Alternative energy 1

Neil, better an artesian well than black gold. Don't 'ya think?

Letty, the sun needs to shine through crystal before real energy could be produced. Look what happens when it burns through glass. A fire.

Humanity is a little slow right now, but I enjoy it just as it is. Personally, in no hurry whatever. Oil, gas and electricity work fine and there's plenty.
What's wrong with nuclear?

We're definitely not ready for the crystal.

er, Tex. Did I support the crystal? sheeze, give me the energy that adrenalin and calories produce. Now if I can just harness it.....

goodnight from Florida.

With the present number of electric power nuclear reactors, the known reserves of uranium will last about 1000 years, much longer if we build breader reactors. Unfortunately most of the breeders built to date had serious accidents or were dismantaled as unsafe. If you figure the potentual for disaster, long term, nueclear is not very cost competitive, especially the cost of holding the lawyers at bay. The French have a nuclear reactor with an excellent safety record, but many Americans would object to paying the French a trillion dollars to build nueclear reactors for us. It takes a few million actual operating hours to assure that a new reactor design is really safe, even with computer modeling. Neil

I agree with Steve about levitating cars, etc. There is no pie in the sky.

The problem is not technology. The problem is political and cultural. The cheapest gallon of fuel is the fuel is the fuel not used. it costs nothing. An obvious way of cutting the use of oil drastically is public transprotation. However, spoiled Americans will never go that route. So, we are driven to find alternate fuels to continue our folly. The cheapest gallon of fuel

How are Americans spoiled? By their knowledge that public transportation requires subsidies and their erroneous belief that cars pay their way. I will list from memory the many ways car owners get a free ride.

The first biggie was the The Oil Depletion Act" of 1928.
Through tax write offs (a subsidy), the federal government enabled gas to be sold at ridiculously and artificially low prices.

The automobile does not exist in a vacuum. It creates
a need for roads that are maintained and which are not paid by gas tax alone. The automobile creates an infra structure to sustain it.

To wit:

Police to mantain some semblance of order.

More police, more ambulances, more hospital space, more medical personnel.

Environmental damage, both from the exhaust and by covering millions of acres of land with concrete.

The above is no means a complete list of the free rides given to the owners of cars.

Why should car owners give up these gifts?

Public Transportation? The Europeans heavily subsidize
PT. And it shows. I've ridden subways in London, Paris. Efficient and easy to use.
And the French high speed trains the TGV, travel at 180 mph

We are light years behind in PT, but we should make it part of the agend.

Pity we cannot turn our trash and waste materials into some form of energy.

Hi billy: I'm not familiar with the details, but my guess is the depletion act of 1928 should be phased out about 28% per year so it is gone completely in about 4 years. Perhaps we could collect an extra dollar in tax each time an SUV or equivalent refuels?
I'm opposed to putting a trillion dollars of taxpayers money in high tech bullet trains etc, unless it can be shown honestly that the gross cost per passenger mile is less than low tech buses. The people mover operational in Jacksonville Florida for 3 years is projected to cost gross at least ten times the per passenger mile cost of well managed city busses. I think we should fund several communities of various sizes to offer free buses. They would reduce the death toll on the roads, make it practical for some people to get to work who are presently almost unemployable due to transportation problems, possibly almost as convenient as driving your own car, make us less dependent on foreign oil, and would save important money for low income citizens. I think up to 10% of our citizens would ride them the first year they became reasonably convenient. School children could ride the free busses to the school of their choice, instead of the present madness. Neil

Mankind is in for a rough ride over the next few decades. We are addicted to oil. More oil addicts appear on the scene every year. The oil supply is set to peak soon and decline thereafter. And we shouldn't even be burning oil and fossil fuels because we are wrecking the earth's atmosphere. (Which if memory serves correctly also extends over the United States).

The long term solution is the hydrogen economy, utilising hydrogen derived from carbon neutral sources, in a network of fuel cells. The question is can we kick the hydrocarbon habit before it kicks us? Certainly not if George Bush has anything to do with it.

Neil, Thanks for the quick rsponse.

1.. Regarding the oil depletion act. We subsidized oil to
an incrediblle degree, encouraging the use of private
cars.

Another enourmous boost to the auto was the 1946 home mortgage deduction. The emphasis on single family homes created a pattern of housing that made public transportation difficult and finally,impossible.
It is as though each person has a private bus.
I really like your ideas on 'free" busses.

Not a trillion developing bullet trains? Not to worry.
The Fench did that in the early 80's. They're developed. They need only to be made. By the way, I claimed the French TGV went 180 mph. I was in error. They go well over 200mph.

Gross cost per passenger mile? I wonder what the gross cost per passenger mile is for modern jet liner

Earlier I wrote that Americans were too spoiled to use good, fast, clean, cheap public ttransportation. The auto is our very being. As the owner of many cars, I can attest to being in love with some cars. I love touring in cars. I love driving cars. I love the challenge
of weather and.or terrain. I used to love the tuning up, the maintenance, the polishing, shining , detailing.

I have met the enemy and it seems to be me.




















ttthiithe

Heeven - Trash to Fuel. Organic garbage can be turned into oil (gasoline in particular) and the mega oil company my brother works for is building a plant to do that right now.

Acquink

That's just an example of a carbon neutral energy source. Its good but you're going to need a lot of them before oil from garbage replaces oil from a hole in the ground.

My personal opinion is that we are like addicts, and do not need another oil fix.

Hi billy: at last, someone who thinks free buses might be good. There are at least 4 more advantages. Free means no time collecting fares which means reaching the average destination perhaps 3 minutes sooner and safer as we have removed an important driver distraction and frustration. No drivers getting mugged for their fares.
!0% or 12% fewer cars on the road at rush hour means we rarely have to build new highways the next 10 years. That cost savings might cover half of the cost of the free bus system.
We can easily get from the voluntary 10% to 12% with the judges suspending the drivers licences of dangerous and impaired drivers. That could halve the death toll on our roads by it's self. The more riders the more places buses can go and more often which attracts more riders. When the bus is a minute ahead of schedule the driver could even take an occasional passenger to his house instead of having him walk a block or two from the bus stop.
In Turkey, besides buses they have the dolmush, a privately owned car which you hail like a taxi, but it keeps picking up passengers until it is packed with people. The route keeps changing to get each passenger to his destination. typically slower than a taxi but less costly and more fuel efficinet. Some drivers would likely provide this service even if they only averaged 50 cents per passenger. Drivers willing to go to rural and thinly populated locals after midnight when buses run less often should get a bonus from the tax payers. Neil

The gross cost per passenger mile of modern jet liners is the average cost of a ticket per mile as even a reasonable profit is part of the gross, not that many airlines are showing a profit. That is skewed a bit (which way?) by the mail and freight planes typically carry, if the plane is not full of passengers.
If the government ran the airlines, the gross per passenger mile would double. Government rarely does anything correctly. Neil

Hi aqualunk and steve: I looked at one of those garbage to oil micro-organism processes. The type of garbage is quite critical to get a reasonable amount of oil for the energy input and the initial cost of the reactors. Would you mind sorting your garbage like you do your recycle? If not; 1% of the world's energy from garbage and trash via micro-organisms is very optimistic. But every little bit helps. Neil

Here in Florida, land owners periodically strip the land they hope to sell of all the brush and small trees that grow without any encouragement. The yield is typically several cords of fire wood of mixed species per acre. Since only about 10% is good looking and burns with a pleasant odor it is piled and left in the field for decades. If this is typical of first world countries this fire wood could provide perhaps 1/10 th of 1% of the world's energy needs. An even larger source of ugly wood is the clear cutting (and other logging) of forests for lumber and paper pulp, with up to 20% of cut burnable weight being left behind to create a massive fire hazard. Are you sure the giant internationalist corporations have a conscience. Neil

Neil, super info on busses.

the littlle busses you mentioned were called jitneys in Atlantic City. You paid a flat fee for up to one loop.
Also saw them in Buenos Aires.

Other basic facts about PT (public transportatiion):

"In 2001, Americans took 9.5 billion trips using public transportation, an increase of 1.9 percent from the previous year -- the equivalent of more than a million new trips each day.

Since 1995, public transportation has risen 21percent -- faster than vehicle miles traveled on our roadways and airline passenger miles logged over the same period.

An estimated 14 million Americans ride public transportation each weekday and an additional 25 million use it on a less frequent but regular basis.

(How can someone as sharp as you believe the myth of government inefficiency? But thats for another thread.)

Billy, When one considers the costs of public transportation one also should consider the values of time and convienience. Buses, trains and airplanes also do not exist in a vaccum. They require roads, airports and fuels also. They also require large companies to manufacture them, provide fuel, and to operate them. Boeing, General Motors and Exxon (manufacturers of airplanes, buses, and fuels) are not exactly "mom and pop" enterprises.

Unfortunetly perhaps I have observed that "technology marches together". If we want hospitals then we need ambulances. If we want miracle drugs then we need chemical companies. If we want knowledge, and thence perhaps wisdom, we need universities. If we want companies big enough to manufacture buses and airplanes then we need a government big enough to regulate them.

Where I take umbrage is with Neils statement is that "big" is generally bad. I don't agree. "Big" is merely a reflection of size. If it's "big" and bad it's very bad. "If it's big" and good it can be very good. But in the world as we find it "big" with its corresponding efficiencies and abilities, is necessary to provide for human wishes.

The efficiencies of scale are very very real. I have a wonderful example if you are interested. Have a nice day, Mech

Hello!

Is seems to me we must think BIG concerning the energy problem - and face the fact that we currently use more energy than is healthy.

Oil - it will just run out, when we burn it all. It will be simply converted heat, CO2 in atmosphere and other waste byproducts.
Natural gas - same problem.

Renewable sources : Wind, water(rivers&sea), biomass, etc. are ok as long as you don't take too much. Burn too much biomass and you'll kill more than it grows; make too many river dams and you'll turn land into lakes. IMHO, we might already use more energy than is readily available from renewable sources..
Basically, all these sources use solar energy indirectly - plants are really a form of 'solar power plants' - storing energy in carbonates. Wind is caused by heating differences - which take energy from the Sun. I must admit that tidal energy is different - that one draws from the Moon orbiting Earth and slows it down slowly - but this is natural and hard to make worse.


Direct Solar energy - looks great at first, but when you think about it more it doesn't seem very practical - you need large areas of solar cells/mirrors which not only deteriorate fast, they warm up&destroy environment. Earth reflects a lot of solar energy back to space and if we cover large areas with solar panels we will heat up the land too much. And our solar cells aren't as good as leaves of trees..

I think solar power is only viable when you build your stations in orbit around the Earth - or better yet on the Moon or nearer the Sun.. Only we currently lack technology to put such large structures in space, and maintain them. We can hardly maintain the little ISS...

We will of course deplete the easy Nuclear sources (Uranium) relatively soon, and along the way create a pile of radioactive dirt - which can be maybe buried near where the Earth's crust is coming together and sinking down.. maybe.

Then there is fusion nuclear power - we can burn our Deuterium reserves from water once we master the fusion (see ITER/tokamak). This one should last pretty long, before it runs out. But this is still in the (modestly far) future.

There is another source of energy for the fusion reactions, which is much better than Deuterium, and the technology for making power plants almost there. It is called He3 - a special form of Helium. No radioactive waste, clean, no meltdowns- to good to be true. Of course there is a catch : it is very rare on earth - only several tons are thought to exist - but guess what , it is plentiful on the Moon. The recent Bush plan for return to the Moon may have more in common with War in Iraq than it seems..

The major problem with all sources of energy is that the more we use (renewable or not), the more heat is produced. It is very simple - almost all energy we use is turned into heat in the end. Now, if we use some energy that is going to turn into heat anyway (wind power, rivers, tide...) that's ok, any other source (oil, nuclear, direct solar...) just ADDS the heat. It is interesting to note that cooling devices have become the major source of heat, and major counsumers of power. We are heating the Earth all the time, furnaces during Winter, air-conditioners during the summer. Florida is a warmer place because of extensive air-conditioning .

We don't know exactly how much additional heat the Earth can take, but we'll see.

Long-term, my guess would be some form of nuclear power - either Hydrogen or He3 fusion, plus smaller sources (renewable, direct solar,...).

IF we can reach that .. before Oil runs out .

Just my 2 cents, all only IMHO.