Energy

Ya you basically summed up rexie pretty well.

Dabbling in conspiracy theory much?
And it's not about alternative energy, it's about cost effective sustainable alternative energy. Good luck providing 6 billion or so people electricity by bacteria and solar panels.
The best alternative I see that is practical and sustainable is nuclear fusion. But until we can perfect such technology, we'll have to work with dirty fuels for now.

I am not sure if rare earth minerals and coal are actually mined in the same types of terrain. Perhaps not. Interesting thought though. Regardless there is a finite supply where the sun's energy is infinite from our own human perspective. I suspect mineral deposits are somewhat haphazardly scattered across the globe.

We supple 6 billion people or so with drugs and vaccines many created by bacteria as it it now. Six billion bottles of beer on the wall, all created by bacteria...

Most of our ethanol today is created by bacteria too...

Not sure who voted you all down but thank for voting me down... I will not be returning the favor... petty...

So you're not talking about electricity anymore?
If you keep up with the research abstract, you'd understand, that electricity produced by bacteria can't sustain 6 billion humans on its own. Sure it may sound like the solution to our future when looking at it in a laboratory scale but in the worldwide scale, it is unproven to be cost effective nor be sustainable.

And you seem to bring up ethanol. It has less energy density than gasoline and there isn't even major ethanol infrastructure in the east or west, and majorly setup in the midwest.
Until fusion reactors are ready, thorium reactors producing hydrogen gas and having hydrogen powered vehicles is a better solution than ethanol/gasoline mixed alternative fuels, albeit a bit expensive to start up and to establish an infrastructure.

And I agree with you on the rating matter, **** the thumb down whores.

You have no proof that bacteria can't sustain world wide electrical needs... Why not tell the scientists working on the research to quit because you are sure it is a dead end... There is also bacteria that can eat nuclear waste and turn it onto common table salt... But with the oil lobbies we many never know because our electorate has been bought and paid for.

Just as in the 1800's people would never have believed there could ever be enough vodka and absinthe to go around so that even street bums could have their daily drunk...

It is time to put our industrial revolution to a positive function.

People consume 350 slices of pizza PER SECOND in the US all thanks to bacteria...

Also some Canadian research I read once about using your septic system to heat your house now add that to this recent discovery of bacteria that can generate electricity and voila! ... Lots of possibilities...

If I wasn't clear, let me be clear. I'm not advocating for such research to stop, because even mundane research can have results which can be applicable to other fields of science.
And if bacteria and I'll even throw in algae, can sustain world wide electrical need, there would be research papers cropping up that would revolutionize the energy industry, and no amount of threats by the oil lobbies would be able to thwart such a movement. But think about it, if these things are to support the electrical needs of the world, think about the mass breeding that must take place. With biofarming power plant taking up more and more land, it would definitely have an adverse effect on biodiversity. As it already is there is already less and less land is available for wild areas due to farming and cattle raising. Efficiency is low with algae, seeing that cultivated algae absorb 15 times more energy than they produce and must be fed CO2 constantly.
However, I think this idea would make a great sci-fi story.

Well we can do the all of the above strategy 'till technology finds a viable solution. But in the words of the great James Burke... "How long can we keep it up?"

When we have exhausted all of the earth's resources the sun will still brightly shine day in and day out... Makes one wonder if we were to follow a single unwavering course of solar energy maybe we could have our cake and eat it too.

I have no doubt algae has many problems, but I wouldn't disregard it on the basis of that 15:1 efficiency ratio. If the cost - and I mean total cost is competitive, and it produces an oil that can be stored, it will be on its way. If the cost benefit isn't there, it will be down there with switch grass ethanol.

My point is that something can be effective without being efficient. Conversely, a process can be highly efficient, but DOA because of lack of effectiveness.

Like you, I've nothing against the research. My problem is with full scale production facilities with an unproven technology - especially when govt subsidized.

I like what you have written Roger...

Especially this:

Quote Roger:
"My point is that something can be effective without being efficient"

Comment:
With this enigma of energy solutions I think it is better to try and fail miserably than to not try at all. We learn in the act of trying. As with fracking and other dirty energy sources these technologies have already failed miserably.

Point in case:
Barges stuck as oil spill jams Mississippi River
http://usnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/01/30/16768492-barges-stuck-as-oil-spill-jams-mississippi-river?lite

Yes Govt subsidizing dead end alternatives is frustrating.

I like what iceland has done with its programs to harness the geothermal energy and utilizing hydrogen fuel cells, as well as what France is doing with nuclear power to provide cheap electricity without the carbon foot print. France also does nuclear waste reprocessing. It's a matter of time before new reactors crop up that will reuse spent nuclear rods. But the political climate in America right now is not favorable towards plans to reprocess waste. Obama administration cancelled GNEP in 2009 and before that the closing of Yucca Mountain.
I personally think energy from nuclear reaction, whether it be fission or fusion, is the solution to the energy problems. I maybe proved wrong, the future will tell. And rexie here was talking about solar power, but that energy alternative is under the duress of the weather and the tilt of the earth, but with a fusion reactor, we can harness energy from a man made -much smaller- sun, so to speak.

It is interesting that among environmentalists nuclear power is more or less anathema. Despite the abundance of uranium fuel; the as yet unexploited (in the U.S) additional fuel recoverable from reprocessing of "spent" fuel; and our enormous in hand stores of enriched uranium and fissionable plutonium; they don't even consider it to be "renewable" - all despite the fact that it is emission free and, in terms of the safety of comparable industrial systems, has a safety record for both workers and the general public that is unmatched by any other source.

I'm not so sure about fusion power. There have been ongoing research programs for at least 45 years attempting to create the required confined high temperature, high pressure environment required for a controlled reaction. Not much progress has been achieved. We may see it some day, but now we're not even close.

There are, as you likely already, know a new generation of reactor designs out there that offer both important operational efficiencies and entirely passive safety in a loss of coolant event. Such entirely passive systems would have avoided the Fukushima outcome - and event that itself resulted from an extremely unlikely natural cause.

It is also interesting to note that the tusnami that caused the Fukushima reactor failures reportedly killed 18,000 Japanese people, while no one was killed in or as a result of the reactor failures, an interesting illustration of the lack of proportionality among the anti nukes.

Not all of us. I think most of those environmentalists don't understand the amount of radioactive material that's released into the environment every year by the burning of coal...

Has to be done right, though. No half-assing. Which means it probably shouldn't be done on a for-profit basis; the tendency to cut corners in order to increase profits is diametrically opposed to the safety we want to promote in such devices.

Cycloptichorn

I did not know that about coal releasing radioactive materials, thanks for pointing that out Cyc. It makes sense... Burning hydrogen also releases radioactive materials. There must be a certain threshold of radioactive particles that is beneficial to life. Maybe not.

The burning of coal releases radioactive uranium because trace quantities of uranium are present in most natural coal deposits. I'm not aware of ANY radioactive nuclide that is released in the burning of hydrogen - it's a simple molecule & atom and there is no naturally occuring radoactive isotope of hydrogen.

The public dose from the burning of the coal that produces about 48% of our electricity is several times greater than that which results from the productiuon of 20 % of our electrical power from nuclear reactors, and the two together are very much less than the average public dose from the practice of medicine, or even the extra natural dose that one gets when moving from (say) Chicago at an elevation 0f 550 feet to (say) Denver at an elevation of 5,000 feet. The public health data for Denver (and other cities at this altitude) does not indicate any added mortality from this added dose, which again is a good deal greater than that provided by coal and nuclear reactors together. (It should be noted that mortality among cigar smoking boozers in Las Vegas is higher than that for teatotalling Mormans in Salt Lake City.)

It should also be noted that some common medical procedures, such as a cat scan of the torso deliver radiation doses (about 2,000 millirem or 20 millisieverts in the new units) that is about four times the legal limit for radiation workers. The most exposed workers at Fukushima got doses equal to about two or three such cat scans - something that is a fairly common occurrence in many hospitals.

External (to the body) ratiation sources are easily measured and shielded. In addition radiation intensity follows an inverse squared law, meaning that if you double your distance from such a source, the radiation received drops by a factor of four; if you triple the distance, the radiation drops by a factor of nine, and so on. Radiaton sources that are ingested by the body are more dangerous. For example, naturally occuring radon is a gas that can be inhaled into the lungs. If an inhaled radon isotope decays (I.e. emits radiation) before it is exhaled, it leaves the decay daughter product, which is a particle, not a gas, behind, and it too is radioactive, so you get zapped twice.

From Wikipedia
Once manufactured, hydrogen is an energy carrier (i.e. a store for energy first generated by other means). The energy is eventually delivered as heat when the hydrogen is burned. The heat in a hydrogen flame is a radiant emission from the newly formed water molecules. The water molecules are in an excited state on initial formation and then transition to a ground state; the transition unleashing thermal radiation. When burning in air, the temperature is roughly 2000°C.


Comment: I am not sure of the difference between nuclear radiation and thermal radiation but I assume thermal radiation is a form of heat.

Thermal radiation is just the energy that radiates out in relation to the kinetic energy in an object. Infrared cameras can pick up these waves better than our natural eyes being that our eyes are evolved to pick up mostly visible light. Nuclear radiation, depending on the type of ionizing radiation and the dose emitted can be far worse to the environment than thermal radiation.

My problem with all of this George is that the exact amount of damage done by Fukushima has been purposefully stifled by the media and world governments. I can understand why though, but by putting a silent face on this it in no way minimizes the potential danger to all life on earth.

In other words hiding your head in the sand does not make it go away, cover your eyes and I can still see your face...

I think nuclear power in the short run poses a risk much greater than gas, oil and coal combined...

Though I do have a problem right now with all of the deep water oil drilling going on.

My father was a sea captain on supertankers hauling oil from the Middle East, Alaska and other parts of the globe to the USA.

One day my family was in the car and my father was driving and we went into a gas station to fill up. My father got out of the car and punched the gas attendant in the face because he was smoking a cigarette while filling our tank.

How often do gas stations blow up? Not very... (maybe in a Steven King Novel)

My father was Mason and a Shriner so he was often using cement to make rock gardens for my mom, slate walkways into the house and building rock walls.

Every few years we had to redo the cement. I asked my dad why.

He said well it is because we live by the ocean. He continued, he said the salt gets into the cement and it draws water into tiny cracks. The cold air makes the water expand and it over time destroys the cement. Seemed simple and logical to me.

Now let's consider the Gulf of Mexico.

The oil companies have drilled thousands of holes into the bedrock of the sea floor. Under thousands of lbs of pressure these drilled holes once the oil well is spent get filled with with what? Solid rock like there used to be there?

No, with cement. This same cement that needs to be replace over time because of salt and water damage.

So who will be responsible to go in and re-cement these holes after about who knows ten, twenty years or so?

Will the oil companies be responsible for the perpetual maintenance of these holes or will they just blow out and then spew oil on a massive scale into the ocean making the last Gulf oil spill look like child's play?

By then the billions in profits made by the oil companies will have been squandered on million dollar homes and fat-cat republican senators.

What recourse will we have?

Once again the bill will be fronted by the consumer and not by those responsible for drilling them. I don't think there will be a viable solution to fix these things short of cordoning off the gulf entirely...

And if they start drilling offshore in the Atlantic off Florida's deep water coast this will then provide a scenario that may spell doom for our oceans... And what of the holes in the sea bed of the North Sea?

Consider that George when you talk about the cost of solar energy...