THE US, THE UN AND IRAQ, ELEVENTH THREAD

How many times does it have to be repeated, it is not either / or, we need to both drill for more oil and transition, all at the same time. It is silly to put all of your eggs in one basket, as we need to exercise all of our options to make this work more smoothly.

I would never hire you as a manager of anything, cyclops, or to run any business. You would run it into the ground with bad decisions. Only a fool would quit developing or severely curtail a proven efficient energy source that will remain in high demand for a very long time and invest everything into alternative that remain to prove that they are more than a token contribution to the energy mix. Of solar, wind, and nuclear, nuclear offers the most potential, but we are decades away from really increasing electrical production very significantly with nuclear. If you think it will take a long time to develop more oil by drilling, you need to increase that with things like nuclear, solar, and wind. We are a long way off from making a significant contribution to the energy mix.

In the case of nuclear, all we have right now is talk. By the time actual plans, permits, and wading through the countless lawsuits that are bound to be filed by tree hugger and other special interest groups that have nothing better to do, and actual construction begins, completes, and brings the plants online, it is anyone's guess how long that will take. I have not researched this, but 15 years would be my guess at a minimum, unless the politicians expedite the process, which I doubt they will do, as they lack the collective will to do it.

I find it somewhat humorous you are now pushing nuclear, as your friends on the left killed this industry 25 to 30 years ago, and here we are worse off because of it. The same is now happening with the no drilling policy, which is idiocy, and you and others will eventually wake up to it.

I suppose it's a good thing that I'm not looking to you for gainful employment, Okie, in that case.

I would say that there are considerations that matter other then the profitability of a form of energy - such as the waste produced by that energy. I believe it is far past time to start cutting down on that waste. I do not advocate the curtailing of oil drilling, only the promotion of alternatives which do not cause pollution through their very use.

I have always been a proponent of nuclear energy use.

Cycloptichorn

It is not a good thing as once again we have commandeered resources in Iraq with no bid contracts which benefit Cheney and Bush and all those in this administration and those associated who are in the oil business. Proving once again that is the "oil stupid." Its shady and shoddy and unfair to others in the world who may have wanted to contribute and profit from any oil contracts in Iraq.

As for those others alternatives, they may take a while and we may always have to rely on oil as well as those alternatives, but in the end, it would save on energy and help the environment. A good investment all around.

Where do get these silly notions? Liberal blogs? Alien anal probes? Just type letters on the keyboard until words are made? Throw crap at a wall and see what sticks?

Please explain to us how that happens as your ideas are so far out there as to be unexplainable.

Deals With Iraq Are Set to Bring Oil Giants Back

Malarkey! We cannot transition to that which does not exist in adequate supply until we develop it. In the meantime, we can dramatically increase our domestic oil supply. So let's do it.

Starting now to drill for more domestic oil is guaranteed to help make America less dependent on foreign oil in the future.

Starting now to build more oil refineries is guaranteed to help make America less dependent on foreign oil refineries in the future.

Starting now to build more oil, gas, and coal burning furnaces to drive electric generators, is guaranteed to help increase our economic growth and reduce our future dependence on foreign generated electric power.

Starting now to build more nuclear powered furnaces to drive electric generators is guaranteed to reduce our future dependence on oil, gas, and coal burning furnaces to drive electric generators.

Starting now to build our capability to generate more electric power is guaranteed to help reduce our future dependence on oil, gas, and coal burning vehicles.

Starting now to develop electricity storing and powered vehicles is guaranteed to help reduce our future dependence on oil, gas, and coal burning vehicles.

Starting now to make America dependent on that which does not yet exist in adequate supply is guaranteed to depress the American economy, promote the further decline of our Constitutional Republic, and cause its eventual replacement by a tyrannical government.

What do you back your guarantees with, Ican? A refund for the time wasted reading them?

Cycloptichorn

Increase our domestic oil supply?

1. Who's going to invest the billions it'll require to drill for that oil?
2. How long before it starts to produce oil?
3. How much will that oil cost once it comes out of the ground and it is refined?
4. How many people in the US will have the money to buy that oil/gas?

Yesterday, you,

What do you back your yesterday's guarantee with, Cyclo? A fee for the time wasted reading it?

Guarantees are not usually backed by additional fees, Ican. You have it backwards.

I think my statement is more logically true then yours were; unless we transition to a source which will never run out (the sun, geothermal) - or at least, not during the projected lifetime of our species - we will eventually run out of available energy.

Cycloptichorn

5. What will be the cost if private entrepreneurs and their future customers are denied the opportunity to accomplish items 1 thru 4?

Starting now to make America dependent on that which does not yet exist in adequate supply is guaranteed to depress the American economy, reduce our ability to develop new solutions, promote the further decline of our Constitutional Republic, and cause our Constitutional Republic's eventual replacement by a tyrannical government.

But this statement of yours and its predecessors are illogical.

Starting now to make America dependent on that which does not yet exist in adequate supply is guaranteed to depress the American economy, reduce our ability to develop new solutions, promote the further decline of our Constitutional Republic, and cause our Constitutional Republic's eventual replacement by a tyrannical government.

I don't guess there's much of a point continuing the discussion if you are just going to repeat assertions without showing any facts to back them up.

Cycloptichorn

I don't guess there's much of a point continuing the discussion if you, Cyclo, are just going to repeat assertions without showing any facts to back them up--and accussing me of doing exactly what you do.

Starting NOW to make America dependent on that which does not yet exist in adequate supply is guaranteed to depress the American economy, reduce our ability to develop new solutions, promote the further decline of our Constitutional Republic, and cause our Constitutional Republic's eventual replacement by a tyrannical government.

What is your counter argument? Do you even have a counter argument?

Yes; I find the proposition that transitioning to more renewable forms of energy - which we do have the science for, Ican, we just haven't invested the money to build it up - will somehow cause the collapse of our system and lead to a 'tyrannical government,' to be laughable in the extreme, and indicative of a soft mind on the part of the proponent. You have no evidence whatsoever that this will be the result of transitioning to a cleaner form of energy generation. Just your partisan bullshit. And you always take it a step too far, which really robs you of credibility. Might as well claim that the sky would fall on our heads, chicken little....

Cycloptichorn

We NOW have under America an adequate supply of oil. All we have to do is permit the oil companies (and other entrepreneurs) to invest their profits in lifting it, transferring it, refining it, and distributing it.

You want to bet on the HOPE of our developing an adequate supply of renewable forms of energy. I want to bet on our PROVEN competence to lift, transfer, refine , and distribute adequate supplies of oil products. You already know what happened when we turned to harvesting energy generating food crops and other plants for fuel. Prices of food inflated and people are going hungary--and rioting. Worse, there is now less cultivated land available to grow plant for food. Worse yet, plants are a less efficient source of energy per equal mass than is oil!

Yes, but the plants are renewable, whereas oil is a fixed quantity resource.

Nobody is claiming that we should stop using oil immediately; just that we should spend the time and money building up cleaner resources then sticking with old, inefficient, and pollutive ones. It would take at least a decade for new oil drilling to truly come online here in America; we can build quite a few nuclear and solar plants in that time, and they would be much cleaner then the oil ever could be.

Cycloptichorn

None of what you asserted here is known to be true. We don't even know whether or not the supply of oil is currently increasing underground. We do know that we are continually finding more of it. We do know how long it takes to bring nuclear plants on line: it takes over 10 years. It's a long term but admittedly a good future solution. Solar technology is itself not even theoretically able to generate adequate energy per its cost in both dollars and space. Finally, we already now know that plant fuel is less clean than oil when burned to generate equivalent energy.

We currently do not have anything more than the HOPE that we can develop at tolerable cost "cleaner resources then sticking with old, inefficient, and pollutive ones."

We currently, do not know how long it will take "new oil drilling to truly come online here in America." We do know how to bring it online ASAP.

This is untrue. Solar energy is probably the most efficient in terms of space vs. energy created, as it can be easily installed on pre-existing structures, whose roofs are currently going unused. All other forms of energy generation carry a larger footprint, with the possible exception of micro-wind generation.

The best solar technologies out there today are producing plants for about $1/watt - comprable to coal.

I think it's fair to say that we know the oil supply isn't increasing faster then we are currently pumping it out. I think it's also fair to say that we are NOT finding large quantities of light, sweet crude - the type of oil which is the easiest to refine and the least pollutive.

Cycloptichorn

From Science Daily:


Researchers Think Pink To Produce 'Green' Solar Energy

ScienceDaily (Aug. 1, 2007) ?- When it comes to producing earth-friendly solar energy, pink may be the new green, according to Ohio State University researchers.


Scientists here have developed new dye-sensitized solar cells (DSSCs) that get their pink color from a mixture of red dye and white metal oxide powder in materials that capture light.

Currently, the best of these new pink materials convert light to electricity with only half the efficiency of commercially-available silicon-based solar cells -- but they do so at only one quarter of the cost, said Yiying Wu, assistant professor of chemistry at Ohio State.

And Wu is hoping for even better.

"We believe that one day, DSSC efficiency can reach levels comparable to any solar cell," he said. "The major advantage of DSSCs is that the cost is low. That is why DSSCs are so interesting to us, and so important."

Pink is a typical color for DSSCs. Most use dyes containing ruthenium, which has a red color; the metal oxide powder that turns the mix pink is most often titanium oxide or zinc oxide, which are both whitish in color. But Wu's materials are novel in that he's using more complex metals and exploring different particle shapes to boost the amount of electricity produced.

In a recent issue of the Journal of the American Chemical Society (JACS), he and his team report that they have made a new DSSC material using zinc stannate.

This is the first time that researchers have made a DSSC from anything other than a simple oxide. Wu and his colleagues chose zinc stannate because it belongs to a class of more complex oxides with tunable properties.

"This opens up new possibilities for how scientists may tailor the properties of DSSCs in the future," he said.

So why are DSSCs pink, and not blue like silicon-based solar cells?

Those traditional solar cells look blue because of an anti-reflective coating, he explained. The coating boosts absorption of green light, which is the strongest in the solar spectrum. Wu's materials don't have that anti-reflective coating.

Color determines the wavelength of light that a solar cell can capture, so adjusting the color lets scientists optimize particular properties in how the device will function. So far in the development of DSSCs, scientists have gotten the best performance from red ruthenium dye.

"If you want to achieve the best efficiency, you need to consider both the voltage you can achieve and the current you can achieve," Wu said. Voltage is the potential energy that the material could provide; current is the amount of charge it can transport.

"If you absorb a very broad range of wavelengths, that's going to sacrifice voltage. And if your absorption energy threshold is very high, you can achieve high voltage, but you'll sacrifice current. The idea is to find some balance."

Silicon-based solar cells have been around since the 1960s. Scientists have been working to develop DSSCs since the 1990s.

In DSSCs, dye molecules coat tiny metal oxide particles that are packed together into a thin film. The dye molecules capture light energy and release electrons, and the particles act like electrical wires to carry the electrons away to an electrical circuit.

But electrons can get lost when traveling between particles. That's why Wu is working on designs that incorporate tiny nano-wires that carry electrons directly to a circuit.

Last year, he and his team published a paper in the Journal of Physical Chemistry B describing DSSCs that contained particles and nano-wires of titanium oxide. That formulation achieved 8.6 percent efficiency -- roughly half of the 15 percent efficiency typical of commercially available silicon solar cells.

In the new JACS paper, they report that a formulation with zinc stannate particles -- but no nano-wires -- achieved 3.8 percent efficiency. Now they are working to combine the two strategies, by making nano-wires from zinc stannate and other oxides.

They are also exploring the possibility of using nano-trees -- nano-wires shaped like the branches of a tree.

"We asked ourselves, what structure is best for gathering light and also transporting materials -- a tree! The leaves provide a high surface area for capturing light, and the branches transport the nutrients to the roots," Wu said. "In our DSSC design, the dye-coated particles would provide the surface area, and the nano-trees would branch out in between them, to transport the electrons."

So dye-sensitized solar cells may contain tiny pink "trees" in the future, but other colors are possible, he said. Researchers are studying new dyes and dye combinations that may work better.

Wu's coauthors on the Journal of the American Chemical Society paper included postdoctoral researcher Bing Tan, doctoral student Yanguang Li, and undergraduate student Elizabeth Toman.

This research was partially funded by the American Chemical Society's Petroleum Research Fund.