Just recycling carbon isn't going to save us; land plants aren't efficient enough at converting sunlight to fixed carbon to yield what we need. I suspect that we're going to need to cycle carbon a lot more tightly than that, keeping the atmosphere out of the loop for most of it; look for a future essay on The Ergosphere when I get a Round Tuit.
I ran into a page that cited 12 cents per gallon as the cost for treating regular community sewage at a processing plant.
If the typical person uses 50 gallons/day of water and flushes it down the drain, that's $6/person/day or $360/person/month. Water bills typically include sewage, and run a small fraction of that. Nope, doesn't pass first inspection.
This might be reasonable if you are talking about sewage solids, but that's a small fraction of most sewage and I'd want you to confirm your source and its accuracy before I took it seriously.
That says, CWT did mention that they can process things such as grease-trap waste (cooking grease, mostly). With the amount of grease produced in big cities and the disposal costs in landfills, it appears that the natural place for CWT to build their next plant isn't near rural poultry plants, but Manhattan. All they'd have to do is undercut the cost of trucking the stuff to New Jersey and they'd have all the feedstock a 400 bbl/day plant could handle, and probably much more.
I speculated about what $100 billion/year could do in an essay last November, but I was looking at oil consumption rather than carbon emissions (didn't have the figures) and avoided the issue of nuclear power because it's such a political hot potato.
In addition to the previous correction, I have to register a complaint with your use of the nonsense term "kW/h".
People in physics and engineering do not use terms such as "kilowatts per hour" or "horsepower per hour". That's like saying "gallons per minute per hour" - a rate of change, and all but useless. You measure energy delivery in KILOWATT-HOURS (kilowatts TIMES hours, 1 KWH = 3.6 million joules), HORSEPOWER-HOURS, et cetera. You don't divide power by time unless you are getting really esoteric, so if the urge strikes you to put a slash in the expression you are almost certainly wrong.
I don't know whether you are serious or trolling, or whether to laugh or cry.
It is not in China's interest to see a neighboring country possess nuclear weapons.
Is that so? Given that, you should be able to explain to me why North Korea was able to build at least two nuclear reactors (suitable for small-scale weapons production) while it was dependent upon aid from and trade through China for its very existence. Specifically, does China have no ability to promote and defend its interests (explain away the occupation of Tibet and threats to invade Taiwan... if you can) or does it have greater interests in a "separate" nation harassing S. Korea and Japan, and through them the US?
More generally, no country would ever like to see any other political force to possess nuclear weaposn, no matter how strong the alliance between the country and the political force would be.
Oh, that's why Libya had Chinese warhead designs (probably through Pakistan); China didn't want anyone else having nuclear warheads.
North Korea got its nuclear technology from China and Russia. The proliferation-resistant pressurized water reactors (primarily financed and built by S. Korea) which were part of the Clinton deal are not even partially completed.
No they didn't. North Korea's Yongbyan reactor is only good for about 5 megawatts electric (30 MWthermal); it does not even have power lines running to it. That reactor was about weapons from the get-go.
For a better albeit incomplete analysis of the rest, like the "help", see here. For a timeline, see this.
The threat comes from Iraq. It arises directly from the Iraqi regime's own actions -- its history of aggression, and its drive toward an arsenal of terror. Eleven years ago, as a condition for ending the Persian Gulf War, the Iraqi regime was required to destroy its weapons of mass destruction, to cease all development of such weapons, and to stop all support for terrorist groups. The Iraqi regime has violated all of those obligations. It possesses and produces chemical and biological weapons. It is seeking nuclear weapons.
Before the invasion, everyone thought Saddam had active programs and stockpiles (European intelligence thought this too); Saddam apparently believed this, and it may have been Saddam's henchmen telling him what Saddam wanted to hear. We now know that Saddam's CBW stocks in Iraq were minimal (if he destroyed them, he did it without allowing weapons inspectors to verify that they were destroyed - stupid of him) but he retained a core of weapons scientists, including nuclear scientists, to restart his programs as soon as sanctions were lifted.
your rants about "overnight" are completely off the mark; I spelled out a ten-year program to eliminate most transport-related petroleum use back in November. You want incremental? I'm all about incremental.
If we wanted to emphasize GHG reductions instead, the program would change a bit. I didn't propose any nuclear development because I'm still not certain that the political will is there to break the logjam, but it would certainly fit into the mix.
As I told another poster, the processes used for e.g. roll-to-roll silicon cell manufacture (not to mention the TiO2-based stuff used in polymer-based cells like those of Nanosolar) don't share much with those of chip manufacture. For one thing, you have none of the mask/implant/etch cycles. Why wouldn't an industrial-scale plant just recycle the silane, diborane, arsene, etc. that isn't used immediately? If you're using stuff in ton quantities, these things become economical.
Yes, the surface area would have to be HUGE. Looked at how much area in the USA is beneath roofs? That's HUGE. Roadways and parking lots? Even HUGER. And all of it is potentially available when the price becomes right, at near-zero ecological impact.
Solar is limited by the physics, and the limits of the physics are a long way off. Even at 10% efficiency, sunlight falling on area that's already built up could replace all electricity used in the USA and then some. At 30% (which the plastic-cell folks think they can get to by adding quantum dots) it would generate about 150 quads of electricity per year, or 1.5 times the USA's total energy consumption for 2002 (and all of it electricity, none lost to waste heat). At 60%, which seems to be the limit for quantum dots, that would be 300 quads. Needless to say, this potential dwarfs what we're currently using from all sources combined.
YOu got a magic wand that'll turn all of our current coal, gas, and oil generators into something else?
The DOE has a "magic wand" (called Integrated Gasification Combined Cycle) which effectively converts coal-fired plants to (synthetic) gas plants at about 3x the output and 20% greater efficiency. If we got an economical source of non-fossil hydrogen (like the "green algae" trick) gas-fired plants could be converted to burn it at minimal cost. And oil's share of electric power generation is minimal. It's about half the share of hydroelectric, and "other renewables" are going to overtake it shortly (they are already 20% ahead of oil's 1995 minimum)
If I wanted to do something personally and I had a plug-in hybrid, I could just put solar on my roof to offset the electricity used by the car. At 250 Wh/mile, a 20-mile commute would use about 5 kWH/day. A 1 kW solar system would feed this with some extra, and cost around $5000 at today's retail, uninstalled. Today's panels have 25-year warranties, so they'd be expiring about the time I replaced my current car... for the third time.
If it was really that simple, why isn't it done? Answer: it's not that simple. Our economy would crash right now if we all suddenly stopped driving our cars and walked to work.
Yeah, if America sent its Excursions, Durangos, Escalades and Hummers to the crusher and commuted in Priuses, Neons and Focuses instead, we'd all die.
Oh wait, no we wouldn't.
Nuke power (while I'm all over it, really, I am) is still relatively unstable. I'd rate it right at the level of stability of Windows XP.
Today's PWR's were built in the 1970's or earlier, but I don't see you comparing them to Windows 95. Strange... or maybe not.
Then wind. While there are some very nice designs, some excellent prototypes, and even some small-scale deployments that have worked well, wind still isn't up to production-level.
Solar failed already. It's not environmentally friendly, it's as simple as that.
Your evidence for this assertion is? Are you repeating the fallacy of associating the waste from chip-making processes with the roll-to-roll process used to make thin-film silicon cells? How about titanium dioxide cells, are you going to argue that TiO2 (used in paint, don't forget that) is an environmental hazard?
You're funny.
"Want to move away from oil" isn't the problem. We all want to.
The first step in moving away from oil is just to avoid wasting it, but I don't seem to see anyone holding a "sledgehammer the Hummer for charity" affair. Plenty of Hummers on the road around me (overgrown things, nobody ever parks one right), and I'd be happy to pay a couple bucks a swing with a ten-pounder, but nobody's volunteering their guzzler for the honors. I guess there are some people who just don't want to.
I bet another $2/gallon in gas taxes would get most of them to want to, though. It would barely affect me; the difference between today's $2/gallon and a hypothetical $4/gallon is about $100 for a fairly serious road trip. I couldn't get a hybrid this time around, but if I had the difference would have been even smaller.
Ask anybody on the street "If I had a better way for you to get around car that didn't require gas, would you do it?" Most would probably say "Yes, if I can be as free as I can with a car" or something to that affect.
Peak efficiency is reached at the maximum amount of power output with the minimum amount of fuel.
Wrong; peak efficiency in a vehicle is maximum coverage of distance, etc. etc.
The engine is only one part of the system; the demand (aerodynamic drag, rolling resistance and drivetrain losses) is the other half, and the matching between them (transmission gear ratios, open vs. lock-up torque converters) can cause substantial changes between otherwise-identical vehicles. If you look back you may notice that that the matter under discussion was the variation of fuel economy with speed, so any analysis which omits a crucial factor isn't worth the energy expended to press the keys.
Some vehicles will run more efficiently at a higher RPM.
Viscous drag in the bearings increases with speed, and the inertial forces (which determine the side-force on the pistons, and thus the drag against the cylinder wall) rise with the square of engine speed. Internal combustion engines are generally most efficient at maximum torque and the minimum speed to meet power requirements; that's why CVT's are the ne plus ultra of efficiency.
The vehicle makes its power more efficiently at that engine speed and thus has to use less fuel per mile.
Which doesn't help you if demand rises faster than the engine efficiency curve. Aerodynamic drag rises roughly as the square of speed.
Nuclear makes electricity. The oil companies could not care less about nuclear; it doesn't compete with them (yet).
Until we get either lots of electric or partially-electric vehicles or nuclear hydrogen, nuclear is going to be used to light lights and run motors; it will compete primarily with coal and natural gas. Gas-fired turbines are cheap to build and easy to site. Coal plants burn cheaper fuel but are harder to site and take longer, and the utilities stayed away from nuclear after the WPPSS bond default (stemming from cost overruns on two nuclear plants and consequent bankruptcy). The people who run utilities have a different mindset from dot-commers; they like their jobs, and they won't keep them if things stay even moderately exciting outside of things like hurricanes and ice storms. Surprises like having your multi-billion dollar plant go from 75% complete to 35% complete as a consequence of one NRC-mandated redesign, during a period of 20% interest rates (Carter administration - look it up) are things they can quite do without. The technological, financial and political risks of nuclear are much higher than fossil-fired, and are compounded by the duration of construction.
THAT's why nobody has build a new nuclear plant in the USA for the past 25 years. With luck, maybe things will change.
Forget how much tidal energy would yield; just trying to collect much would cause extreme damage to coastal ecosystems.
But you're wrong about solar. The US's built-up area (roofs, roads and such) already covers as much ground as Ohio. My estimate is that about 500 quads (quadrillion BTU) of solar energy falls on this area each year. If you can convert even 7% of this to electricity (35 quads/year), you'll have more electricity than the United States uses each year, plus enough energy to replace everything that goes to the wheels of all our vehicles.
The problem has been primarily cost, secondarily storage. But if the Europeans can bring the one-micron-thick silicon cells to market at 1 Euro/watt, solar PV will be cheaper than fossil-fired fuel during daytime hours across a large swath of the USA. It will be much cheaper than energy generated from oil. In 2015, will you be driving home on energy that fell on your workplace's roof that day? Don't discount the possibility - the technology is all here, and a relatively small shift in cost will start the stampede.
Most vehicles reach peak fuel efficiency at the speed where they can just barely stay in top gear. In my car, that's just over 40 MPH; cruising at that speed on level ground, the trip computer (which reads about 10% high) indicates instantaneous mileage between 60 and 75 MPG (between 55 and 68 MPG actual).
Average mileage on freeways cruising at 65 MPH is closer to 39 MPG. At 55 MPH, indicated mileage is only about 50-55 MPG (45-50 actual).
If we really wanted to eliminate the need for oil (and carbon-based fuels in general) we'd move as many vehicles as possible from pure internal combustion to plug-in hybrid and make it easy to get energy from the grid. Even if the vehicle gets only 25 MPG when burning fuel, if it runs 80% of its mileage on grid power the effective mileage would be a whopping 125 MPG. The extra grid power could come from nukes, wind, solar... it wouldn't matter, as long as it wasn't coal or gas.
Another passenger in the car is another pair of eyes, and will stop talking when the traffic situation gets complicated. The technology that would allow a cell-phone conversationalist to do the same isn't available yet, due to insufficient bandwidth.;-)
There are people who dispute that the Earth is older than 6000 years. Just because some people are idiots does not mean there is a dispute you need to take seriously.
I'd be very interested in any facts you might have regarding matters such as the financial payoff from finding extrasolar planets, or pre-Clovis human artifacts in the Americas. And while you're at it, how about the fee schedule for different "correct" results from paleoclimate research?
Scientists who perform research on behalf of corporations are not necessarily any less honest than scientists performing research for the government or other 'unbiased' source of funding.
If their ability to publish depends on their results agreeing with the corporate interest, would you still say that? (You aren't going to hear the full story even from the honest people, and the honest people will tend to leave.)
It's bad enough that you put scientific research on a pedestal and expect every scientist to be some sort of altruistic super-human...
You have no idea how science works, do you? Research scientists live and die based on the accuracy and usefulness of their results. If their results cannot be replicated (or worse, show signs of being fraudulent) then their careers grind to a halt. Scientists may be sloppy, but the system works to get rid of sloppiness and incorrect results.
In the case of climate research, there is one hell of a lot of prestige which would come with a correct debunking of the global-climate models which all predict warming. There might even be a Nobel in it. But note that I did say correct debunking; anyone withoute the facts on their side need not apply. Have you noticed where the huge majority of the climate scientists (who have the facts such as they are) stand today?
do you have to hold this public relations ploy to try to convince people that your views are right despite evidence and in the face of so many examples of bad scientists?
You're implying that "all scientists are self-interested, therefore nothing they say can be trusted". I suppose that you disregard everything you're told about the safety of the water supply, the recommendations for nutrients in your diet, the effectiveness and hazards of drugs, and everything else that was researched and published by a scientist. Because, y'know, "there are bad scientists and they're all just out for their personal interests"?
Regarding climate science, I refer you to this entry:
The main reason for concern about anthropogenic climate change is not that we can already see it (although we can). The main reason is twofold.
(1) Carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases are increasing rapidly in the atmosphere due to human activity. This is a measured fact not even disputed by staunch "climate skeptics".
(2) Any increase in carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases will change the radiation balance of the Earth and increase surface temperatures. This is basic and undisputed physics that has been known for over a hundred years.
It takes some gall to deny something which can be measured by infrared absorption in a test cell, or the Keeling curve. And it's certainly not honest, far less honest than anything I've seen from the "self-interested" scientists. Calling someone an "industry shill" is one of the most flattering things you could do.
Slashdot Mirror
Just recycling carbon isn't going to save us; land plants aren't efficient enough at converting sunlight to fixed carbon to yield what we need. I suspect that we're going to need to cycle carbon a lot more tightly than that, keeping the atmosphere out of the loop for most of it; look for a future essay on The Ergosphere when I get a Round Tuit.
... make that $180/person/month.
This might be reasonable if you are talking about sewage solids, but that's a small fraction of most sewage and I'd want you to confirm your source and its accuracy before I took it seriously.
That says, CWT did mention that they can process things such as grease-trap waste (cooking grease, mostly). With the amount of grease produced in big cities and the disposal costs in landfills, it appears that the natural place for CWT to build their next plant isn't near rural poultry plants, but Manhattan. All they'd have to do is undercut the cost of trucking the stuff to New Jersey and they'd have all the feedstock a 400 bbl/day plant could handle, and probably much more.
any such program for agitated copious breathing which required a partner would never, ever happen as long as the people came from Slashdot. ;-)
I speculated about what $100 billion/year could do in an essay last November, but I was looking at oil consumption rather than carbon emissions (didn't have the figures) and avoided the issue of nuclear power because it's such a political hot potato.
People in physics and engineering do not use terms such as "kilowatts per hour" or "horsepower per hour". That's like saying "gallons per minute per hour" - a rate of change, and all but useless. You measure energy delivery in KILOWATT-HOURS (kilowatts TIMES hours, 1 KWH = 3.6 million joules), HORSEPOWER-HOURS, et cetera. You don't divide power by time unless you are getting really esoteric, so if the urge strikes you to put a slash in the expression you are almost certainly wrong.
I suppose that you would accept the same list if it had appeared on a different source? ;-)
North Korea got its nuclear technology from China and Russia. The proliferation-resistant pressurized water reactors (primarily financed and built by S. Korea) which were part of the Clinton deal are not even partially completed.
For a better albeit incomplete analysis of the rest, like the "help", see here. For a timeline, see this.
You don't believe that North Korea was all sweetness and light until Washington got belligerent, do you?
If we wanted to emphasize GHG reductions instead, the program would change a bit. I didn't propose any nuclear development because I'm still not certain that the political will is there to break the logjam, but it would certainly fit into the mix.
Yes, the surface area would have to be HUGE. Looked at how much area in the USA is beneath roofs? That's HUGE. Roadways and parking lots? Even HUGER. And all of it is potentially available when the price becomes right, at near-zero ecological impact.
Solar is limited by the physics, and the limits of the physics are a long way off. Even at 10% efficiency, sunlight falling on area that's already built up could replace all electricity used in the USA and then some. At 30% (which the plastic-cell folks think they can get to by adding quantum dots) it would generate about 150 quads of electricity per year, or 1.5 times the USA's total energy consumption for 2002 (and all of it electricity, none lost to waste heat). At 60%, which seems to be the limit for quantum dots, that would be 300 quads. Needless to say, this potential dwarfs what we're currently using from all sources combined.
The DOE has a "magic wand" (called Integrated Gasification Combined Cycle) which effectively converts coal-fired plants to (synthetic) gas plants at about 3x the output and 20% greater efficiency. If we got an economical source of non-fossil hydrogen (like the "green algae" trick) gas-fired plants could be converted to burn it at minimal cost. And oil's share of electric power generation is minimal. It's about half the share of hydroelectric, and "other renewables" are going to overtake it shortly (they are already 20% ahead of oil's 1995 minimum)
If I wanted to do something personally and I had a plug-in hybrid, I could just put solar on my roof to offset the electricity used by the car. At 250 Wh/mile, a 20-mile commute would use about 5 kWH/day. A 1 kW solar system would feed this with some extra, and cost around $5000 at today's retail, uninstalled. Today's panels have 25-year warranties, so they'd be expiring about the time I replaced my current car... for the third time.
Yeah, if America sent its Excursions, Durangos, Escalades and Hummers to the crusher and commuted in Priuses, Neons and Focuses instead, we'd all die.
Oh wait, no we wouldn't.
Today's PWR's were built in the 1970's or earlier, but I don't see you comparing them to Windows 95. Strange... or maybe not.
3.6 megawatt wind turbines are in production. The prototype of a 5 megawatt turbine is on the grid.
Your evidence for this assertion is? Are you repeating the fallacy of associating the waste from chip-making processes with the roll-to-roll process used to make thin-film silicon cells? How about titanium dioxide cells, are you going to argue that TiO2 (used in paint, don't forget that) is an environmental hazard?
You're funny.
The first step in moving away from oil is just to avoid wasting it, but I don't seem to see anyone holding a "sledgehammer the Hummer for charity" affair. Plenty of Hummers on the road around me (overgrown things, nobody ever parks one right), and I'd be happy to pay a couple bucks a swing with a ten-pounder, but nobody's volunteering their guzzler for the honors. I guess there are some people who just don't want to.
I bet another $2/gallon in gas taxes would get most of them to want to, though. It would barely affect me; the difference between today's $2/gallon and a hypothetical $4/gallon is about $100 for a fairly serious road trip. I couldn't get a hybrid this time around, but if I had the difference would have been even smaller.
They're called plug-in hybrids, and they are al
The engine is only one part of the system; the demand (aerodynamic drag, rolling resistance and drivetrain losses) is the other half, and the matching between them (transmission gear ratios, open vs. lock-up torque converters) can cause substantial changes between otherwise-identical vehicles. If you look back you may notice that that the matter under discussion was the variation of fuel economy with speed, so any analysis which omits a crucial factor isn't worth the energy expended to press the keys.
Until we get either lots of electric or partially-electric vehicles or nuclear hydrogen, nuclear is going to be used to light lights and run motors; it will compete primarily with coal and natural gas. Gas-fired turbines are cheap to build and easy to site. Coal plants burn cheaper fuel but are harder to site and take longer, and the utilities stayed away from nuclear after the WPPSS bond default (stemming from cost overruns on two nuclear plants and consequent bankruptcy). The people who run utilities have a different mindset from dot-commers; they like their jobs, and they won't keep them if things stay even moderately exciting outside of things like hurricanes and ice storms. Surprises like having your multi-billion dollar plant go from 75% complete to 35% complete as a consequence of one NRC-mandated redesign, during a period of 20% interest rates (Carter administration - look it up) are things they can quite do without. The technological, financial and political risks of nuclear are much higher than fossil-fired, and are compounded by the duration of construction.
THAT's why nobody has build a new nuclear plant in the USA for the past 25 years. With luck, maybe things will change.
But you're wrong about solar. The US's built-up area (roofs, roads and such) already covers as much ground as Ohio. My estimate is that about 500 quads (quadrillion BTU) of solar energy falls on this area each year. If you can convert even 7% of this to electricity (35 quads/year), you'll have more electricity than the United States uses each year, plus enough energy to replace everything that goes to the wheels of all our vehicles.
The problem has been primarily cost, secondarily storage. But if the Europeans can bring the one-micron-thick silicon cells to market at 1 Euro/watt, solar PV will be cheaper than fossil-fired fuel during daytime hours across a large swath of the USA. It will be much cheaper than energy generated from oil. In 2015, will you be driving home on energy that fell on your workplace's roof that day? Don't discount the possibility - the technology is all here, and a relatively small shift in cost will start the stampede.
Average mileage on freeways cruising at 65 MPH is closer to 39 MPG. At 55 MPH, indicated mileage is only about 50-55 MPG (45-50 actual).
If we really wanted to eliminate the need for oil (and carbon-based fuels in general) we'd move as many vehicles as possible from pure internal combustion to plug-in hybrid and make it easy to get energy from the grid. Even if the vehicle gets only 25 MPG when burning fuel, if it runs 80% of its mileage on grid power the effective mileage would be a whopping 125 MPG. The extra grid power could come from nukes, wind, solar... it wouldn't matter, as long as it wasn't coal or gas.
Another passenger in the car is another pair of eyes, and will stop talking when the traffic situation gets complicated. The technology that would allow a cell-phone conversationalist to do the same isn't available yet, due to insufficient bandwidth. ;-)
If you don't think this contributed to an increase in spam, you're not informed.
There are people who dispute that the Earth is older than 6000 years. Just because some people are idiots does not mean there is a dispute you need to take seriously.
- Anthropology
- Chemistry
- Physics (high-energy, solid state, plasma, etc.)
- Planetary geology (Spirit/Opportunity, Cassini/Huygens)
- Cosmology
- Biology
- Paleontology
I'd be very interested in any facts you might have regarding matters such as the financial payoff from finding extrasolar planets, or pre-Clovis human artifacts in the Americas. And while you're at it, how about the fee schedule for different "correct" results from paleoclimate research? If their ability to publish depends on their results agreeing with the corporate interest, would you still say that? (You aren't going to hear the full story even from the honest people, and the honest people will tend to leave.) You have no idea how science works, do you? Research scientists live and die based on the accuracy and usefulness of their results. If their results cannot be replicated (or worse, show signs of being fraudulent) then their careers grind to a halt. Scientists may be sloppy, but the system works to get rid of sloppiness and incorrect results.In the case of climate research, there is one hell of a lot of prestige which would come with a correct debunking of the global-climate models which all predict warming. There might even be a Nobel in it. But note that I did say correct debunking; anyone withoute the facts on their side need not apply. Have you noticed where the huge majority of the climate scientists (who have the facts such as they are) stand today?
You're implying that "all scientists are self-interested, therefore nothing they say can be trusted". I suppose that you disregard everything you're told about the safety of the water supply, the recommendations for nutrients in your diet, the effectiveness and hazards of drugs, and everything else that was researched and published by a scientist. Because, y'know, "there are bad scientists and they're all just out for their personal interests"?Regarding climate science, I refer you to this entry:
It takes some gall to deny something which can be measured by infrared absorption in a test cell, or the Keeling curve. And it's certainly not honest, far less honest than anything I've seen from the "self-interested" scientists. Calling someone an "industry shill" is one of the most flattering things you could do.