A short treatise
- Corn-based ethanol is retarded
- Electric cars are stupid
- Personal carbon credits, also stupid
- The "hydrogen economy" won't solve all our ills
- Nuclear power is the way to go
I'm not sure if I would want to drive around with 4 wheels strapped around a nuclear bomb.... LOL. I'll stick with gas, and sacrafice in other areas. I hear, ya though. All other methods at this point are a joke. We have 100 years of oil reserves. Build a refinery and tap the SOB. Tap Alaska too. The US needs to start worrying about its people and not foreign countries or animals. (I am a patriot as well as an animal lover, and am very environmental) WE, The People......are suffering. I would hope that would count for something.
My thoughts on alternative energy:
- There is no one solution.
That's it. Pretty simple, eh? Now let's make it more complicated.
Like I said, there is no single solution to the world's energy problems. Oil is gonna be the main source of energy (not to mention the chief ingredient in about 90% of what we buy) for a LOOOOOOOONG time. It'll never be 100% replaced.
It can be supplemented, though. The easiest, cheapest, and most likely way to supplement oil as an energy source is to do it "on the grid". There are many ways of generating electricity. Each has its down side, of course. Each one of these has the potential to help, but will never succeed on its own. That's why we need a balanced approach, using each technology where it's best suited.
- Wind. A wind farm might work great in a coastal area where it's always windy, but not so much in areas not known for reliably strong winds. They also act as "Bird Blenders", but I feel that the amount of birds blended up by windmills would be far offset by the amount not poisoned to death by oil spills, acid rain, smog, etc.
- Solar. Great for areas where the sun always shines and there is plenty of open space for vast solar fields. For the other 99.99% of the earth's surface, notsomuch. Plus, efficient solar cells are expensive.
- Hydro. There are a few different types of hydro:
[LIST=1]
- Conventional - where a river is dammed up, a reservoir is made, and the energy of the water rushing down a hill is harnessed to spin turbines and generate electricity. The problem with this method is that hundreds of acres of wildlife habitat is destroyed, not to mention a perfectly good river. Don't wanna inconvenience those salmon on their way to do their business
- Tidal - where the energy of the rising and falling tide is harnessed, either by placing windmill-like turbines in the strong currents, or by diverting some of the tidal water through a turbine similar to conventional hydro, or by directly harnessing the up & down motion of the waves. The cons of this approach include bruised or inconvenienced whales, restricting access to commercial fishing grounds, etc.
- Nuclear. Likely the cleanest, cheapest, most widely available and most reliable of alternative energy sources, it suffers badly from NIMBY syndrome. You can talk about how safe nuclear energy has been for the past 50 years 'til you're blue in the face, NIMBY people will reject your arguments. They'll only remember Three Mile Island and Chernobyl. Actually, it goes beyond NIMBY to CAVE - Citizens Against Virtually Everything. The same people whining about nuke plants whine about "Bird blenders", wildlife habitat destruction, etc. They want us to live in caves in the dark, which is why the acronym works so well. Perhaps if the USA got a president that could pr0nounce the word people would feel more confident in its safety?
Each one of these has the potential to help, but will never succeed on its own. That's why we need a balanced approach, using each technology where it's best suited. Ignore the cries from Maine, where solar won't work - give them wind instead. Ignore (well, maybe not ignore, but place less emphasis on) the environmentalists who will throw up road blocks to ANY energy source. Tidal generator gonna hurt a whale? Tough for the whale. The smart ones will swim around the generator anyway.
Now, the future holds two distinct possibilities: What I would like to see, and what is actually going to happen.
What I would like to see:Energy taken from all available sources, spread out over the grid. A huge percentage of electricity that is generated is lost during transmission over the lines - instead of one big coal-fired plant in each city, why not have several smaller generating plants scattered through the land? A windmill or two here, a solar array or two there, and a nuke plant or two for each large city where windmills and solar arrays wouldn't make sense or just plain wouldn't work)...
Combine this with a real conservation effort by the public, including more fuel efficient cars (already happening), more energy efficient homes (already happening), more use of local, renewable, non-polluting heat sources (geothermal, solar, etc) and the energy problem would be solved forever.
What is going to happen:Alternative energy will start to gain traction. OPEC and other oil producers will panic when they see a real threat to their energy monopoly, and flood the marketplace with oil. The price will drop to the point that alternatives are no longer cheaper, nor even economically feasible. The public will demand an end to public-funded alternative energy projects because they are not needed while oil is so cheap. Politicians will oblige, because it would be a very unpopular politician who would have his constituents pay more for energy just because it's good for them in the long run. The move toward alternative energy will slow to a crawl. People will stop conserving because it's cheap, and there's no need to conserve something that's cheap.
Then we'll repeat it all in 20 years.
OK, let's be honest. You're not suffering. You're driving less. There are billions of people in this world who can tell you what suffering is. That is a head in the sand kind of attitude, since we're only now paying what the rest of the world was paying for fuel before the 'crisis' hit. Sometimes a little bit of perspective is all we need, (not a bigger car).
Right on, Carmen. I've been trying to tell people this for a while now. The only reason we're in a crisis is because we didn't learn last time that we need more than one mainstream source of energy storage.
Hey Jeremy, if electric cars are stupid, then what do you think nuclear plants produce? Seems like a logical misfire there - no?
About 7.4% of power is lost during transmission. 60% of that through the lines, 40% through transformers. [1 (http://"http://climatetechnology.gov/library/2003/tech-options/tech-options-1-3-2.pdf")]
In general, smaller fossil fuel and nuclear plants aren't economically feasible. Especially nuclear plants. Scattering wind and solar could work, but I'm not familiar with large scale application of them.
When I say
electric cars, I mean battery powered electric cars, not fuel cells. Battery powered cars have a poor range and a long charging time. Battery technology is pretty mature, so I don't see those things improving dramatically with time.
The nuke power comment is directed at my "hydrogen economy" bullet. We will need much more power generating power capability to get hydrogen. Nuclear power is cheap and relative clean (unless you reside near Yuca Mtn. ;) )
It's been known that its possible to make synthetic everything.
At what cost and why aren't we doin it more?
Hey, did you hear about the new puppiesanese fuel-cell battery that recycles back into water molecules and thus only needs to be replenished with water once in a while (similar to SLA batteries). It can store a lot of energy compared to regular batteries as it does the chemical separation (energy storage) on board. Sounds VERY promising and it solves the issue of having to deal with distributing explosive hydrogen.
When I was a kid,I maid black powder off the shelf.You older bubs will know what I mean.Salt peter.sulpher,a little sweetness.
I do not recomend this though.
I always wondered what salt peter was - lol (not that I was thinking about making gunpowder :) )
Nope. Sounds interesting! Do you have a link?
No actually - I read about it about a month ago and then kinda stashed in the back of my head as in "if I hear about this one again, it's going to change the world as we know it"
I always assume new technology will be impractical once they try to make real units, but I always pay attention to the ideas that seem to make sense. Be nice to have a fuel cell battery whose only maintenance is to add water once is a while (besides the normal plug-in or hybrid charging scheme.)
How do you charge it?,If its bye cord to the house it could be wasteful
Saly peter.
Back in the day it was fed to ya,to keep your thingie down!!,Vets would understand.
7.4% wasted is a LOT of electricity. If we could even cut that loss in half it'd have a huge impact on overall energy use. If we could do it by putting a few windmills or solar substations along a transmission line, even if they were there for the sole purpose of replacing lost energy, it'd be double-huge. If we could do it by the aforementioned methods, plus maybe add another 10% (or even more) capacity to the grid from these non-fattening sources, it'd be triple huge. And if we could eliminate the loss almost entirely by putting the source closer to the destination (instead of thousands of miles, such as with James Bay in Labrador, Canada, sending power to NYC) it'd be... well, it'd be really huge.
Like I said: No single solution. Many smaller ones. What works in one area might not work in another, but that's no reason to dismiss the idea entirely. As a Nova Scotian living a few miles from the world's most powerful tides, in a climate that only sees the sun about 25% of the year but is windy almost every moment, I'm naturally going to support tidal power or windmills before I support solar power. Similarly, somebody in Tuscon might not care about tidal, but might be all for wind or sun. People in the midwest and prairie provinces might lean more toward ethanol. Those living on top of natural gas might want to go that way.
We've got to shift our thinking. When oil was $20/barrel it was fine and well to take a one-size-fits-all approach. Now that it's almost touched $150 and will very likely continue to climb (at least until the producers feel their monopoly is in danger) we need to work on a more diversified energy source. Even if the price of oil comes back down, because as has been demonstrated in the 70's and 80's, cheap oil is temporary, and the fact that a good deal of it belongs to hostile nations makes it an uncertain and unreliable source.
Man to man? Oh, good Lord. :rolleyes: I guess there's no point in trying to explain that some of the worst situations a US or Canadian citizen finds themselves in is a far cry from Suffering.
My apologies if you thought I was threatening you somehow. This isn't a Mustang forum.
Man to man, person to person. Hang on whatever word(s) you would like.
Again, you do not know my personal situation right now. It does not make me happy when somebody, who does not know it... makes light of it. I am not willing to make my whole life an open book on this forum; so if you're interested in knowing details, please feel free to contact me privately. I think you would feel badly for your generalizations made about me.
Apology accepted.
I also apologize for being defensive and somewhat sensitive.
My intent wasn't to generalise about you. I was generalising about people living in the US and Canada ('WE, The People......are suffering.' Your words, not mine), who on the whole; the vast majority; are not suffering because the price of gas went up. They're just not quite as comfortable as they were three years ago.
In my opinion, if you've got a roof to keep you dry, food to keep you living, clothes to keep you warm, and a car to get you where you're going, you don't know what suffering is. Disagree all you want.
... are you still looking to meet at the swing-sets? You need to lighten up, man.
Don't tell me to lighten up when you're firing shots across my bow with your comments toward me personally. I didn't call you out... I invited you to visit man to man instead of utilizing the forum as your tool. Suffering may have been the wrong word. Does struggling sound better to you??? Regardless, this has gone nowhere and is quite frankly a meaningless conversation.
Whatever, man. I didn't call you out, I replied to your post. That's what we do on message boards. What are you so excited about? I've already told you I was talking about 'We the people.' After reading your posts in the fast food thread, I'm seeing some anger issues. You're taking these comments pretty personally.
*edit*
I admit, I should have said 'we', not 'you aren't suffering'. Do you see what I was trying to say now?
Let's get along.Aren't we supposed to be a team around here?Feel the love (brotherly love,not that "prison love" stuff)..........
New alternative fuel - hot air!
I'm not mad, or angry, man. If that happens I turn green and rip my clothes.
I think the hot air would be the best bet. Ha-ha.
OldRaven, no hard feelings. We must just be thinking about things differently. Oh, and yeah, I get ya man.
Fast Food Thread? I have no clue what you're talking about....?.....
No hard feelings here either. There were none to begin with. ;)
I must be getting you mixed up with someone else. Oh, old paint (waiting for the manager in the parking lot with a bat). My mistake.
So, about that topic... ;)
Whilst driving this weekend, Angela asked if you could use the dead trees as a fuel. I thought about it, and said "Probably, but I don't see why anyone with a harvester or power saw would bother cutting down dead trees when he could be harvesting healthy lumber."
What did we see on the news two days later but a new push to harvest these dying or dead spruce and convert them to a liquid fuel. :P We have a big problem around here with our spruce. It looks like a parasite (DNR claims it's windburn every time a stand dies :rolleyes: ) because it can be one tree in a stand, or a good 50 trees in a strip or clump, all dead and ready to fall. Cutting the dead and dying out could stop or slow the 'bug', make room for new growth, and prevent a massive fuel load on the forest floor that will just be a raging fire if left alone.
This is the second plan for wood chip -> Ethanol I've seen in the Maritimes in less than a month.
I remember watching something on the History Channel with my dad when I was like 14 about Three Mile Island. At the time I thought this and I still do now.....it melted down.....it spilled into the CONTAINMENT CHAMBER built underneath the plant. It went no further. Again it was contained by the..........containment chamber that was built.....to.....contain accidents. :confused: LOL
So.....basically....a problem occurred...and the safety measures installed to combat that very problem worked EXACTLY as they should have. People remember Three Mile Island as a blunder, but it was an engineering SUCCESS! Jeez! The sense and logic is overpowering, I think I might pass out!
Chernobyl....different story. Ya wanna know what my view on that is? Freakin russians who didnt know their ass from a hole in the ground, just tryin to one-up us because, of course, it's the 80s. So they rushed and messed up and blew theirs to bits and harmed many....whereas ours stood strong and did just what it should have in that situation. In America we build stuff RIGHT dammit. :headbang:
And oh yeah we got environmentalists who want us to use things like wind energy....and then some of them oppose the others because the birds will get chopped up!!! It's hilarious and surpemely aggravating at the same time. They don't even turn like...fast or anything. They'll fly the hell around them don't worry. Why are we still driving cars? Plenty of people hit deer all the time. I love the wind turbines too. I think it's just how *&(^ing BIG they are. I've read that they don't even make a ton of noise anyway. That would be cool though if they had a noisy gear drive like 1WLDBIRD's car :hick:
i've seen a couple of very large windmills on my way out to Wyoming a couple of times. It almost boggles the mind the first time I saw them Each blade was prolly 100 ft or more! The blades were also well over 50 feet off of the ground, and I'm not sure how fast it was really spinning, but ever if it was only 12 rpm, it is still fairly cool.
The IBEW headquarters in Boston, which is located right on the windy bay south of Boston has a windmill to power their headquarters. It's impressive when it's windy and you realize just how much energy it takes to spin something with those length radial arms @ the speeds I've seen on some windy days (I'd guess 60 RPM). I know they have to be careful (at least with the largest units) and limit the speed (by turning them perpendicular to the wind) as they can self-distruct (mechanically & the generators) if allowed to spin too fast.
As I work for a power (supplies, distribution & control - we don't generate it) company, we're very interested in being in the emerging solar and wind markets with inverters, generators and other control & power routing equipment. We're currently looking at making it easier for individuals to set up solar power generation & conversion. We believe that someday there will be 1000's of distributed power sources that will minimize the transmission losses (as was described above). This seems like (at least partially - battery technology is the other big element) the most practical and reliable solution to eliminating our reliance on ignorant dictators halfway around the world.
I priced out a solar system from solarfind.com (http://"http://www.findsolar.com/") and my ROI was ~17-24 years - even with a $2000 Federal tax credit, a $500 TVA credit, and getting paid .015 per kWh (double what TVA charges). That pretty much makes it a no-go for me. It will change one day after the $/kWh comes down enough to make it economical.
I also looked at wind power. The average area wind speed is 7.9mph (http://"http://lwf.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/climate/online/ccd/avgwind.html"). Most micro/mini turbines cut in ~8mph. Using those numbers, a roof mounted turbine makes sense. However, several articles I read found that rooftop wind speeds were about .5X of free speeds. Using 4 mph as the average wind speed dropped the monthly kWh produced (from an Air-X turbine) by an order of magnitude (162 kWh to 10 kWh)- making wind a no-go for me also. If only I lived in a neighborhood where a 50-ft tower wouldn't be an eyesore. ;)
Wind power calculator (http://"http://www.reuk.co.uk/Calculate-kWh-Generated-by-Wind-Turbine.htm")
Wind power map (http://"http://rredc.nrel.gov/wind/pubs/atlas/maps/chap2/2-01m.html")
I'm waiting for the ramp up in flexible polymer solar generating material to become mainstream - I sure hope this stuff is good.
Okay for drag racing cars the Electric Car would be okay to trailor and or drive short distances to a dragway.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pm6gD6r3-cw
Dodge Viper 500 hp Vs Tzero Electric Car - See Who Wins
Also the car before the Tzero was the EV1 which people owned untill the car compaines took the cars back to a crusher.
If corn oil is so Bad why does Saleen have a 10 sec supercar that uses E85 gas?
http://autos.yahoo.com/auto-shows/new_york_auto_show_2008/533/
Now tell me why all the world has to slow down we still got years of gas and if they start making some more of these cars now life might not be that bad.
You can burn trees in "Mr. Fusion"
Those technologies would never exist without an energy 'crisis'. Everything we do is reactionary. And whilst it's nice to say we've got years of gas left, imagine how quickly those years would go by if (when) India and China get to the same level of personal transportation as North America has. Then think of our kids, or grandkids, being hit with an energy crisis that would make anything we've seen look like a hiccup. These aren't sustainable outlooks.
Corn Ethanol is a bad idea for the same reason Soy BioDiesel is. It takes away from our food stores. That doesn't mean we can't have Ethanol from non-food based crops and waste. We just shouldn't be taking the food off our table to put in the car. Use your grass clippings instead. ;)
Cougar5.0, have you heard much about this company who has a type of modified printing press for making Photo-voltaic cells? Nanosolar is the name. They're making the cells at 1000'/min! Their target price for the panels is 1$/Watt! I'd like to see city/town rooftops blanketed in this stuff. Cells on every rooftop, and batteries in every basp00get. I bet that would make a big dent in our overall energy use, to the extent where electricity would cost a lot less.
http://www.autobloggreen.com/2008/06/23/video-nanosolar-makes-a-one-gigawatt-printing-press/
I'm having visions of solar "sheets" covering much of the house roof while storing the energy in a fuel-cell battery in the basp00get for use at night. Energy "crises" aren't all bad ;)
Oh, and think of this. If you're absorbing and 'converting' the suns rays, rather than reflecting them, would that not have some positive effect on the temperature in civic areas?
I've often said that while high gas prices suck, the worst thing that could happen is for them to drop. Lower prices would eliminate any hopes for alternatives because it would make research unfeasible.
You gonna hook a brutha up once the market gets kickin?
Heh, I wish I was able to - I do get a discount on our stuff though - I can't wait until the market picks up. It's heartwarming that a multi-billion dollar company like mine is seeing the potential market here - we don't want to miss out on it!