewal too, just don't make it from fossil sources
See http://tech.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1225951&cid=27864987
Aglae can produce oil instead of ethanol. Oil that can be treated just like light sweet crude at the refinery, with a lot less impurities [so it's easier to refine].
So to not do something stupid like Algae Ethanol and do Algae Oil the biggest advantage is it's a potentially carbon neutral drop in replacement that can be used in existing gasoline and diesel engines.
If you can get efficient storage of electricity (like hopefully EEStor isn't full of it) a pure-eletric system will be better - but at the same time we can cut our greenhouse gas emissions massively by using Algal Oil as a drop in replacement for fossil oil.
Now as gas/diesel demand drops down in about 50 years we can do other things with that algae production infrastructure I'd imagine.
even without the "think of the children" that's still a waste of time compared to what I discuss here: http://tech.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1225951&cid=27864987
so.. you're agreeing with me?
I said "Food crops as energy sources was never a good idea" and then talked about a vastly more viable alternative.... i'm confused as to what you're trying to say.
Agreed... pump em full of Algal Oil produceed biodiesel... instant carbon neutrality [assuming all energy used for pumps, etc in the production plant is carbon neutral which can be done]
That's the nice thing about using Algal Oil as a drop in replacement for fossil oil - it's chemically identical but all that carbon in it was sucked out of the atmosphere.
I make plenty thank you very much anonymous coward. how about you have the balls to post under your actual posting name.
I hold a Bachelor of Sciences in Computer Science... not like I'm some poor mechanic from Alabama.
We can get fossil fuels out of our energy system right now with drop in non-fossil replacements like Algal Oil [ see my discussion of it in this thread http://tech.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1225951&cid=27864987 ]
I think it's pretty clear what they are saying: with bioelectricity you get more harvastable energy per acre of planting. Crops take space to grow.
but.... then also see: http://tech.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1225951&cid=27864987
food crops->energy = ill advised
Food crops as energy sources was never a good idea, we didn't breed them for their modern harvestable energy content, and even if we did we'd be offsetting fuel crops. Algal Oil is a MUCH better biofuel solution as it can be build anywhere you have the following things:
A) Land [cheaper the better] .. so cannot pull it straight from the air, have to filter it.. but pretty much everywhere]
B) Source of Water [doesn't neccesarily need to be fresh or particularly clean, in fact fertilizer polluted water might even be a good thing]
C) Source of Carbon Dioxide [clean CO2
D) Sunlight
And it already works, we have "pilot plants" already cranking it out.
Don't have to offset prime forest or prime agricultural - vast stretches of the semidesert southwest would be usuable.
Sun's energy output has been at a cyclic low for an unusual amount of time since early 2008, global average temperature still increase. CO2 raising the temperature causes more H2O vapor which then raises the temperature - so it is a self-amplification.
We know pretty well how CO2 load in the atmosphere relates to temperature as we have pretty freaking good geological records that can tell us quite a lot.
As one Farscape character would say "The Imperfection is yours".
I shouldn't have to teach you 9th grade rudimentary earth science. Guess you came from one of the bottom 25 education states.
they weren't my estimates - and if the numbers in an estimate are wrong the estimate is wrong.
snarky says what?
don't confuse an error of recollection with intentional revisionism. Anyway the real period of laissez-faire/libertarianism was late 1800s through early 1900s.. probably 1880 to 1920 [at the latest]
You don't have to remove all of a regulation to weaken them enough to start causing problems - the world isn't binary, it's analog.
You might say the most prosperous, the majority of Americans at the time would have lynched you for it - because they were being raped [figuratively] by the robber barons every day.
As for "socialism having failed" except for the fact that those policies did indeed have measurable positive effect on the economy. IF you want a first hand source I will call my relatives who are old enough to have lived through it. Just because a depression is long doesn't mean its the fault of the policies trying to bring us out of it - you could have a policy of the purest win but still take a long time to undo the damage. Building things always takes longer than tearing them down.
I clearly can see that I'm not going to get through your Rosy-Glasses of Shortsightedness -10 [Cursed] when it comes to economic policy.
I have a proposal - why don't all the libertarians in the United States move to Texas and Texas withdraw from the union. We'll take back all our nationally owned hardware (all of NASA stuff, military assets, etc) and do what Zeddicus Zuu'l Zorander did the Midlands: let you suffer from the consequences of your own actions.
Texas is already pretty crappy on a lot of measures [education anyone?] because of their libertarian/republican crap government. Without the rest of the United States to come save you from your own policies where do you think they'd be?
A) Um... how exactly do you claim I said the exact opposite of what I said in regards to the economists
B) Hoover changed policies mid-flight when it was clear his initial ones where wrong. atleast if i remember my history correctly
C) I brought up the Laffer Curve preemptively - most libertarians and republicans like to toss it around as if it says "cutting taxes is always the right thing to do!"
D) Yes because it couldn't possibly be that we made banks not be idiots, they did it all on their own. The sudden return to bank stupidity when those regulations were gutted is just completely a coincidence.
Sorry buckoo. However you want to try to cut it we've TRIED libertarianism before. It doesn't work. It cannot work in a modern society.
a lot of the estimates i had see say 3.6% .. but after looking up numbers myself those are quite clearly wrong.
Yes because they're too busy believing that it's a "vast liberal conspiracy" since their corporate-fellating information sources feed them that, and since climate science is so complex that things that to a layman seem like counter-evidence actually are evidence.
Like Antarctica getting more snow a year is actually a sign of a warming climate in Antarctica.
Henry Wallace was right. The American fascist does work by polluting the streams of information.
read the entire thread, I've posted a number of pieces of information with source citations.
like the fact that the atmospheric carbon load is the highest it's been in 20myr and that it's growing at the fastest rate in the last .4 Ma. Oh how about the tidbit that the steady state carbon load in the atmosphere has increased 50% since the start of the industrial revolution.
The simple fact is you're flat wrong, the evidence is all around you: we could literally beat you over the head with a college-phsyics-textbook sized tome detailing the evidence and you still wouldn't believe it. Because you don't care about evidence, you only care about politics. /Al Gore is a hypocrite.
your analysis is full of win, I wish to subscribe to your newsletter :D