Comments Nucbuddy has made

The need for bigotry

Bart Anderson wrote: Numbers don't remove the need for clear thinking

When you say clear thinking, do you mean bigotry?On A Cambridge physicist's cooling summer treat posted 1 year, 5 months ago 27 Responses

Diffuse fuels never scale

GreyFlcn wrote: 335,000 square miles of "Warm Desert" in North America. Is that enough?

If Nevada Solar One is averaging ~10 MW/sqm, it would need to be scaled up to ~50,000 square-miles to cover the present average electrical market of the United States. As the United States electricity market expanded to 10 times its present size, the solar power plant would need to scale up to ~500,000 square-miles (but that little, only if all of those square-miles were as optimal as the first square-mile), exceeding all of the "Warm Desert" land area in North America.On Solar thermal can save us, but it needs public clamor posted 1 year, 5 months ago 35 Responses

Do people believe that solar has to do with oil?

The Tom Friedman article says that all oil use in the United States can be economically replaced "tommorrow" with "wind and solar power [...] on your roof."

Now we have the new Bush energy plan: "Get more addicted to oil."
[...]
People forget, wind and solar power are here, they work, they can go on your roof tomorrow. What they need now is a big U.S. market where lots of manufacturers have an incentive to install solar panels and wind turbines -- because the more they do, the more these technologies would move down the learning curve, become cheaper and be able to compete directly with coal, oil and nuclear, without subsidies.

Are you all (David Roberts and the previous commenters in this thread) endorsing that statement? If you are, please:

1. Be explicit.
   
2. Show your math.

Is CSP really over 200% efficient?

Tnrkitect wrote: PV's would require 1,000's of square miles to power the grid.

CSP's on the other hand are more efficient, and therefore would only require 100 square miles to produce the same amount of energy.

If we take that implied PV/CSP ratio to be at least 20 (2,000sqm/100sqm), and if we assume that PV has an efficiency of at least 10%, your statement seems to imply that CSP has an efficiency of at least 200%.

Is that really what you meant to imply?
On Solar thermal can save us, but it needs public clamor posted 1 year, 5 months ago 35 Responses

Maybe Santa Cruz should be tested with water

Wolverine wrote: The plan was to spray artificial pheromones, encapsulated in plastic and mixed with chemicals

Is that supposed to imply something sinister?

Wolverine wrote: the spraying of Monterey and Santa Cruz counties the previous year sickened at least hundreds of people

Perhaps it is just a coincidence that both Santa Cruz and Monterey are also notorious hotbeds of anxiety neurosis. It is well known that there are special reasons that people move to special places like Santa Cruz and Monterey, and that high stress-tolerance is not one of those reasons.

If a double-blind test -- consisting of random alternation between 1. any-given commercial spray and 2. a placebo (maybe plain water?), and with sufficient time between sprayings -- were to be conducted over Santa Cruz and/or Monterey, would you expect the corresponding sickness-reporting from the public to statistically-significantly vary between the two types of sprayings?
On California officials yank controversial urban spraying plan posted 1 year, 5 months ago 9 Responses

Hapa

Do you think it would increase maintenance needs if a level were devoted to ordinary car traffic (no heavy vehicles such as buses or trucks)?
On Carmaker knows most efficient freight system: trains posted 1 year, 5 months ago 25 Responses

Why are competing businesses shipping by truck?

Tasermons Partner wrote: if almost everything [...] were shipped by train

...the US economy would collapse, due to excessive transit-rigidity and excessive transit-latency. Rail means monopolies. Over-the-Road (OTR) means myriad independents, competing to provide the most-efficient service.

Have you ever wondered why business chooses to spend more to ship by truck and plane? Do you honestly think that many, if not most, of the businesses that choose to ship by truck have not already tried rail?
On Carmaker knows most efficient freight system: trains posted 1 year, 5 months ago 25 Responses

The Turks stopped walking when they hit turquois

Wolverine wrote: I've always said "traditional" native people.

Like the Turks that you reference? Turks (also known as Tibetans, Ainu, Chukchi, Eskimo, Navajo, and Dine) certainly have tradition, but they are not native to Southwest United States. (And "Not all Native Americans are Turkish.")

One of their more-famous traditions was nomadicism. Another was worship of the copper-aluminium-phosphate mineral turquois (note the relationship: Turkish, turquois).

In both Turkish and Navajo legends the first man is stated to have been made of turquoise.

Turquois is an interesting mineral in that it is found in essentially only two places on Earth:

1. Persia.
   
2. Southwest United States/North Mexico.

In most European languages the bright blue or blue-green stone is called "Turkish" because at the time of its introduction to Europe it appeared to have originated from the country of Turkey.

Wolverine wrote: The traditional Dine have ALWAYS been opposed to ANY form of mining

If that were accepted as true, it might be hard to explain this big pre-Spanish hole (from the above Persia-link):

Turquoise [...] was called chalchihuitl or xiuitl ['xiu'=blue] [thus the word 'Mexican' might mean 'men of torquois' -NB], which are Nahua [as in Navajo? -NB] words. Nahuatl is the language of the Aztecs
[...]
The Nauhua colonial name for the Turquoise Hill on the north side of the Cerrillos was Cerro Chalchiquite. In the Argentine Andes the valley of turquoises is recorded as Valle de Chalchaquies.

One of the smallest, but at the same time most important, of the Cerrillos Hills is Mount Chalchihuitl [...] the site of numerous prehistoric turquoise mines. The early Spanish visitors to New Mexico did not value the mineral -- there is no "Cerro Turquesa" -- but their central-Mexico allies and fellow-travelers, primarily Nahuatl-speaking Tlascalans, esteemed turquoise above all other stones. Hence, we have inherited through the Spanish records the Tlascalan name for this 'turquoise hill'.
[...]
Mount Chalchihuitl is the site of the most extensive prehistoric mining operations known on the American continent. The extent of the workings is "truly marvelous"; the whole north side of the hill has been quarried out, while less extensive excavations are found in other parts of the so-called mountain...

William P. Blake, the first geologist to visit Mount Chalchihuitl, described it in Journal XII, the entry of August 29, 1857.
[...]

"A great chasm or excavation, basin shaped, with projecting crags and precipices. 200 feet deep - 300 wide - an enormous excavation into the solid rock and a pile of debris equally enormous. Trees growing in the bottom and at the sides, 20 feet high pines & very old. The rocks have caved in. A cave or shelter cut into the crags where Indians even now lodge.

"Leaving the arroyo we ascended the slope of the hill following a foot trail among the cedars & gradually ascending until we reached the brink of a precipice which stopped our progress. Here we dismounted and clambering down among the crags looked off into an enormous basin shaped excavation below in the bottom and along the sides of which pine trees were growing. This excavation is nearly circular and is bounded on three sides by vertical precipices of rock, rugged and supporting trees here and there in the crevices.

"I was so much struck with the extent of this singular excavation that it was some minutes before I could believe that it was the work of men alone and for an ornamental stone whatever it might prove to be. I looked in vain for traces of a mineral vein or bed of ore which might have attracted miners but there were none. In extent this opening is not not less than 300 feet in length and breadth and 200 feet deep and it must have been made the greater part of it centuries ago. The immense heaps or debris of the rock which has been removed is strewn out on one side and forms quite a hill which is over covered with pines - sufficient evidence of the antiquity of the opening. This is not the only pile of rocks which have been removed they are found on all sides and in most places are covered with lichens, gray with age. All the rock appears to have been broken up into fragments not larger than the fist or of eggs and then carried out and turned over the bank of refuses precisely as is done by the miners with their [] at the present day.

In the words of Silliman,

"The observer is deeply impressed with the enormous amount of labor which in ancient times has been expended here. The waste or debris excavated in the former workings covers an area which the local surveyor assured me extends by his measurement over at least 20 acres. On the slopes and sides of the great piles of rubbish are growing large cedars and pines, the age of which... must be reckoned by centuries." (Benjamin Silliman, Jr., 1881)

According to measurements made by Sterrett in 1911, the main pit is about 130 feet deep on the high side, 35 feet deep on the low side, and 200 feet across, and the debris therefrom covers about 2½ acres. Many stone hammers and other primitive implements have been found in the debris of the ancient workings.

Ancient excavations have also been found at the other points modernly worked and at several places in Turquoise Hill they exceed in extent the recent excavations.

The immense excavations at Cerrillos are of great antiquity, and it seems beyond reasonable question that the greater portion was executed before the advent of the Spaniards. Indeed, this deposit must have supplied much of the turquois which was so widely used in pre-Spanish times

Cars more-efficient than trains - for people

Hapa,

Minivans hold people. Trains are only efficient when transporting dense cargo.

A major reason why a railroad train is usually a lot more efficient for hauling freight than passengers is due to weight and space requirements. Hauling live people takes up a lot of interior space so that people can move about and have space to read, walk, etc. But freight just requires the space to store the freight. For bulk commodities like coal, there is little air space between the coal lumps.

The weight of the passengers in a train is often only a few percent of the total weight of the train so the heavy rail cars and locomotives exact a high toll in energy consumption. In contrast to this, for high density freight, the weight of the freight may constitute roughly half the weight of the train. So the heavy rail cars don't accrue the high weight penalty that they do for passenger rail.

• Passenger train cars have almost double the specific rolling resistance of freight cars due to the low weight of the "cargo" (passengers).

• Passenger trains travels at higher speeds than freight and a doubling of speed will quadruple the aerodynamic drag.

• Passenger train cars are heated or cooled (air conditioned) and lighted while freight cars are usually not.

Something is rotten in Minnesota

Denmark already has hyper-subsidies for wind. What could it possibly learn from Minnesota?
On Massachusetts town could be first to build offshore wind farm in U.S. posted 1 year, 5 months ago 31 Responses

Price it in - adsorb it from the oceans

Archigeek wrote: Nucbuddy [...] I welcome your suggestions on how we can clean up the uranium mining and nuclear power industries.

Why, thank you. I would suggest pricing in all externalities, and then letting the market decide. If terrestrial mining thus becomes too expensive, uranium (and thorium) can always be cheaply mined from the oceans.

The consistent 3.3 ppb U in seawater is in chemical equilibrium. If it were being depleted, we would expect that additional U would be leached and put in solution from ocean bottoms, hydrothermal vents and cold seeps, and terrestrial sources (primarily through tidal pumping on the continental shelves, with some from rivers and other discharges). If we extracted a billion tons over hundreds of years, it is more likely that the oceans will contain nearly 4.5 billion tons than be reduced to 3.5+ billion tons.

Is this a "renewable" energy source?

David Brower was right: EF! needs SC.

Wolverine wrote: Well David [...] I notice that you save your most venomous comments for me, probably the strongest defender of the Earth who posts here.

I suspect it is not the message, but the delivery style. There are plenty of deep-ecologists in the world. I would be surprised to learn that David did not know, and was on very good terms with, at least a handful. Throughout history, plenty of radicals in-general have graduated from milquetoast media/groups just like Gristmill.

Wolverine wrote: I've never seen you make a nasty comment toward [Mad Mac, Nucbuddy, and John Bailo] or tell them to stop saying something.

Google the archives.
On Gallons per mile: A better way to express fuel efficiency posted 1 year, 5 months ago 24 Responses

David: cars do not consume fuel

I believe this article is essentially a repeat of another one that you ran a year ago. Yes, it is important to know. It is also important to know that not all cars are going to be driven the same distance, nor in the same manner, nor with the same maintenance regimen, nor in the same conditions. The average Prius owner only drives some 6-7 thousand miles per year (famous dust-to-dust study on Prius vs. Hummer), making his ownership of a Prius even more irrelevant than it would be if he drove a normal amount. Also, jacking up the fixed-costs of a car to cover features like fuel-efficiency and safety, merely makes the relative marginal-costs of driving drop -- encouraging more driving (and hence typically more fuel use), not less.

Bottom line:

Cars don't consume fuel. People consume fuel.
On Gallons per mile: A better way to express fuel efficiency posted 1 year, 5 months ago 24 Responses

Why is Denmark not 100% wind/solar?

Nirsnet wrote: a 100% reduction in carbon emissions [...] can only be done without building new [nuclear reactors]

Why has Denmark not achieved this?
On Lovins and Sheikh defend their work in 'The Nuclear Illusion' posted 1 year, 5 months ago 23 Responses

Hull 2 is achieving 23.3% capacity-factor

Gar Lipow wrote: 23% capacity factor is [expletive deleted]

Hull 2 Capacity Factor 23.3%.

Interestingly, Hull 1 replaced a 1985 windmill that was destroyed in a storm in 1997. The capacity factor of that 1985 windmill, since 1997, has been 0%.

Perhaps the four-turbine cluster of Hull 3 will indeed achieve a capacity factor of 33% -- in its first year. Then, salt, bugs, dirt, bird-parts, etc. might build up on the blades, reducing capacity-factor.

Build-up of dead bugs has been shown to halve the maximum power generated by a wind turbine, reducing the average power generated by 25% and more. Build-up of salt on off-shore turbine blades similarly has been shown to reduce the power generated by 20%-30%.

The machinery wears, especially in a salty environment, further reducing capacity-factor (Edmunds.com notes this, and thus reduces fuel-economy estimates over the five years of their total-cost-of-ownership estimates). The turbines might be taken offline for maintenance or repair.

17.04.2008 [April 17, 2008]

After two accidents this February involving wind turbines, the Danish Wind Industry Association is now proposing a system of mandatory annual service checks, according to industry magazine Megawatt.

A `runaway event' at a 600 kW Nordtank wind turbine at Halling in eastern Jutland caused its blades to spin out of control and collide with the tower, causing the turbine to collapse. In an unrelated event at Vig in Odsherred, a 600 kW Vestas Wind Systems wind turbine lost a blade.
[...]
Failure to meet the requirements of a service certificate should result in a wind turbine being taken out of service.

`It's very important that we act quickly, so Danes' confidence in wind turbines is not harmed,' said Bjarne Lundager Jensen, the association's managing director.

Then, the turbines might be destroyed by a storm, before their planned decommissioning, just like the 1985 turbine that Hull 1 replaced, and just like myriad other might-still-be turbines worldwide that have suffered similar fates. It would be OK, though. The village of Hull could simply continue to draw on the natural-gas, coal, and nuclear power that it would normally be relying on anyway, even if/when all of its turbines were operational.
On Massachusetts town could be first to build offshore wind farm in U.S. posted 1 year, 5 months ago 31 Responses

Thanks, Graham. Take Two.

OK. Let's try this again.

Boston Globe article from January 2008:

The four offshore wind turbines would produce close to 15 megawatts of electricity

Currently, "early estimates are up to $40 million" (WSJ). That works out to $2,667/KW. If we were to assume a 23% capacity-factor, the nuclear-relative capacity cost would be $10,667/KW.
On Massachusetts town could be first to build offshore wind farm in U.S. posted 1 year, 5 months ago 31 Responses

$40 million for 15 MW = $4,000/KW

Boston Globe article from January 2008:

The four offshore wind turbines would produce close to 15 megawatts of electricity

It is currently estimated at $40 million. That works out to $4,000/KW. If we assumed a 23% capacity-factor, the nuclear-relative capacity cost would be $16,000/KW.
On Massachusetts town could be first to build offshore wind farm in U.S. posted 1 year, 5 months ago 31 Responses

'Cancer rates skyrocketed'

Tasermons Partner wrote: [at the height of DDT spraying] the number of cancer, neural disorders, and stillborn rates skyrocketed.

Cite? Quantification? There is little association between DDT and cancer.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DDT

In 1987 the EPA classified DDT as a class B2 probable human carcinogen [...] Regarding the human carcinogenicity data, they stated "The existing epidemiological data are inadequate. Autopsy studies relating tissue levels of DDT to cancer incidence have yielded conflicting results."

A study of malaria workers who handled DDT occupationally found an elevated risk of cancers of the liver and biliary tract. Another study has found a correlation between DDE and liver cancer in white men, but not for women or black men. An association between DDT exposure and pancreatic cancer has been demonstrated in a few studies, but other studies have found no association. Several studies have looked for associations between DDT and multiple myeloma, and testicular, prostate, endometrial, and colorectal cancers, but none conclusively demonstrated any association.

Elevated cancer-risk typically takes many years to decades to express.
On Icky disease afflicting Alaskan salmon posted 1 year, 5 months ago 11 Responses

Horse pollution

Wolverine wrote: none of the harms you identified are to wilderness or wildlife.

Horses emit methane and consume grain, generally grown on farms.

Wolverine wrote: that doesn't mean that there aren't other methods of transportation [...] including [...] public transit.

What benefit could there be in replacing the automobile with public transit?

Wolverine wrote: horses don't belong in unnatural urban environments

Welcome to Manhattan.
blogs.villagevoice.com/runninscared/1339670160_f4ba4e3418.jpg
On The case for fuel-agnostic efficiency posted 1 year, 5 months ago 21 Responses

$6.4 trillion for 20% windpower share

Greentiger wrote: Let's say we swap in 20% wind

How could that be done? Even Denmark was unable to achieve that. At the current price of $64,000/KW, 100 GW of wind would cost $6.4 trillion.
On Lovins and Sheikh defend their work in 'The Nuclear Illusion' posted 1 year, 5 months ago 23 Responses

'Burning the last' of 1/3rd quadrillion barrels

Justlou wrote: When the US fleet averages over 50 mpg, and there are half the number of automobiles on the road in the US as there are now, then we can possibly discuss burning the last of it.

With over a third of a quadrillion barrels of oil -- over ten thousand years' worth -- in the earth's crust, how could one burn the last of it anytime soon?
On How greens and Democrats can win the energy debate posted 1 year, 5 months ago 19 Responses

It's simple: price everything in, minimize costs

Usandthem wrote: We need to get off of the oil teat. We will have to pay more, but the alternative is generations of lowering lifestyle and pollution and hunger.

If you price in those externalities, then you might end-up paying less.
On Backing up McCain, Bush calls for ending offshore drilling moratorium posted 1 year, 5 months ago 11 Responses

Show us the money, not the energy-efficiency

Nucbuddy wrote: Is a unit of energy as heat equal to the value of a unit of energy as electricity? If it is not, your combined-heat-and-power plan might decrease efficiency, rather than increase it.

And what happens over time, as heat becomes less and less valuable, and homes and businesses consume ever-increasing amounts of electricity to power electronics? Does your combined-heat-and-power plan become more-and-more valuable?

Sean Casten wrote: Thomas Edison's plant was 6% efficient.  But he also recovered thermal energy

Yes. Hence my above-comment to you addressing that point. By the way, is a unit of energy as heat equal to the economic value of a unit of energy as electricity?

Sean Casten wrote: With respect to your second point, you need to be careful not to confuse the first and second laws of thermodynamics

I guess I wouldn't have anything to worry about, then, since I ignore laws of thermodynamics.

Sean Casten wrote: Here's the crux of the math

Glancing at it, and not noticing any dollar signs, I skipped it. Please show the money, Sean.
On The solution: Output-based standards posted 1 year, 5 months ago 72 Responses

The humble automobile, in perspective

Wolverine wrote: People should be driving NO cars, which would provide a higher quality of life for the rest of the planet

...Even if those cars were replaced by horses?

Wolverine wrote: and for those humans who still have any sense left.
google.com/search?q=cars+horses+manure+disease

While the nineteenth century American city faced many forms of environmental pollution, none was as all encompassing as that produced by the horse. The most severe problem was that caused by horses defecating and urinating in the streets, but dead animals and noise pollution also produced serious annoyances and even health problems. The normal city horse produced between fifteen and thirty-five pounds of manure a day and about a quart of urine, usually distributed along the course of its route or deposited in the stable. While cities made sporadic attempts to keep the streets clean, the manure was everywhere, along the roadway, heaped in piles or next to stables, or ground up by the traffic and blown about by the wind. In 1818, in an attempt to control the manure nuisance, the New York City Council required that those who gathered and hauled manure, so-called "dirt carting," to be licensed, also restricting aliens to this type of carting activity. Thousands of loads of manure were gathered on special "manure-yards" to undergo a process of "rotting," and "gangs" of men were employed to overturn the manure and to expose it to weathering. In 1866, the Citizen's Association Report on the Sanitary Condition of the City observed that, "The stench arising from these accumulations of filth is intolerable."

Nineteenth century urbanites considered the stench or miasmas produced by the manure piles a serious health hazard, but cleaning was sporadic at best. Manure piles also produced huge numbers of flies, in reality a much more serious vector for infectious diseases such as typhoid fever than odors. By the turn of the century public health officials had largely accepted the bacterial theory of disease and had identified the "queen of the dung-heap" or fly, as a major source. Inventors and city officials devised improved methods of street cleaning and street sweeping became a major urban expense. Increasingly, however, it became obvious that the most effective way to eliminate the "typhoid fly" (so named by L.O. Howard, chief of the Bureau of Entomology of the Department of Agriculture and a leader in the campaign against flies), was to eliminate the horse.

Combined-heat-and-power may harm efficiency

Sean Casten wrote: The grid today is only 1/2 as fuel efficient as it was in 1910.

In 1910, thermal-electric powerplants were about 6% efficient.
iea.org/textbase/work/2004/eewp/Ayres.pdf

Furthermore (just as with gasoline), the quality and reliability of the delivered electricity was poorer than today.

Is a unit of energy as heat equal to the value of a unit of energy as electricity? If it is not, your combined-heat-and-power plan might decrease efficiency, rather than increase it.

And what happens over time, as heat becomes less and less valuable, and homes and businesses consume ever-increasing amounts of electricity to power electronics? Does your combined-heat-and-power plan become more-and-more valuable?

Max,

Thanks.On The solution: Output-based standards posted 1 year, 5 months ago 72 Responses

4.5 billion airline passengers, for 10,000 years

Jon Rynn qrote: 4.5 billion airline passengers [...] (worldwide) [...] isn't sustainable

How do you figure?
On Let's rebuild our national rail network instead of repealing the gas tax posted 1 year, 5 months ago 31 Responses

Reply to this is just a click away

Joebhed wrote: This is to maxx8806 at 10:55.

...Then click the reply to this link located at the bottom of that message. Click the parent link below my username to be taken to the message that the present message is in reply-to.
On The goal of climate policy is not high GHG prices posted 1 year, 5 months ago 69 Responses

More logical fallacies

Sean Caston wrote: If you've got a more profitable way to lower GHG emissions that I know of, deploy it!

I beg your pardon? In what way could it be profitable for one to lower GHG levels (strangely, you wrote "emissions"; maybe it was a typo)?

Sean Caston wrote: fossil fuel costs money [...] and therefore reducing fossil fuel combustion saves money

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syllogism

Syllogisms require two premises. Is fuel-cost the only cost involved in generating electricity from powerplants?
On The goal of climate policy is not high GHG prices posted 1 year, 5 months ago 69 Responses

A spoilt anthropocentric view, but habitat is fine

Latenac wrote: Don't worry, Wolverine just thinks there shouldn't be any humans on the planet. So any solutions that enable humans to get energy aren't good.

Perhaps, then, his implied endorsement of this human-centric viewpoint (from the article) was inadvertant:

"This transmission line will cross through some of the most scenic areas of San Diego," said David Hogan of the Center for Biological Diversity. "It would just ruin it with giant, metal industrial power lines."

Latenac wrote: Just because something might be an eyesore to humans it doesn't mean nature really cares all that much ie the plants and animals around it.

...Precisely my point -- or, at least, half of it. The habitat itself is not being ruined, but merely the exclusively-human-valued view of it.
On Huge Calif. solar plant would run transmission lines through state park posted 1 year, 5 months ago 39 Responses

Burial of powerlines incurs inefficiency

Cgurkin,

These are ladder-lines. Because there is only air separating the conduction wires, they are very efficient. One cannot bury a ladder-line without building a tunnel around it.
On Huge Calif. solar plant would run transmission lines through state park posted 1 year, 5 months ago 39 Responses

Are wind/solar portfolio-standards advantageous?

Sean Caston wrote: we have such a political problem getting a national [epithet deleted]PS passed

Why would a state, or a nation, adopt a wind/solar portfolio standard? Is it supposed to confer some competitive-advantage upon the adopting entity?
On RPS distribution posted 1 year, 5 months ago 12 Responses

Oil supply is not tight

BILL HANNAHAN wrote: We have seen what happened to oil prices when the supply tightened up.

The oil supply is loose, and demand is down, Bill.
google.com/search?q=%22there+is+no+gas+shortage%22
On Nuclear power is expensive posted 1 year, 5 months ago 39 Responses

Nuclear power reduces total radioactivity

Wolverine wrote: creating electricity from uranium causes more radioactivity to be emitted

Actually, the opposite is true.
phyast.pitt.edu/~blc/book/chapter12.html

When uranium is mined out of the ground to make nuclear fuel, it is no longer there as a source of radon emission. This is a point which has not been recognized until recently because the radon that percolates out of the ground originates largely within 1 meter of the surface; anything coming from much farther down will decay away before reaching the surface. Since the great majority of uranium mined comes from depths well below 1 meter, the radon emanating from it was always viewed as harmless. The fallacy of this reasoning is that it ignores erosion. As the ground erodes away at a rate of 1 meter every 22,000 years, any uranium in it will eventually approach the surface, spending its 22,000 years in the top meter, where it will presumably do great damage. The magnitude of this damage is calculated in the Chapter 12 Appendix, where it is shown that mining uranium to fuel one large nuclear power plant for one year will eventually save 420 lives! This completely overshadows all other health impacts of the nuclear industry, making it one of the greatest lifesaving enterprises of all time if one adopts a very long-term viewpoint.

If one wants less radiation in the world, then one might want nuclear power.
On Nuclear power is expensive posted 1 year, 5 months ago 39 Responses

Why replace oil?

Vakibs wrote: Instead of nitpicking about how efficiently each dollar spent in your choice energy paradigm reduces CO2 emissions, we should think seriously about how quickly we can completely replace oil

Why would one want to replace oil?
On What should I ask the efficiency guru about nuclear power? posted 1 year, 5 months ago 67 Responses

Wind and solar "mar the landscape"

RichardR wrote: Skeptico took your own quoted annual power figure of 134 gW to arrive at a 15mW plant.

That works out to a capacity-factor over 100%. Assuming 8,760 hours in a year, a capacity-factor of 95% would imply a 16.1 MW plant. A capacity-factor of 90% would imply a 17.0 MW plant. The cost quoted (that does not include the needed transmission lines) is $260 million. If we assume the plant is equivalent to a 17 MW baseload plant, that works out to $15,294/kWh.

By the way, from the above link:

[Walt Kuver, representing the Southern Nye County Conservation District, said,] "Renewable energy sounds like a good deal. Part of the renewable concerns, project concerns, is water consumption. Some solar power projects are sloppy and use a lot of water. We have to discourage that."

Kuver explained water is used to cool the fluid going through the turbines powered by solar power to make electricity.

Kuver talked about the difference between "dry cooling," which may use only 15 to 20 acre feet of water per year for a 100-megawatt plant, to "wet cooling," which could consume 1,200 to 1,500 acre feet. An acre foot of water is about 320,000 gallons, or enough water to supply two families for a year.

Nevada Solar One near Boulder City uses 400 acre feet of water for 64 megawatts of power.

Kuver said he expects protests to be filed by federal agencies on water applications for renewable energy projects in Amargosa Valley.

The big renewable energy projects are in the middle of the Valley Electric Association service area, which Kuver said is "not a high-powered utility company."

"It's rural. They still give out jelly recipes and fly swatters at the front desk, and now all of a sudden they have to wheel this power out of the Nevada grid, or as expected, a lot of it will go to California. There are transmission corridor issues," he said. "There are a whole host of things that have to be dealt with."

Brian Brown, a member of the Amargosa Conservancy, mentioned massive solar and wind power projects are proposed in the Desert Southwest, with applications to use over 1 million acres of public land all the way to the Mexican border.

"Now if you take 1 million acres of anything, and you remove all the plants, and you level it, and you cover it for tens of square miles, obviously that's going to have a significant impact on the environment and the whole ecosystem in that region," Brown told attendees at the workshop.
[...]
Some solar power facilities have significant water needs, while he said some green energy projects with massive wind turbines could mar the landscape.

"Those have all sorts of implications, especially when you're talking about gigantic acreages. [...] Whenever you do a facility like this, you've got to get electricity into the grid so you've got to have transmission lines. You've got to have roads to maintain all this stuff. There are significant impacts of renewable energy."

Cement supply is expanding, demand is falling

GreyFlcn wrote: can you tell me what the commodity cost of concrete will be 10 years from now?

Currently, the price is crashing from recent highs.
cement.org/econ

The cement industry is currently engaged in an aggressive $6 billion capacity expansion. More than 4 million metric tons of new clinker capacity is expected to come on-line this year. An additional 10 million metric tons of new clinker capacity is expected to come on-line during 2009. The capacity expansion coincides with the onset of an economic recession. Imbalances are expected to characterize the market during the next three years, resulting in elevated inventories, import reductions

In the long run, all commodity prices approach zero.
juliansimon.com/writings/Ultimate_Resource
juliansimon.com/writings/Ultimate_Resource/TCHAQ02A.txt

The potential supplies of all the important minerals are sufficient for many many lifetimes, on the basis of almost any assumption about these minerals' abundance on earth. This material-technical assessment is entirely consistent with the historical economic evidence of falling prices relative to wages for all raw materials, showing a trend of increasing availability and declining scarcity, as discussed in Chapters 1, 5, 8, 10, and 11.

Windfarm cancelled -- too expensive

GreyFlcn wrote: Nuclear power has [...] build-schedules [...] As long as 10-15 years.

Untrue. Where did you get that information?

GreyFlcn wrote: It's [...] inaccurate to compare overnight costs between technologies with [...] different build-schedules.

If time-value is priced-in, then cost-comparisons between time-distanced strategies are not necessarily inaccurate.

GreyFlcn wrote: [Epithet deleted] have notoriously short build-schedules. Often measured in months.

If you mean wind and solar, please provide a recent example, with cost. For wind, here is an example from Texas:

a [cancelled, because it was too expensive] 500 megawatt Texas offshore windfarm would have cost "in the billions".

Ten thousand year oil-supply

Rocketgirl,

The earth's crust contains over a third of a quadrillion barrels of oil -- over ten thousand years worth, at the present consumption-rate of 84 million barrels per day.
http://www.akadeemia.ee/_repository/File/VALISSUHTED/Oil% ...
On Gingrich mounts campaign to support domestic oil drilling posted 1 year, 5 months ago 59 Responses

n

Russ wrote: the market has definitively rejected nukes

41 gigawatts of new nuclear power are in the pipeline:
world-nuclear.org/info/inf41.html#preparing
On The climate crisis cannot be solved without cost-benefit analysis posted 1 year, 6 months ago 12 Responses

Making a famine where abundance lies

Solarwind wrote: retro-fitting old buildings is a much more important issue than new buildings.

Demolishing old buildings is not difficult.
On Ed Norton goes to the Hill to talk up green building posted 1 year, 6 months ago 4 Responses

Biosphere vs. ecosystem: only one can collapse

Robco1 wrote: If there is no sea ice at the poles, the entire ecosystem collapses.

Tasermons Partner wrote: If [ecosystem] was the world, then it'd be called a biosphere

Canis Candida wrote: Sensible people [...] understand [Robco1's] words about "collapse" to refer to the imminent destruction of the community into which we have all been born

Tasermons Partner wrote: a good starting point is obviously what Nucbuddy needs if he doesn't know basic definitions like ecosystem and biosphere

Please stop raping me, Tasermons Partner.

Tasermons Partner wrote: If Nucbuddy wishes for more "solid" or extensive background on certain subjects, all that is required is to type a few keywords into your standard search engine.

Here is what Google returns:

12,900 hits for "world's ecosystem"
google.com/search?q=%22world%27s+ecosystem%22

19,500 hits for "world ecosystem"
google.com/search?q=%22world+ecosystem%22

3,230 hits for "worldwide ecosystem"
google.com/search?q=%22worldwide+ecosystem%22

84,800 hits for "global ecosystem"
google.com/search?q=%22global+ecosystem%22

14,300 hits for "earth ecosystem"
google.com/search?q=%22earth+ecosystem%22

27,300 hits for "earth's ecosystem"
google.com/search?q=%22earth%27s+ecosystem%22

1 hit for "earthwide ecosystem"
google.com/search?q=%22earthwide+ecosystem%22

11,100 hits for "planet's ecosystem"
google.com/search?q=%22planet%27s+ecosystem%22

9,090 hits for "planetary ecosystem"
google.com/search?q=%22planetary+ecosystem%22

16,800 hits for "planetwide ecosystem"
google.com/search?q=%22planetwide+ecosystem%22

3,380 hits for biosphere "life can exist"
google.com/search?q=biosphere+%22life+can+exist%22

Definition of biosphere from the Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary with audio ... 1 : the part of the world in which life can exist

A biosphere is a part, or an area, of a world. Because it is not a system, a biosphere cannot collapse in the way that an ecosystem can collapse -- e.g. ecologically. A global ecosystem, on the other hand, can collapse ecologically.
On Alaska legislature looking for polar-bear skeptics posted 1 year, 6 months ago 159 Responses

Hostile and threatening language

Tasermons Partner,

Please stop raping me.

Tasermons Partner wrote: haveta [...] inform ya on

Please use standard English when addressing me.
On Alaska legislature looking for polar-bear skeptics posted 1 year, 6 months ago 159 Responses

P-Tr H2S suspended-animation theory

Robco1 wrote: Seed Magazine [...] article about research into the mass extinction prior to the dinosaurs (about 150 million years ago if I remember correctly).

...251.4 million years ago.
seedmagazine.com/news/2008/04/suspending_life.php
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permian-Triassic_extinction_eventOn Alaska legislature looking for polar-bear skeptics posted 1 year, 6 months ago 159 Responses

For what purpose, polar bears? Part 3

Robco1 wrote: Every living species has a purpose.

Does a species adapted to living on sea ice have a purpose if there is no sea ice?On Alaska legislature looking for polar-bear skeptics posted 1 year, 6 months ago 159 Responses

A meltdown once a week is still safer than coal

Bill McKibben wrote in the OP: Coal-fired power plants operating the way they're supposed to are, in global warming terms, as dangerous as nuclear plants melting down.

How would a nuclear "plant" [perhaps you meant "reactor unit"] "melting down" be "dangerous"?
phyast.pitt.edu/~blc/book/chapter6.html

THE FEARSOME REACTOR MELTDOWN ACCIDENT
[...]
In 1978, a movie called "The China Syndrome" [...] gained widespread popularity. When the Three Mile Island accident followed in 1979, it became the news media story of the decade, complete with days of suspense during which the public was led to believe that a horrible disaster could occur at any moment. This combination of events led to very serious problems for the nuclear power industry.

As a result of these developments, the word meltdown has become a household word. We will use it here, although it is no longer used by risk analysis scientists. In the mind of the public, it refers to an accident in which all of the fuel becomes so hot that it forms a molten mass which melts its way through the reactor vessel. Let's use the word in that sense. The media frequently referred to it as "the ultimate disaster," evoking images of stacks of dead bodies amid a devastated landscape, much like the aftermath of a nuclear bomb attack.

On the other hand, the authors of the two principal reports on the Three Mile Island accident agree that even if there had been a complete meltdown in that reactor, there very probably would have been essentially no harm to human health and no environmental damage. I know of no technical reports that have claimed otherwise. Moreover, all scientific studies agree that in the great majority of meltdown accidents there would be no detectable effects on human health, immediately or in later years. According to the government estimate, a meltdown would have to occur every week or so somewhere in the United States before nuclear power would be as dangerous as coal burning.

Even the Chernobyl accident, which was worse in many ways than any meltdown that can be envisioned for an American reactor, caused no injuries outside the plant. That is not to say that it is impossible to have fatalities caused by a meltdown, but it is estimated that in no more than 1 in a 100 meltdowns could any be obviously related to the accident.

The nuclear-fig-leaf posts

Dkoplow wrote: I'm also interested in your views on the link between nuclear power and weapons proliferation.

...Posted many times, in many places:
google.com/search?q=%22BILL+HANNAHAN%22+%22fig+leaf%22

From Bill's webpage:

The United States is in a position to do for world energy what Boeing and Lockheed did for world transportation. By taking the lead in the production of floating nuclear power plants we can make clean safe inexpensive energy available all over the world. We can have the high paying jobs and control the technology. We can design the plants to be highly resistant to acts of terror and the diversion of nuclear material. We can insist that plants be subject to international inspection as a condition of sale or lease. We can sell or lease these plants at a cost that is much lower than traditional construction methods, eliminating the fig leaf of energy production to hide a nuclear weapons program.

Thank Wikipedia

Caniscandida wrote: Nice, TasPar. Your love of animals instructs us all.

One can thank Wikipedia for much of the text:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polar_bears#Ecological_role
On Alaska legislature looking for polar-bear skeptics posted 1 year, 6 months ago 159 Responses

Ice-cap machines

Black Wallaby wrote: We could always do food drops if necssary.

Sea ice can also be generated artificially via nuclear power. The habitat need not ever change, regardless of the average global temperature.
On Alaska legislature looking for polar-bear skeptics posted 1 year, 6 months ago 159 Responses

For what purpose, polar bears?

Tasermons Partner wrote: We want to stop the population [of polar bears] from declining.

If sea ice is permanently disappearing, why would one want the population of polar bears not to decline?
On Alaska legislature looking for polar-bear skeptics posted 1 year, 6 months ago 159 Responses

Will not vs. might not

Tasermons Partner wrote: Nature only adapts when change takes place [...] very slowly.
[...]
Nature may not adapt when change is sudden

You are contradicting yourself.
On Alaska legislature looking for polar-bear skeptics posted 1 year, 6 months ago 159 Responses

US-EPR has dual containment-shells

Here is the original Turnage PowerPoint presentation (PDF):
sais-jhu.edu/centers/fpi/ieep/Turnage.pdf

From that, it can be gleaned that the total 4.3 cent/kWh subsidy is only active for the duration of the dept-repayment period.

Page 13 lists the myriad enhanced-safety-features of the particular ultra-expensive reactor that Constellation chose, the US-EPR. Do you think it would be helpful if Constellation chose a cheaper reactor featuring less safety, Ron? That way, the ratepayers could save a few dollars during the debt-repayment period.
On No more subsidies for nuclear power, McCain et al posted 1 year, 6 months ago 34 Responses

n

Ron Steenblik wrote: the two industries

What two industries?
On No more subsidies for nuclear power, McCain et al posted 1 year, 6 months ago 34 Responses

Max price for Yucca: one-tenth of a penny

GreyFlcn wrote: How much do you think it will cost to build Yucca Mountain?

I think it would cost in the ballpark of one-tenth of a penny per kWh. It depends upon a number of factors, though, as Richard Garwin has pointed out. According to Garwin, the longer repository-space is delayed, the cheaper it is, since the thermal-power of the spent-fuel drops over time ("100 years [...] gives a further factor 10 decay"), and since capital is worth less in the future. With a century of delay, I would expect a repository to cost only one-hundredth of a penny per kWh.

How much do you think it would cost, per kWh?
On No more subsidies for nuclear power, McCain et al posted 1 year, 6 months ago 34 Responses

n

GreyFlcn wrote: the Nuclear industry is shedding full liability of dealing with the waste

In what way?
On No more subsidies for nuclear power, McCain et al posted 1 year, 6 months ago 34 Responses

Peak power actually refers to peak power

Tasermons Partner wrote: I may be wrong [about] this, but power plants are typically classified by their average power outputs, not maximum potential outputs

You are indeed wrong.

Tasermons Partner wrote: 1.5 MW wouldn't be a peak, it would be an average.

That is untrue.

Tasermons Partner wrote: certain types of solar plants can store power (or rather hot water that used to make power) so that it's available even at night.

Bill's point was actually that power stored still has to be produced. Solar power plants only produce continually-average about one watt per square meter, regardless of storage capabilities. Dispatchable-electricity costs come to at least $1/kWh.
On No more subsidies for nuclear power, McCain et al posted 1 year, 6 months ago 34 Responses

Ye Olde Rhetorical Bigot Fig-Leaf

Joseph Romm wrote: I am not against building new nuclear power plants; far from it.

google.com/search?q=%22some+of+my+best+friends+are+black%22
On No more subsidies for nuclear power, McCain et al posted 1 year, 6 months ago 34 Responses

Center for Biological Diversity says no gain

http://www.commondreams.org/news2008/0508-05.htm

Virtually all of the areas to be acquired or managed under the conservation easement are undevelopable anyway. On paper the deal sounds good, but a close examination shows that very little is gained biologically

Communism suggested as cure for Africa

Jonas wrote: I would even go so far as to suggest that we could use an initiative to encourage and streamline urbanisation and population migration in Central Africa. [...] tiermondists [...] should be funded to design Curitiba-like cities across this region.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_worldism

Among the New Left groups and movements associated with Third Worldism were Monthly Review and the New Communist Movement.
[...]
Third worldism is also closely connected to movements such as [...] Maoism [...] African socialism and the variety of Communism associated with Fidel Castro. National liberation movements such as the Palestinian Liberation Organisation, Sandanistas and African National Congress have been cause celebres of the movement.

It at least seems to be a popular idea, Jonas. Would you specifically suggest Cuba as the optimal development model for sub-Saharan Africa?
On Goldman says oil 'likely' to hit $150-$200 by 2010 posted 1 year, 6 months ago 58 Responses

Marxism - transport in the hands of the state

Jon Rynn wrote: public transit = marxism

Indeed.
greaterthings.com/Constitution/Associates/10Marx_planks.htm

THE TEN STEPS OF KARL MARX [...] Taken from the Communist Manifesto
[...]
6) Centralization of the means of communication and transport in the hands of the state.

Communists, Socialists and Liberals [...] are very anxious to force us all to use state run mass transit trains, subways and car pooling schemes. Thus we can see how the enemies of liberty have very nearly achieved their goal of fully implementing the sixth plank of the communist manifesto.

Trucks are more efficient than trains

Wiscidea wrote: trains [...] for long-distance shipping... far more efficient.

That is not true -- and its untrueness is increasing over time as trucks become even-more efficient.
On Goldman says oil 'likely' to hit $150-$200 by 2010 posted 1 year, 6 months ago 58 Responses

Feed conversion ratios are never unity

Biodiversivist wrote: Grain fed to livestock is grain fed to people.

Some of the potential-energy in the grain fed to livestock is turned into heat and methane, rather than into food. Therefore, not all of the grain fed to livestock is grain fed to people.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feed_conversion_rate

In animal husbandry, feed conversion ratio (FCR), feed conversion rate, or feed conversion efficiency (FCE), is a measure of an animal's efficiency in converting feed mass into increased body mass.

Specifically FCR is the mass of the food eaten divided by the body mass gain, all over a specified period of time. FCR is dimensionless, i.e. there are no measurement units associated with FCR.

Animals that have a low FCR are considered efficient users of feed. Poultry usually can convert 2-3 kg of feed into 1 kg of live weight, while sheep and cattle need more than 8 kg of feed to put on 1 kg of live weight. The U.S. pork industry claims to have an FCR of 3.4-3.6.

More suggested-reading for Dot

http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/inf75.html

Uranium is a relatively common metal, found in rocks and seawater. Economic concentrations of it are not uncommon.
[...]
Since uranium is part of the energy sector, another way to look at exploration costs is on the basis of energy value. This allows comparisons with the energy investment cost for other energy fuels, especially fossil fuels which will have analogous costs related to the discovery of the resources. From numerous published sources, the finding costs of crude oil have averaged around US$ 6/bbl over at least the past three decades. When finding costs of the two fuels are expressed in terms of their contained energy value, oil, at US$ 1050/MJ of energy, is about 300 times more expensive to find than uranium, at US$ 3.4/MJ. Similarly, the proportion of current market prices that finding costs comprise are lower for uranium. Its finding costs make up only 2% of the recent spot price of US$ 30/lb ($78/kgU), while the oil finding costs are 12% of a recent spot price of US$ 50/bbl.

By these measures, uranium is a very inexpensive energy source to replenish, as society has accepted far higher energy replacement costs to sustain oil resources.

Nukes are being built because there is no uranium

Dotcommodity wrote: Uranium is reaching a peak in 50 years

Wherefrom did you here, or how did you establish, that? Our economically-mineable fission-fuel resources are enough for the next half-trillion years, at current nuclear-electricity production rates.
google.com/search?q=nucbuddy+trillion+yearOn McCain calls for 700+ new nuclear plants costing $4 trillion posted 1 year, 6 months ago 26 Responses

Nuclear decommissioning costs are around zero

Jeanmac wrote: the cost to build a nuclear plant is about the same as deconstruction costs

That is not true:

For nuclear power plants any cost figures normally include spent fuel management, plant decommissioning and final waste disposal. These costs, while usually external for other technologies, are internal for nuclear power.

Decommissioning costs are about 9-15% of the initial capital cost of a nuclear power plant. But when discounted, they contribute only a few percent to the investment cost and even less to the generation cost. In the USA they account for 0.1-0.2 cent/kWh, which is no more than 5% of the cost of the electricity produced.

Wind and solar air-rights construction, redux

Gar Lipow wrote: a percent of solar (and some wind) could go on existing surfaces

Then why is it not? Could it be that it is not economically competitive to do that?
On McCain calls for 700+ new nuclear plants costing $4 trillion posted 1 year, 6 months ago 26 Responses

Nothing is cheaper than nuclear, except hydro

Sunflower wrote: Only the elite can afford energy at $6+/kW

Only the elite can afford energy at 3 cents per kWh? Nothing is cheaper than nuclear, except hydro.On McCain calls for 700+ new nuclear plants costing $4 trillion posted 1 year, 6 months ago 26 Responses

Sky-high cancer rates in France - linked to nukes

Morganmghee wrote: Have an indisputable organization perform soil and water tests all over France and report back to me:

What would you expect would be found?

Morganmghee wrote: include a comprehensive independent cancer rate study

What would you expect would be found? Are members of the French public exposed to ionization radiation from the French nuclear-power industry? If so, are there any reasons to believe that these levels of exposure are high?

Here is an abstract from a 2007 study on cancer and mortality rates among French nuclear workers:

External radiation exposure and mortality in a cohort of French nuclear workers.

Institut de Radioprotection et de Sûreté Nucléaire
[...]
METHODS: A cohort of 29 204 workers employed between 1950 and 1994 at the French Atomic Energy Commission (Commissariat à l'Energie Atomique (CEA)) or at the General Company of Nuclear Fuel (COmpagnie GEnérale des MAtières nucléaires (Cogema, now Areva NC)) was followed up for an average of 17.8 years.
[...]
RESULTS: The mean exposure to X and gamma radiation was 8.3 mSv (16.9 mSv for exposed worker population). A total of 1842 deaths occurred between 1968 and 1994. A healthy worker effect was observed, the number of deaths in the cohort being 59% of the number expected from national mortality statistics. Among the 21 main cancer sites studied, a statistically significant excess was observed only for skin melanoma, and an excess of borderline statistical significance was observed for multiple myeloma. A dose-effect relationship was observed for leukaemia after exclusion of chronic lymphoid leukaemia (CLL). The relative risk observed for non-CLL leukaemia, n = 20, was 4.1 per 100 mSv (90% CI 1.4 to 12.2), linear model and 2.2 per 100 mSv (90% CI 1.2 to 3.3), log-linear model. Significant dose-effect relationship were also observed for causes of deaths associated with alcohol consumption: mouth and pharynx cancer, cirrhosis and alcoholic psychosis and external causes of death.
[...]
CONCLUSION: The risk of leukaemia increases with increasing exposure to external radiation; this is consistent with published results on other nuclear workers cohorts.

PMID: 17522135

Do you believe that members of the French public are exposed to more ionization radiation than are French nuclear-industry workers?
On McCain touts gas-tax holiday as well as 'long-term solutions' posted 1 year, 6 months ago 45 Responses

Windpower deaths - the numbers

Gar Lipow wrote Assess all industries for deaths - [...] solar and wind (low but not zero

Please be more explicit.
On McCain touts gas-tax holiday as well as 'long-term solutions' posted 1 year, 6 months ago 45 Responses

n

Pompey Road wrote: You would think saving the earth would warrant some kind of program on a massive scale

What would solar power have to do with saving the earth?On Concentrated solar power is already doing great; no breakthroughs needed posted 1 year, 7 months ago 49 Responses

How Israel got its plutonium

Pangolin wrote: explain how itty-bitty Israel managed to get enough pure fissile material to start making bombs if they didn't leverage it up from the "civilian" nuclear reactor that the US gave it.

Israel's dedicated explosives-grade-plutonium production-reactor was built in secret by France.
google.com/search?q=israel+reactor+Dimona+heavy+water

By the way, it is considered polite to say "please," rather than simply demand that people do things for you.
On Building faster to get the power to build faster posted 1 year, 8 months ago 10 Responses

Half a trillion years' worth of fission fuel

Manacker wrote: current nuclear technology is limited by reserves of uranium, which are estimated to be 35 million tons.

You are off by one million times. These are the fission-fuel reserves:

• Uranium: 40 . . . . trillion tons
  
• Thorium: 120-160 trillion tons

nuclearinfo.net/Nuclearpower/UraniuamDistribution
nuclearinfo.net/Nuclearpower/TheScienceOfNuclearPower#Energy_Lifecycle_of_Nuclear_Powe

Another Uranium source for Forsmark is the Rossing Mine in Namibia. A description of the operations of the mine is available here. The Rossing mine produced 3037 tonnes of Uranium in 2004, which is sufficient for 15 GigaWatt-years of electricity with current reactors. The energy used to mine and mill this Uranium was about 3% of a GigaWatt-year. Thus the energy produced is about 500 times more than the energy required to operate the mine.

Subsidies flowing to solar from coal and nuclear

Amazingdrx wrote: affordable solar PV and wind

If there would be anything affordable about solar PV and wind, it would be partly the fault of subsidization by coal, gas, nuclear, hydro, and oil. Eliminate the latter, and any affordability of the former likewise vanishes.On Obama joins Illinois legislators pushing to revive FutureGen posted 1 year, 10 months ago 14 Responses

Jason Matheny vs. animal agriculture

Javaearth wrote: Meat marketers and lobbyist have brainwashed so much. -  It is sad to see intelligent people saying that it's okay to treat animals with such cruelty, for the sake of their taste buds

What would animals have to do with meat?
google.com/search?q=meat+%22Jason+Matheny%22On In case you'd forgotten, industrial meat is a friggin' nightmare posted 1 year, 10 months ago 46 Responses

Fortified veganism vs. fortified veganism

Jason D Scorse wrote: I've been vegan for 15 years and my bloodwork is perfect- I get every nutrient the body needs in essentially perfect proportion.

Do you ever eat nutritionally-fortified foods?On In case you'd forgotten, industrial meat is a friggin' nightmare posted 1 year, 10 months ago 46 Responses

The effect of higher vehicle-costs on driving

GreyFlcn wrote: consumers react [...] to lump-sum purchase costs

That is true. In order to receive value from a more-expensive commodity, they use it more, and they use it in more-liberal ways (in terms of cars, that would mean more-spirited driving).
On California considers "feebate" bill to make polluting cars more expensive posted 1 year, 10 months ago 9 Responses

Is the economy too illiberal to produce synthfood?

GreyFlcn wrote: The basis of food production is plants.

If the basis of food production were to turn out to not be plants, would then the theoretical connection you posited between gobal-warming and hunger be falsified?

GreyFlcn wrote: Plants are largely reliant on rainfall, and fair weather.

Largely reliant does not mean absolutely reliant, so your statement might be taken to imply that plants are not absolutely reliant upon rainfall, and fair weather. Even if plants were the basis of food production, if plants were also indeed not absolutely reliant upon rainfall, and fair weather, how could there be a connection between hunger and global warming?

GreyFlcn wrote: SeaFood makes up a gigantic portion of the protein provided to the world's populace.

Wikipedia says:

Fish [...] with other seafoods [...] provides [...] 14-16% of the animal protein consumed world-wide; over 1 billion people rely on fish as their primary source of animal protein.

Those proportions do not seem overwhelming to me, so I would take that Wikipedia statement to mean that seafood could be entirely deleted from the worldwide human diet with little even-immediate overall effect on hunger. However, even if seafood accounted for 100% of human dietary protein, and if global-warming were capable of -- and likely to -- wipe out seafood stocks, that would still not provide a basis for a connection between hunger and global-warming. The reason for that is that humans (unlike other creatures) create their own resources, and -- in sufficiently-liberal economies -- humans sufficiently renew, or create-substitutes-for, resources undergoing depletion. If seafood is not yet being substituted-for, it would theoretically be at least because of either economic illiberalism or because seafood is not yet expensive-enough.

Which would it be? Is the economy too illiberal?
On More bogus climate skepticism posted 1 year, 10 months ago 227 Responses

@ GRLCowan

Please not that I did not say, "RTG." I said, "REG." I think that, as REG fuels, beta-emitters might hold more promise than alpha-emitters.

The battery's staying power is tied to the enduring nature of its fuel, tritium, a hydrogen isotope that releases electrons in a process called beta decay. The porous-silicon semiconductors generate electricity by absorbing the electrons, just as a solar cell generates electricity by absorbing energy from incoming photons of light.

If this takes off, RTG's will be totally Nowheresville.On Nukes don't replace oil posted 1 year, 10 months ago 39 Responses

@ GreyFlcn

In what way is Diablo Canyon "eating up" that water?On Severe drought in the Southeast impacts nuclear power production posted 1 year, 10 months ago 38 Responses

@ Amazingdrx

Amazingdrx wrote: I'm evil.  Taking the focus away from clean, safe, affordable nuclear power.

There was no discussion of nuclear power here until you brought it up. Why are you vandalizing this thread?On Schools should be talking about climate change solutions posted 1 year, 10 months ago 63 Responses

Man makes natural-resources moreso, continuously

kmp wrote: We do not make clay

Humans do make clay -- but more importantly, humans gave natural-clay every bit of its current "resourceness", and humans continuously give natural-clay more "resourceness". Natural-clay is more of a resource than it was last week, and more last week than the week before, because humans continuously make it so.On Schools should be talking about climate change solutions posted 1 year, 10 months ago 63 Responses

Fission-fuel is an essential part of ecosystems?

LegumeSam wrote: The substrate of "raw materials" is (among other things) the Earth's ecosystems.

What does fission-fuel have to do with ecosystems? Fission-fuel is not biological.On Schools should be talking about climate change solutions posted 1 year, 10 months ago 63 Responses

How society has no dependence upon ecosystems

Stevenearlsalmony wrote: What am I missing?  What are y'all seeing?

I am seeing 200 trillion tons of uranium and thorium -- a half-trillion-year supply at current nuclear-electricity generation rates -- and people making useful things (i.e. resources) out of them. I am seeing 1) oxygen and all chemical fuels as regeneratable, 2) food as producible, 3) all waste-products as recyclable, and 4) shelter and social-networking as providable with energy from fission-fuel and requiring neither ecosystem nor any more than negligible amounts of the earth's surface.On Schools should be talking about climate change solutions posted 1 year, 10 months ago 63 Responses

The self-charging nuclear-powered automobile

GRLCowan wrote: Nuclear powered automobiles will be, of course, indirectly powered by nuclear motor fuel plants.

Why would nuclear-powered automobiles not be more-directly nuclear-powered by onboard Radioisotope Electric Generators (REG's) charging batteries?

400 electric watts x 24 hours per day = 9.6 kWhe per day. At 300 watt-hours per mile, that would provide a daily range of 32 miles -- easily extendable by a small onboard gasoline-powered generator.On Nukes don't replace oil posted 1 year, 10 months ago 39 Responses

How could growth be unsustainable?

Stevenearlsalmony wrote: soon to become unsustainable growth of the manmade global economy.

How could growth of the manmade global economy be, or become, unsustainable?On Schools should be talking about climate change solutions posted 1 year, 10 months ago 63 Responses

Slavery = wealth. Are you sure?

Biodiversivist wrote: Some "green" jobs will be created when plug in owners start hiring contractors to run power to the garage, driveway, or curb where their car gets parked. That's good.

How do you figure it is good to create jobs?

Saving labor, producing more goods with fewer man-hours, is widely perceived not as progress but as a danger. I call this the make-work bias, a tendency to underestimate the economic benefits of conserving labor. Where noneconomists see the destruction of jobs, economists see the essence of economic growth: the production of more with less.

Hostility issue

GreyFlcn wrote: Lifespan [...] So is that all you have to fall back on?

Why do you act so hostile toward me? Please stop.On Severe drought in the Southeast impacts nuclear power production posted 1 year, 10 months ago 38 Responses

Water-intensivity of cooling-ponds

GreyFlcn wrote: A coal plant is considerably less water intensitve than a Nuclear power plant.

How water-intensive is a nuclear powerplant with a cooling pond?

A power plant with an electric output of 1,300 MW needs a pond with a cooling surface of about 10km2 to be able to maintain a cooling water temperature of 21°C at humid air temperatures of 8°C (12°C dry, relative humidity 57%).

Why is wind so expensive and nuke so cheap?

GreyFlcn wrote: Nuclear [...] costs too [...] much

Why is it that electricity in Denmark costs about 30 cents per kWh, while in France electricity costs about one third of that?

Denmark had the highest prices in the 18-country survey, as taxes added as much 66 per cent to consumers' bills, INRA said.

Danish charges up to four taxes on bills including a power distribution tax and an environmental tax designed to curb electricity demand and promote the use of green energy.

Nuclear vs. windpower fatalities per unit energy

Amazingdrx wrote: In the caee of nuclear power [the fatality problem] is a well documented, real problem.

Could you please quantify that in relation to units of energy produced?

Amazingdrx wrote: [There have been] over a thousand new nuclear contamination related genetic diseases identified since the nuclear age began.

Could you please explain what a nuclear contamination related genetic disease is, and list at least one such?On Hybrid emissions: Facts and numbers posted 1 year, 10 months ago 34 Responses

How many American politicians run in China?

GreyFlcn wrote: The route where you "Get more oil" [...] is the kneejerk dominant context which Peak Oil is viewed in [...] Especially from Democratic Candidates.

There are no Democratic candidates in China.

GreyFlcn wrote: they are falling into the trap of dittoheading Republican

There are none of those in China, either.On Nukes don't replace oil posted 1 year, 10 months ago 39 Responses

Dam-failures lists

http://www.dha.lnec.pt/nti/english/studies/FLOOD_RISK/tex ...
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_dam_failuresOn Draft EIS for Nantucket Sound wind project is positive posted 1 year, 10 months ago 35 Responses

Windpower's other, other problem

Nickz wrote: the 2 biggest problems wind has are night time troughs in consumption, and intermittency.

What about the fatality problem?On Hybrid emissions: Facts and numbers posted 1 year, 10 months ago 34 Responses

Storage hobbies - spent fuel, other items

Amazingdrx wrote: 20 to 30 tons of nuclear waste are created each year by each nuclear plant.  That waste must be stored for over 50,000 years.

Why would spent nuclear-fuel need to be stored for over 50,000 years?On Some not-entirely-coherent thoughts on nuclear power. posted 1 year, 10 months ago 34 Responses

Why does windpower cause so many fatalities?

Charles Barton wrote: I think if you will carefully check, you will find that there have been 13 deaths from wind power associated accidents.

There have been far more than 13 windpower fatalities, Charles. Windpower accidents like this one occur continuously.

Helicopter goes down in central NY, 4 suffer minor injuries
Associated Press - January 15, 2008 6:35 PM ET

FENNER, N.Y. (AP) - Four people suffered minor injuries when their company helicopter crashed near a windmill in central New York.

A state trooper says all four aboard the helicopter were able to walk away from the aircraft after it made what appears to have been a hard landing near a windmill farm in Fenner in Madison County.

The private helicopter was owned by Adkins Aviation of Cornelius (North Carolina), although company officials could not immediately confirm it was 1 of their aircraft. Initially, state police believed the helicopter was owned by Canastota Windpower, which owns the 20-turbine wind farm located 30 miles east of Syracuse.

The helicopter crew was doing routine maintenance when the pilot became disoriented in the heavy fog. It's not known what caused the accident.

The principal reason that windpower involves such an extremely high number of per-kWh accidents, injuries and fatalities is that it taps a relatively diffuse power source. The safest power sources, such as coal and especially nuclear, have high energy density -- again, particularly nuclear has the highest energy density. The most-dangerous power sources, such as windpower, hydro and solar, have low energy density.On Draft EIS for Nantucket Sound wind project is positive posted 1 year, 10 months ago 35 Responses

Floating wind - it was amazingly cheap

Amazingdrx wrote: floating wind [...] a lot cheaper

When you make statements like these, could you please show your figures and their sources? Thank you in advance.

Does Denmark employ floating wind? If not, why not? If Denmark does not employ floating wind, would you consider that peculiar in light of your a lot cheaper claim?

Amazingdrx wrote: Floating wind is assembled in drydock and towed out to sea

Where has that ever occurred?On Draft EIS for Nantucket Sound wind project is positive posted 1 year, 10 months ago 35 Responses

A look at what other blogs say about C. Castro

http://antigreen.blogspot.com/2008/01/climate-change-blam ...

your citation of Prof. Andrew Dessler's articles at Grist is amusing. Dessler has monumentally embarrassed himself by recently claiming there were only two dozen scientists skeptical of man-made climate fears. Dessler is now trying desperately to salvage his unsupportable assertions over at Grist with increasingly shrill and comical posts.

It is made clear you have not read the Senate report when you parrot Dessler's claims that Dr. Christopher Castro "unabashedly and explicitly endorses the IPCC consensus." If you took the time to read Castro's entry in the Senate report you would find that even though he accepts the idea that mankind is responsible for most of the recent warming, he has serious doubts about future dire predictions of warming. Excerpt from report:

Castro, who studied under skeptical climatologist Dr. Roger Pielke, Sr. "agrees that `other possible forcings to the climate system besides CO2 (like land-use change, aerosols, etc.) are not accounted for well, if at all' and "models are highly sensitive to parameterized processes, like clouds, convection, and radiation, and these processes can have significant impacts on their results.'"

Remember, many skeptical scientists believe the Earth has already seen most of the warming impact of rising CO2, so agreeing that a 20th century CO2 rise has caused some warming is not the same as believing future catastrophic climate projections.

Manacker,

Thank you.

But Andrew should provide us a similar breakdown for the Inhofe list.

Fair enough.On Today: Thomas Ring posted 1 year, 10 months ago 66 Responses

Nothing ironic about this Vinick wind-news

David Roberts,

The situation need not be confusing. The Alliance to Protect Nantucket Sound apparently does not want to present itself as anti-wind.

Our Position

The Alliance supports wind power as an alternative energy source.

Charles Vinick was apparently hired specifically because he was not against wind. From the article you linked:

Vinick came on board as chief executive officer of the Alliance in May 2005, bringing with him a lengthy list of environmental credentials.
[...]
The Alliance leader said his consulting work for Clipper Windpower, which assembles 2.5 megawatt turbines at its Iowa plant, was in no way ironic.

"I am very much committed to all of these technologies being used in the right ways," he said. "We would work even with Jim Gordon to find sites outside of Nantucket Sound."

By the way, $200,000 is not a very high salary for an executive officer of a corporation -- particularly in an area with high costs-of-living.On WTFx3 posted 1 year, 10 months ago 8 Responses

n

Manacker,

Please provide some names, as Andrew requested.On Today: Thomas Ring posted 1 year, 10 months ago 66 Responses

Meta comment for Manacker - html tags

Manacker,

You can use the blockquote formatting-tag for quoting things.

like this

Tags go inside less-than/greater-than signs. To close a tag, use slash-tag, as in: /blockquote. Other tags:

i italics /i

u underline /u

b bold /b

s strikethrough /s

a href="putwebsiteurlhere" url tag /a
On Today: Thomas Ring posted 1 year, 10 months ago 66 Responses

The negative-three percent solution

I would suggest the -3% solution. Increase carbon-emissions by 3% per year (which is the same as 10-trillion-fold per millennium). A mild tax by a global government should be able to cover the cost of liming the atmosphere.

By the way, what is it we are trying to solve?On Eban Goodstein invites you to join in the largest climate teach-in ever posted 1 year, 10 months ago 36 Responses

Yes, it is indeed BYD (plug-in hybrid F6 sedan)

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB120005753514983735.html?m ...

[Paul Lin, auto export manager of BYD Auto] [...] said his company wants to launch in the U.S., among other vehicles, a new breed of a gasoline-electric hybrid that can be plugged into a home wall outlet and run 100 kilometers (about 61 miles) on electricity when fully charged.

Mr. Lin said the plug-in hybrid, based on its gasoline-fueled BYD F6 sedan, will likely hit U.S. dealer showrooms until the end of 2009 or the beginning of 2010. BYD Auto is expected to display the plug-in hybrid at the North American International Auto Show that opens to the public on Jan. 19.
[...]
He said the launch of the plug-in hybrid would be quickly followed by other models including other plug-in hybrids, all-electric cars, as well as conventional gasoline-fueled vehicles. Mr. Lin didn't elaborate on what kind of time frame BYD Auto had in mind.

Mr. Lin said the plug-in hybrid is almost ready for sale in China, but BYD Auto will need at least two more years to make sure it meets America's tough safety and other regulations.

In China, Mr. Lin said BYD Auto plans to launch the plug-in hybrid this summer -- "during the Beijing Olympics" -- and is likely to sell it for 200,000 yuan [$27,542.50 USD].
[...]
The car would likely to sell for a similar retail price tag in the U.S., he said.

The BYD plug-in hybrid, to be called the BYD F6 DM, is similar in design to General Motors Corp.'s Chevy Volt concept car which GM is aiming to launch by 2010. Both cars are propelled by electric motors using electricity stored on batteries and generated by a small gasoline engine on the car when the car run out of electricity when it isn't plugged in.

BYD Auto, which began producing and selling cars in 2003, is displaying the plug-in hybrid car and four gasoline-fueled vehicles at the Detroit auto show.

n

Tasermons Partner,

Shared problems are also known as tragedies of commons. Does that help you to understand?On Australia will phase out plastic bags posted 1 year, 10 months ago 14 Responses

n

Matt G,

Maybe you missed this FAQ from your link:

We recommend only using the scrap solar cells for creating 1-5 watt solar panels. Scrap solar cells are non-uniform cells and it may be difficult for you to create a functional solar panel larger the 5 watts.

By the way, are you volunteering to solder and mounts these broken cells, for anyone worldwide who asks, for free?On A roadmap to getting 70 percent of U.S. electricity from solar by 2050 posted 1 year, 10 months ago 42 Responses

n

Solar John,

What does that link have to do with your claim that Nanosolar is building $1 per watt solar panels?On A roadmap to getting 70 percent of U.S. electricity from solar by 2050 posted 1 year, 10 months ago 42 Responses

Nothing has ever prevented 100% solar power

The Original Post wrote: Wind turbines and solar modules help generate electricity in accordance with how much wind and sun is available.

This would work fine if their variability were random enough. However, the reality is that their variability is very unrandom.

The Original Post wrote: Technically, there is nothing preventing us from 100 per cent provision with [epithet deleted].

Straw man. Nothing has ever prevented 100% solar power of society -- other than cost and the solar-flux limit.On German scientists develop Combined Power Plant posted 1 year, 10 months ago 7 Responses

Ausra's rosy expectations for centralized power

Trock wrote: [Ausra] say that they only need a 92 by 92 mile square area to supply all the electricity in the U.S.

Since a mile is ~1600 meters, that would be 22 billion square meters. At 10 watts per meter, that would be only 220 gigawatts. Perhaps Ausra has rosier expectations than 10 watts per meter.

Meanwhile, a single nuclear powerplant could supply all of the electricity in the U.S. in less than a single square mile. One difference between the solar plant and the nuke would be that the nuke would not be restricted to the Mohave Desert.
On A roadmap to getting 70 percent of U.S. electricity from solar by 2050 posted 1 year, 10 months ago 42 Responses

Planetside solar potential - it's all bad

Tasermons Partner wrote: Flordia [has] good solar potential

Florida, like all of Earth, has terrible solar-power potential. The least-bad solar-power potential of the United States is in the Mohave Desert.
theoildrum.com/uploads/2305/Solar_Insolation_map.gif
On The renewable portfolio standard will return posted 1 year, 10 months ago 6 Responses

Nuclear cargo-ships - fast, light and cheap

Original Post wrote: "This is a serious attempt to reduce bunker [fuel] costs and polluting emissions,"

No, this is:

With nuclear ships, fuel expenditures are minor, both in terms of weight and cost. At current nuclear fuel prices an SHP hour produced by fissioning slightly enriched uranium fuel costs less than one sixth as much as an SHP hour produced by burning residual oil. The advantage is even more dramatic when compared to distillate fuels. There is virtually no change in weight on a nuclear powered ship because of fuel consumption.

There are obvious advantages to increased speed if fuel consumption is less constraining. More cargo can be moved with the same number of ships. Cargo will spend less time at sea and more time where it is needed. Shippers will pay higher rates for certain types of cargo since they will save on financial carrying costs. Since a faster ship requires the same crew size as a slow one, productivity can increase be improved without painful layoffs.

Eight gallons water from each gallon gasoline

Enki wrote: Every time we burn a gallon of gasoline we produce roughly one gallon of water.

No. Burning one gallon of gasoline produces eight gallons of water.
On FutureGen "clean coal" demonstration plant slated for Illinois posted 1 year, 11 months ago 26 Responses

Why would anyone value fuel-economy?

Odograph,

Why are you telling other people what they value? What does what you value have to do with what others value?

Furthermore, over about 10 or 20 mpg, why would anyone value fuel-economy? Your personal hobbies (energy efficiency, etc.) do not seem to have much to do with what people generally value in this world.On Venture-capital star ain't no clean-tech expert posted 1 year, 11 months ago 54 Responses

Bonneville runs and wind turbines both need a push

GRLCowan wrote: How exactly does "[to start the blades turning when the wind is just getting fast enough to keep them going]" not sound like a load of hooey?

It does not sound like much hooey to this observer who is familiar with Bonneville speed runs.
google.com/search?q=bonneville+%22push+vehicle%22

67 hits.

google.com/search?q=bonneville+push+record

11,200 hits.

Records set at Bonneville are recognized worldwide. ... Rules allow vehicles to get a push start because top speed is the main concern.

"Sometimes history needs a push." -V.I. Lenin
On New developments in solar power make 'clean coal' look even dumber posted 1 year, 11 months ago 35 Responses

Smaller nukes might scale better than larger nukes

Amazingdrx wrote: Continuing on the present course of more power use, more centralized even larger nuclear [...] power plants, and 100s of new nuclear power [...] plants is [...] expensive.

Perhaps you are right. Millions of these smaller nuclear powerplants might be cheaper.
On Renewables are pulling two directions, nationwide and local posted 1 year, 11 months ago 39 Responses

Nanosolar shipments

Common Sense wrote: Nanosolar [...] have begun commercial shipments

To whom has Nanosolar shipped?

Is this relevant?

The bidding on ebay for the second PV panel is now over $12,000. The winning bidder has to sign an agreement not to attempt to reverse engineer the product. Also, Nanosolar will only sell panels to electric utility companies. The end user must sign a non-disclosure form and situate the panels in a fenced, secure location. It is obvious that their technology has insufficient patent protection or is not patentable or it would be easy to circumvent their patents. They can't let the cat out of the bag until they have realized a good profit for their investors. On top of that, they are completely sold out through 2008. If you want to put these panels on the roof of your house, don't hold your breath. File this under: "Too Good to be True."

Posted by: Arne P. Ryason at December 21, 2007 07:14 AM

n

MattG,

Your suggestion has been made and replied-to over and over and over and over and over.

Gravitational energy-storage does not pencil out, unless it is gargantuan in scale.
google.com/search?q=pumped+storage+caesOn A concise introduction posted 1 year, 11 months ago 38 Responses

Recommendations to maximize energy-cost - why?

Danielbell wrote: So lets use [our fossil infrastructure] as a stop gap and invest all new generation in [epithet deleted].

What if solar and wind are more-expensive than alternatives?On Storage helps the sun keep shining even on cloudy days posted 1 year, 11 months ago 16 Responses

The jobs-creation-as-a-virtue fallacy

Original Post wrote: Jobs: energy efficiency and [epithet deleted] can create 40 million jobs by mid-century

Employment-requirement (which is often masked as "jobs-creation") is not a virtue. Requiring more work for the same given amount of value makes a society poorer, rather than richer. To make society richer, the ratio of new-value/work must be increased, rather than decreased.

Nuclear power (being dense) tends to increase the new-value/work ratio.

Discrete energy-efficiency and diffuse-power types such as wind and solar tend to decrease the new-value/work ratio -- by doing so, they tend to increase human slavery.

A wind- and solar- powered world, with much discrete energy-efficiency, would be a relatively medieval world.

if you're referring to torture as being "medieval," make sure you're using it to describe something really, unquestionably, horribly brutal, not just something that is bad.

How long do wind turbines actually last?

GreyFlcn wrote: 60 years for nuclear
25 years for wind

Do wind turbines actually last 25 years?
On Renewables are pulling two directions, nationwide and local posted 1 year, 11 months ago 39 Responses

CAFE is calculated using a harmonic-mean method

GreenEngineer wrote: Disclaimer: I don't know details of how CAFE is calculated

The formula is right here:
nhtsa.dot.gov/cars/rules/cafe/overview.htm

The averaging method used is referred to as a "harmonic mean".

Averaging according to a harmonic mean method (which basically means averaging the reciprocals) accomodates for the potential averaging-problem you pointed-out in your comment.

GreenEngineer wrote: If you have one car that gets 20 MPG and one that get 60 MPG, your CAFE is 40 MPG.

No, the CAFE harmonic-mean method would say that you have a CAFE of 30 mpg. The CAFE harmonic-mean method would not add 20 mpg to 60 mpg and then divide by two. It would divide 1 by 20, add that to (1 divided by 60), and divide 2 by that sum. The result would be an average 30 mpg, which would equal a summed gasoline usage for both vehicles of 667 gallons over 10,000 miles -- exactly as you calculated it should be.

In comparison, two 40 mpg vehicle would indeed be calculated at an average of 40 mpg and together would use only 500 gallons of gasoline over 10,000 miles.

Therefore, the CAFE methodology -- because it calculates according to a harmonic-mean -- does indeed recognize the superior fuel-economy of two 40 mpg vehicles vs. one 20 mpg vehicle summed with one 60 mpg vehicle.
On When is a Tundra a better buy than a Prius? posted 1 year, 11 months ago 47 Responses

500MW Texas offshore wind $billions

Tasermons Partner wrote: May be expensive off New York [...] but here in Texas they're already constructing several offshore wind farms

...Like this one?
mexiadailynews.com/statenews/local_story_164103320.html

Published: June 13, 2007
Developer cites cost in nixing offshore wind farm in South Texas
[...]
Plans to build what would have been the nation's largest offshore wind farm in South Texas have been called off because the multibillion-dollar project didn't make economic sense, the developer said Monday.

John Calaway, chief development officer for Babcock & Brown Ltd., the Australian investment bank, said the company notified the state a month ago it was giving up its 30-year lease on nearly 40,000 acres in the Gulf of Mexico off the coast of Padre Island.
[...]
``We just don't see the economics working offshore in Texas,'' Calaway said, noting the project cost would have been ``in the billions.''

He said offshore wind farms on the East Coast, such as a proposed project off the coast of Massachusetts, are more logical and potentially viable because of land constraints and higher energy prices in the region.

The now-defunct Texas project called for construction of about 170 turbines, each 400 feet tall, with the capacity to generate 500 megawatts of energy -- enough to power about 125,000 homes.

Babcock is moving on with an onshore wind farm in South Texas' Kenedy County, a $700 million-plus venture that calls for 157 turbines on thousands of acres, Calaway said. He noted the expense of building an offshore farm can be more than double the cost of one on land.

Tasermons Partner wrote: they sure as heck aren't costing a billion dollars to construct.

Check the quote, above. It says that a 500 megawatt Texas offshore windfarm would have cost "in the billions".
On Offshore wind posted 1 year, 11 months ago 18 Responses

n

GreyFlcn wrote: There more

How much more -- another trillion?
On Offshore wind posted 1 year, 11 months ago 18 Responses

Nuclear power - an awesome return on investment

GreyFlcn,

Over the past two decades, the United States has produced some 14 trillion kWh (about 700 billion kWh/year), of nuclear electricity. At 3 cents/kWh, that electricity was worth $420 billion dollars. Your link's Public Citizen link says that nuclear energy has been given only $74 billion in subsidies between 1948 and 1998.

Would you consider a $420 billion return on $74 billion to be a poor investment?
On Offshore wind posted 1 year, 11 months ago 18 Responses

n

GreyFlcn,

Stop/Start would make little difference on a diesel, because diesels -- being non-throttled engines -- idle efficiently.
On High gas prices make hybrids look even better posted 1 year, 11 months ago 45 Responses

Mining trucks can, and do, run on electricity

Elbarto wrote: You can't run a 3000 horsepower iron ore haul truck on batteries. Oil is the only way

That is not true. When liquid-fuels are expensive, mining companies run their trucks on grid-electricity.
google.com/search?q=Liebherr+T282+trolley
http://www.digitalcar.sae.org/ohmag/origeq_12-00/origeq3. ...

As an option, the ac drive system for the Liebherr T 282 can operate with a pantograph and overhead trolley system.

Here is an overview of historical and modern electrically-powered mining trucks. There are plenty of photographs:
hutnyak.com/Trolley/trolleyphotos.html

The following photos are from actual trolley operations around the world.
[...]

Valtellina Dam Project - 1936 to 1962

The Valtellina trolley system was built in 1938 and operated until the early sixties. A total of 20 trolley trucks were used to carry concrete, sand and equipment for construction of the Valtellina dam in northern Italy.

There were 16 three-axle trolley trucks, 4 two-axle trolleytrucks, and 2 trolley buses for transporting personnel. These trucks were NOT trolley-assisted, but were FULL trolley - operating on 650 volts dc power from overhead lines. Two trolley lines were installed, having a total length of 80 kilometers.
[...]

Riverside Cement - 1956 to 1971

This truck was NOT trolley assisted, but rather FULL trolley. It did NOT have an engine, and was driven by an overhead trolley line on haul roads or by an "extension cord" when at the shovel.
[...]

Kennecott Chino - 1967

In 1967 Kennecott Copper Corporation conducted the first feasibility study and prototype test of trolley-assisted large mining trucks. [...] testing was successful
[...]

Quebec Cartier Mine - 1970 to 1977

QCM at Lac Jeannine, Quebec was the first successful application of modern trolley-assist. This trolley system collected power from an overhead busbar using a trolley pole arrangement. Trolley trucks included KW Dart 85 ton, Unit Rig M85 (85 ton), and Unit Rig M100 (100 ton) trucks.
[...]

Palabora Mining, South Africa - 1980 to 2001

Palabora's initial trolley test system incorporated a trolley pole/conductor arrangement. At conclusion of the testing, the poles were discarded and replaced with pantographs. The early trolley fleet was comprised of 75 Unit Rig Mark 36 trucks, with 170 ton capacity. Euclid R190 trucks were later added to the trolley fleet.
[...]

ISCOR Mining, South Africa - 1982 to 2001

ISCOR is presently the largest user of trolley assist in the world. These photos are primarily of the "early" ISCOR trolley system, with the exception of those showing the Euclid R280 AC truck. ISCOR has perfected a "lightweight" overhead line system, which is fed by many small substations. It is hoped to add photos of the current system in the near future.

As of February 2001, the Sishen mine was operating a trolley haulage fleet consisting of 32 Komatsu 730Es and 9 Unit Rig M36s. The Grootegeluk mine was operating a trolley haulage fleet consisting of 14 Komatsu 730Es, 11 Marathon-LeTourneau 2200s, and 1 Euclid R280 AC.
[...]

Nchanga Mine - 1983 to 198?

The ZCCM mine at Nchanga installed a trolley system that collected power from an overhead busbar using shoes mounted on trolley poles. Many of these pictures are screen shots from a GE-produced video.
[...]

Rossing Uranium - 1986 to 2001

Rossing was a "sister" mine to Palabora, and when they installed their trolley system, sometime around 1986, they patterned it after Palabora's.

As of February 2001, Rossing was operating a trolley haulage fleet consisting of 11 Komatsu 730Es.
[...]

Barrick Goldstrike - 1994 to 2001

Barrick conducted numerous trolley feasibility studies and in 1993 gave the go-ahead to proceed with the installation of a system at their Goldstrike mine in Nevada. The system was patterned after Palabora's, except that the equipment was upsized to accommodate Goldstrike's larger trucks (190 ton vs. 170 ton).

Overhead lines and substations were supplied by Siemens, and were of a full-catenary heavy-duty design. Pantographs, from TransTech of South Carolina, were used for current collection. Their "half-scissor" design differed from the "full-scissor" design used at Palabora.

By October 1994 five trolley lines, which totaled 2.9 miles in length, were in service - along with 50 Komatsu 685E haul trucks that had been converted for trolley operation. Barrick continued to expand the trolley system, with a total of 74 trucks and 4.5 miles of trolley lines in service.

Windmill fluctuations vs. lightswitch fluctuations

GreenEngineer wrote: I think Nucbuddy's point is that this amazing level of service has been bought at the price of enormous waste.

That would be an absurd point to make, and it was not my intent to make it.

GreenEngineer wrote: Somehow the energy fluctuations from [windmills] is fundamentally harder to manage than the fluctuation created by user loads going on- and off-line

Yes, windmill fluctuations are harder to manage. Windmills within a given area, relative to each other, go on and off not randomly, but in sync.

GreenEngineer wrote: Nucbuddy's [...] Of course, being part-troll

grist.org/about/terms

Prohibited Conduct

6. By accessing our website or any chat room, online discussion forum, or other service provided through our website, you agree to abide by the following standards of conduct. You agree that you will not, and will not authorize or facilitate any attempt by another person to, use our website or any related chat room or online discussion forum to:

a. Transmit any Content that is unlawful, harmful, threatening, abusive, harassing, defamatory, vulgar, offensive, obscene, pornographic, lewd, lascivious, or otherwise objectionable, as determined by Grist.

b. Use a name or language that Grist, in its sole discretion, deems offensive.

c. Post defamatory statements.

d. Post hateful or racially or ethnically objectionable Content.
[...]
g. Harass, threaten, or intentionally embarrass or cause distress to another person or entity.

Magickal thoughts about the grid, vs. reality

Sean Caston wrote: The grid is a truly wonderful thing, aggregating both suppliers and consumers so that the instantaneous fluctuation of any individual on either side of that transaction doesn't harm any individual on the other side.

You do not actually believe this, do you? Are you aware that electrical generating stations employ lead-acid backup batteries and resistive shunts to even-out the power? If you install a windmill on your property and tie it to the grid, where do you suppose the power goes when the wind happens to blow? Typically, it gets bled off by a resistive shunt -- i.e. the electrical utility, after being forced to buy it from you, disposes of your garbage-power for you.
On Duke wins approval for a $3100/kW plant posted 2 years ago 26 Responses

Toyota Prius - 105 mph, 140 mpg

Sam Wells wrote: even the Toyota Prius is over-powered so as to go 140 MPH

No.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prius#2004_to_2007_Prius_.28NHW20.29

Prius [...] Models have a 0-60 mph acceleration time of 10.1 seconds and a top speed of 105 mph (169 km/h) when using both electric and internal combustion motors simultaneously.

However, the Prius does get 140 mpg (miles per gallon) at a steady 20 mph on flat roads.
gristmill.grist.org/story/2007/3/9/152028/3730#8
On We have $100-a-barrel oil due to speculation and fear posted 2 years ago 54 Responses

Dolphin arms and hands

Jon Rynn wrote: Dolphins don't have manipulative limbs

What do you call this?
http://www.neoucom.edu/DLDD/interst/develop/flipper/index ...
On Jeremy Carl argues that coal will be with us for a long while posted 2 years ago 43 Responses

Hydrogen half the cost of gasoline, in California

hydrogencarsnow.com/hydrogen-filling-station-irvine-ca.htm

Note the current price here is $4.99 per gallon equivalent or the same price per kilogram (Kg).

The 2009 Honda FCX Clarity gets 68 miles per kg, according to Honda.

Gasoline now costs about $4/gallon in Southern California.

(The FCX can carry 4 kg of hydrogen, for a range if 270 miles.)
On Full-cell company bought by Daimler and Ford posted 2 years ago 55 Responses

n

Picture of the Code Pink activist.

Name: Tyghe Berry.
On Reflections on Grist's presidential forum on climate change posted 2 years ago 62 Responses

RPS = Renewable Portfolio Standard

Sean Casten wrote: What is an RPS, after all, if not artificial price support for a few select industries?

RPS stands for Renewable Portfolio Standard.
On Pro-business vs. pro-market posted 2 years ago 14 Responses

n

Sam Wells wrote: Our urban highways are filled with productivity - sucking delays and congestion, resulting in billions of dollars just in stop and go traffic

Meanwhile, 4 million Americans telecommute, and climbing:
google.com/search?q=telecommute+million

U.S. Telecommuters Save 840 Million Gallons Of Gas Per Year ...The findings also indicate the estimated 3.9 million telecommuters in the U.S. reduced gasoline consumption by about 840 million gallons, while curbing ...
www.environmentalleader.com/2007/09/20/us-telecommuters-save-840-million-gallons-of-gas-per-year/ - 38k

3.9 Million Americans Telecommute, Helping Reduce Greenhouse Gas ...Check out 3.9 Million Americans Telecommute, Helping Reduce Greenhouse Gas Emissions - Submitted by jacob dauler at Associated Content.
www.associatedcontent.com/article/386640/39_million_americans_telecommute_helping.html - 42k -

New Study Finds 3.9 Million Americans Telecommute » Earth 911New Study Finds 3.9 Million Americans Telecommute. by Earth 911 on September 20th, 2007. Post a comment. Associated Content features the results of a study ...
earth911.org/blog/2007/09/20/new-study-finds-39-million-americans-telecommute/ - 42k -

What true-horror of nuclear-pollution?

Pangolin wrote: Of course that was before the true horror of pollution became know to us.

If you mean nuclear-pollution, please provide details of what you call its true-horror.
On We have $100-a-barrel oil due to speculation and fear posted 2 years ago 54 Responses

Radioisotope Electric Generators in cars

Cosmoss,

There is no market for electric vehicles. They cannot be sold. No one buys them. There is no electric-vehicle technology available today that is attractive to consumers.

I think there would be a market for electric vehicles if onboard continuous recharging were available in the form of Radioisotope Electric Generator (REG) modules, but nuclear power would need to be decriminalized for that to happen.
On We have $100-a-barrel oil due to speculation and fear posted 2 years ago 54 Responses

n

GreyFlcn wrote: fuel economy is the real goal should be.

Wherefrom did you get that idea?
On We have $100-a-barrel oil due to speculation and fear posted 2 years ago 54 Responses

Powerplants really do produce power

MrLee wrote: Your theory that when you plug in your car someone at the coal plant says "Hey Vinnie, start stokin' her up, we got a big one!" is incorrect.

It is not incorrect and is in fact what occurs.
On Giving up car-lessness for Rob Lowe's plug-in hybrid posted 2 years ago 27 Responses

The true size of the earth's oil resource

Paintbrush wrote: Where is more oil?

...Under your feet -- trillions upon trillions of barrels.

runet.edu/~wkovarik/oil/3unconventional.html

In their book, The Future of Oil, Odell and Rosing note that estimates of the world oil resource base ranged from two trillion to 11 trillion, with three trillion barrels of oil being "the more realistic figure" for conventional oil, while another two trillion could be added as a conservative estimate for unconventional oil.
[...]
In a 1999 Greenpeace report on Climate Change, Odell noted that "a modest 3,000 billion barrels reserve of non-conventional oil (out of an ultimate resource base more than an order of magnitude bigger) could then sustain a continued increase in world oil use beyond the middle of the 21st century on the basis of an assumption of a 2% per annum growth in demand. Under this scenario the world oil industry in the mid-21st century would be approximately three times its present size."

Light-rail vs. automobile efficiency

Another efficiency-calculation link:
lafn.org/~dave/trans/energy/rail_vs_autoEE.html
On NYT's Andy Revkin pens another stinker on the so-called 'center' of the climate debate posted 2 years ago 42 Responses

n

How does changing the source of one's energy nip energy use?
On Frito-Lay hopes to manufacture eco-friendly potato chips posted 2 years ago 4 Responses

The g nexus, and farming

GreenEngineer wrote: about the only thing IQ measures is the ability to succeed in the modern economy.

That theory has been tested and found wanting. See this book, especially Chapter 8, The Practical Validity of g, and Chapter 14, The g Nexus:
amazon.com/Factor-Science-Evolution-Behavior-Intelligence/dp/0275961036

You can read some 50 pages of it online for free by clicking the Search inside this book link.

GreenEngineer wrote: It correlates strongly to income

Correlation does not imply causation.
On Another study shows organic ag outpacing conventional posted 2 years ago 16 Responses

n

GreyFlcn wrote: So lets see.
$6500 * (30%/44%)

Wherefrom did you get those figures? What are you trying to calculate?
On The cost of the FutureGen 'clean coal' plant doubles posted 2 years ago 16 Responses

IGCC is 60% efficient

Rmcleod wrote: Coal is about 21 GJ/short ton, or at 30 % burning efficiency produces 6.4 GJ electricity/ton.

IGCC is 60% efficient.
world-nuclear.org/info/inf83.html

Overall thermal efficiency for oxygen-blown coal gasification, including carbon dioxide capture and sequestration, is about 73%. Using the hydrogen in a gas turbine for electricity generation is efficient, so the overall system has long-term potential to achieve an efficiency of up to 60%.

n

Daniel:
visforvoltage.org
On Electric motorcycle delivers man to side of van posted 2 years ago 15 Responses

Russian oil tanker breaks in two

In other news:
news.google.com/news?q=Russian+oil+tanker

Five-metre (16-feet) high waves smashed apart a Russian tanker on Sunday, spilling 1300 tonnes of fuel oil into the Black Sea in what a Russian official said was an "environmental disaster."

Two-months old news

killacycle.com/2007/09/13/im-fine-scapes-and-cuts-bike-is-a-little-bent
On Electric motorcycle delivers man to side of van posted 2 years ago 15 Responses

Enron shut down Diablo Canyon?

Pangolin wrote: The triad of wind/solar/geothermal are far easier to finance and install than a single new nuclear plant. It would be modular, redundant and hard to switch off if Enron buys your legislature and goes profit hunting. Remember Diablo Canyon was shut down in California for just that purpose.

Enron shut down Diablo Canyon? Please provide details of this.
On Is wind worth it? posted 2 years ago 72 Responses

Netherlands, then Denmark, then Germany, bicycling

Odograph wrote: One reason Denmark has the highest bike ridership in the world [...]

Figure 1: [...] Bicycling Shares of Urban Travel in North America and Europe, 1995

1. Netherlands 28%
   
2. Denmark 20%
   
3. Germany 12%
   
4. Sweden 10%
   
5. Switzerland 10%
   
6. Austria 9%

Spent-fuel disposition and dry-cask storage

Elbarto wrote: Where [...] put the waste from 1000 new nuclear plants?

Nuclear powerplants do not produce waste. The spent-fuel of the current reactor fleet of the United States is being moved from cooling-pool storage to on-site dry-cask storage.
google.com/search?q=+site%3Awww.fas.org+garwin+dry+storage

Spent reactor-fuel does not take up very much room, so this does not present a problem.
On Nuclear plants require lots of water in an increasingly dry world posted 2 years, 1 month ago 28 Responses

Non-investors, and the economic-shocks they create

Colin Wright wrote: But isn't growth in Asia driving oil prices up?

It is, temporarily. Supply has to catch up with demand. If you and others had been doing your jobs by investing in oil futures, supply would have already caught up with demand.
On Why I don't agree with James Kunstler about peak oil and the 'end of suburbia' posted 2 years, 1 month ago 65 Responses

Used vs. new

KenG wrote: Used is a good idea if you don't put a lot of miles on.

Ditto, as long as you can find a tow hitch for an older Yaris. The only economic reason to prefer new over used is if you are planning on putting on substantially-more mileage than the new-vehicle fleet average of 15,000 miles per year. (My personal cutoff would be something like 20,000+ miles per year.) Used cars can be purchased online on eBay, Auto-Trader, etc.

By the way, you can put a hitch on a Chevy Aveo, and it is a far better value than a Toyota Yaris (especially considering the fact that Toyota's quality ratings have been dropping like rocks).
On Tell BioD what car to buy posted 2 years, 1 month ago 27 Responses

Oxymorons are only used for epigrammatic effect

Amazingdrx wrote: The unifying principle of so-called "opinion leaders" happens to be conventional wisdom (the ultimate oxymoron).

Actually, that would not be an oxymoron.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oxymoron

What distinguishes oxymorons from other paradoxes and contradictions is that they are used intentionally, for rhetorical effect, and the contradiction is only apparent, as the combination of terms provides a novel expression of some concept, such as "cruel to be kind".

$2,250/kW quoted for one, undersized coal unit

Sean Casten wrote: they are simply the only places I am aware of in the press that acknowledge what those in the industry are already keenly aware of, but rather hesitant to say publicly

That is an absurd assertion.

At the time when it was news, Google News would return multiple unique newspaper hits reporting $1.8 billion for the 800-megawatt coal-fired unit. Today, there are 24,000 unique google hits for:
google.com/search?q=duke+coal+billion+800+1.8+megawatt

Sean Casten wrote: the Duke plant actually is at $3000, but that hasn't been reported yet.

Please name your source.

Sean Casten wrote: I recently heard that their $2500 number

Wherefrom did you get that $2500/kW figure? The Duke plant is reported as costing $1.8 billion for 800 megawatts.
google.com/search?q=duke%20coal%20billion%20800

That works out to $2,250/kW -- and if the Cliffside expansion project involved two 800 megawatt units, instead of just one, the price per kilowatt of capacity would undoubtedly be lower.

Sean Casten wrote: I recently heard that their $2500 number doesn't include the construction finance costs, which they clearly have to pay.  Add those in, and they've topped $3000.)

That is an absurd assertion. Capital cost figures are capital cost figures. Finance costs are never included in capital cost figures, unless noted.

The hit from the above-search notes, "[the 800-megawatt coal unit] would cost $1.8 billion for construction and about $600 million to finance. Finance costs would therefore push it up to $3,000/kW. However, finance costs are not capital costs -- they are separate figures.

Sean Casten wrote: while you are generally right that the published reports coming in right now are in the $2000 - $2500 range

I did not say that. Please stop raping me. A single 800-megawatt coal-fired unit has been quoted at $2,250/kW. A larger powerplant would undoubtedly benefit from economy of scale, and would therefore be less-expensive per unit of capacity.

Sean Casten wrote: the actuals that are starting to materialize in rate case filings and in other behind-the-scenes discussions are considerably higher.

Please name your sources.

Sean Casten wrote: You still have to add in $1300/kW for T&D

How do you know that those capital-cost figures do not include Transmission and Distribution (T&D)?

Sean Casten wrote: you still end up at numbers for power from these plants that are way above the 1.5 cent

Fuel for coal-fired powerplants indeed is typically in the ballpark (though dependent upon the distance the coal has to travel to the plant) of 1.5 cents per kilowatt-hour.

Sean Casten wrote: nonsense spouted by Sunflower's CEO.

Please stop raping Sunflower Electric Cooperative's CEO.
On Don't believe the power company hype about coal's low price posted 2 years, 1 month ago 18 Responses

Which recent coal plants have/will cost $3,000/kW?

Sean Caston wrote: Just about all of them

When you say all, do you mean none?

Those are the same two articles you indirectly linked-to above. Neither article mentions any specific "coal plants [...] going in nowadays [...] getting quoted at ~$3000/kW installed cost." Even the recent Duke Power unit of only 800 megawatts (and it might have been cheaper/kW if it had been allowed to be 1,600 megawatts, as originally-planned) was quoted at less than $2,500/kW.

Could you please name some names of these $3,000/kW coal plants you speak of, instead of linking to off-topic articles?
On Don't believe the power company hype about coal's low price posted 2 years, 1 month ago 18 Responses

Really conserving energy

Sunflower wrote: Not using energy is a wedge.

The sun continuously leaks energy at a rate of 3.846e26 watts. Would you suggest plugging that leak, to save energy?
On Kansas coal plant air permit denied on basis of CO2 posted 2 years, 1 month ago 9 Responses

Your are wrong, Sean; coal is cheaper than gas

Worldwide, levelized lifetime wholesale coal-electric costs (including capital and operating costs) tend to be competitive with those of gas and nuclear. A summary of a diverse array of studies and examples is available here:
world-nuclear.org/info/inf02.html

For the United States, new coal is consistently found to be less-expensive than new gas. This map (made March 2007) shows that the U.S. states that produce more of their power from coal, tend to have lower electricity costs. The typical exceptions are the hydropower states, such as Washington, Oregon, and Idaho. The rule seems to be: if you want cheap electricity, you want coal or hydro.
On Don't believe the power company hype about coal's low price posted 2 years, 1 month ago 18 Responses

n

Jon Rynn,

Nuclear energy is dense. For any given amount of power-production capacity, it makes a relatively small eyesore.

Wind energy is diffuse. For any given amount of power-production capacity, it makes a relatively large eyesore.
On Is wind worth it? posted 2 years, 1 month ago 72 Responses

Danes think wind-mining rigs are 'ugly'

biodiversivist wrote: Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. [...] Personally, I would love a spectacular view of distant wind turbines out my window. Guests would find them interesting and fascinating. And, how easy would it be to give peopele who don't like they way they look a break on their electric bill for a decade or two?

It is funny that you should mention that.
cphpost.dk/get/102943.html

Residents may reap windmill compensation
02.08.2007 [August 2, 2007]

Stalled plans to build new high-efficiency wind turbines could get a jump start thanks to a government plan to pay residents for decreased property values.

Property owner resistance over plans to replace the country's 5000 existing wind turbines with fewer high-efficiency models has the government suggesting that homeowners living in the shadow of the 150-metre giants be compensated for lost property value.

Most politicians and citizens are in agreement that wind power is the way to a cleaner, more environmentally friendly future, but many also believe rows of wind turbines are an eyesore and destroy the harmony of the nation's gentle landscape.

The new initiative to compensate property owners comes on the heels of a report from a special commission created by parliament to determine the most aesthetic means of erecting new wind turbines across the country.
[...]
citizens' groups concerned about the effects the new wind turbines have on the landscape have managed to stall the process. Connie Hedegaard, the environment minister, believes the new initiative will help get it back underway.

'If you live near a new wind turbine, you should be able to receive compensation from the state,' she told Weekendavisen newspaper.
[...]
'I still think it's best to discuss the situation out in the communities,' she said. 'There are cultural lines in the landscape that you can't necessarily see just by looking at a map.'

When wind turbines began to sprout up in earnest at the beginning of the decade Uffe Ellemann-Jensen, the former leader of the prime minister's Liberal Party, expressed the feelings of many when he called wind turbines 'politically correct, economically questionable and ugly'.

How to pronounce the word 'nuclear', revisited

Amazingdrx wrote: Do you pronounce it nuke..you..ler

The Merriam-Webster dictionary does.
merriam-webster.com/dictionary/nuclear

Main Entry: nu·cle·ar
Pronunciation: [...] 'nyü-, ÷-kye-ler

n

Trock wrote: Sure, electricity is made by coal and natural gas, but these are also the things that release carbon dioxide

Without a price-tag on it, released carbon-dioxide is irrelevant.
On A panel discussion on how much plug-ins rule posted 2 years, 2 months ago 32 Responses

n

Paintbrush wrote: Patrick Moore [...] gets paid directly by polluting industries, including the chemical  (i.e. PBDEs) and nuclear industries.

How is the nuclear industry a polluting industry?
On BusinessWeek allows Whitman to lobby for nukes under the guise of an op-ed posted 2 years, 2 months ago 16 Responses

The wealth of moderns, in relation to medievals

Caniscandida wrote: Is Nucbuddy being sarcastic when he refers to the "poorness" of the Netherlands?

...Probably not, since Nucbuddy nowhere in this thread referred to unqualified "poorness" of the Netherlands.

Caniscandida wrote: The Dutch are nowadays just about the richest nation per capita in the world

...It is interesting that the Dutch got that way while continuously-repelling the sea for 900 years.

Caniscandida wrote: quite at the opposite extreme from Bangladesh.

Is the present Netherlands richer than the Bangladesh of decades hence?

Caniscandida wrote: But already in the Middle Ages, the trading cities of the Low Countries, along with the great Italian cities, were the greatest centers of wealth in Western Europe.

Really? How much did AISI Type 316 structural steel and ASTM C150 Type I Portland cement cost? How about PVA structural concrete-reinforcing fibers and Xypex expansive concrete-waterproofing crystals? How about AutoCAD and desktop and laptop computers to run it on?
On Lomborg misrepresents possible sea-level rise posted 2 years, 2 months ago 27 Responses

The Dutch as a model for modern lowlandism

Sam Wells wrote: The last post seems to smack of the "Netherlands Paradigm" where we can geo-engineer our way out of global sea level rise by building dikes and other hard structures. [...] the Netherlands is a very small coastal plain north of Belgium that has been around for centuries.

Yes, it is indeed interesting that very-poor people -- the poorness of whom is unequalled anywhere on Earth today -- were able to build effective sea-dikes using 12th-century technology, and that those same people and their descendents managed to thrive thusly below sea-level for circa 900 years.
On Lomborg misrepresents possible sea-level rise posted 2 years, 2 months ago 27 Responses

The Nuclear Renaissance

Anybody in particular you Gristies want me to chat with?

• Reliant Energy, Mark Jacobs, CEO

n

Do you have any criticisms of the content of the editorial, David?
On BusinessWeek allows Whitman to lobby for nukes under the guise of an op-ed posted 2 years, 2 months ago 16 Responses

To resolve collective conflicts-of-interest

David Roberts wrote: Coal may be cheap, but clean coal -- IGCC plants with sequestration -- produces absurdly expensive electricity.

How expensive is absurdly expensive -- 7.5 cents per kWh?
enerdynamics.com/documents/Insider72406.pdf

David Roberts wrote: what exactly would we be demonstrating to China? [...] I fail to see how our demonstration of expensive energy would induce them to choose expensive energy.

What would induce any nation to make an individually-harmful/collectively-beneficial choice is a world carbon-tax imposed by a world-government equipped with its own military power. This is how familes work. This is how cities work. This is how counties work. This is how states work. This is how nations work. In each of these cases, a single collective power resolves conflicts-of-interest among its constituent members.
On Carbon sequestration is a costly alternative to renewables, not a transition to them posted 2 years, 2 months ago 21 Responses

Wind vs. nuclear - uneven playing field

Trock,

Wind powerplants are used as tax write-offs. No one can use a nuclear powerplant as a tax write-off, because there are no tax write-offs avalailable for nuclear powerplants. Additionally, those tax write-offs are artificially inflated by fraudulently-high estimations of wind powerplant generation capacity -- which instances of fraud would be more difficult to execute in the stricter regulatory environment that surrpunds nuclear powerplants.

One of the many other exclusive subsidies that wind powerplants receive is a lifetime 2-cent/kWh (and automatically rising with inflation) generation subsidy. The subsidy-distorted economics tend to work in favor of wind powerplants, and against nuclear powerplants.

It is also easier to execute a wind powerplant venture because the regulatory environment surrounding wind power is so much laxer than that surrounding nuclear power.

It does not solely matter that nuclear powerplants only cost 1/8th what wind powerplants cost. There are other factors involved in the decisions that utilities and investors make.
On Strict safety guidelines cause construction delays at nuclear plants in Finland and Taiwan posted 2 years, 2 months ago 14 Responses

Trock,

You wrote, "If nuclear is as cheap all that, 8 times cheaper than wind, everybody will be putting them in."

Your stated conclusion does not seem to follow from your stated premise. How did you come to your stated conclusion?
On Strict safety guidelines cause construction delays at nuclear plants in Finland and Taiwan posted 2 years, 2 months ago 14 Responses

Jones,

How did you establish that geothermal is pollution-free?On It's time to stop accepting the claim that we 'can't' switch to renewable energy posted 2 years, 2 months ago 21 Responses

Fuel energy-density in light of octane-level

Clark Williams-Derry wrote in the original post: Ethanol isn't quite as "energy dense" as gasoline. A thousand gallons of ethanol has about the same amount of energy as only 610 gallons of gas.

Here in the Northwest (British Columbia, Washington, Oregon, and Idaho) we use about 6 billion gallons of gasoline per year. So if the poplar research is close to being right, it would take about 9.2 million acres of poplar plantations to satisfy our gasoline appetite.

Energy-density of fuels is irrelevant if engine-efficiency is not mentioned. Engines optimized for ethanol's higher octane-level are more-efficient than standard gasoline engines -- so much so that the energy-density differences become negligible.
On A closer look at producing ethanol from poplar trees posted 2 years, 2 months ago 39 Responses

Spent-fuel disposition vs. the present subject

Rcphillips wrote: it is silly, almost childish, to talk about the "costs" of nuclear power in terms of billions of dollars and say nothing about the radioactive waste

The subject of Joseph Romm's post was up-front capital cost. Spent-fuel disposition is not part of up-front capital cost, unless dry-storage facilities are included in the initial construction works -- they never have-been included in the past, and even if they were, the added costs would be negligible.
On Strict safety guidelines cause construction delays at nuclear plants in Finland and Taiwan posted 2 years, 2 months ago 14 Responses

Sunflower,

What percentage of the real-estate is shaded? Please use Google Image to search for a picture of a heliostat that you think is shown shading more than 10% of the ground, and then link to that image from here. Thank you in advance.
On Coal insider reveals the truth about carbon sequestration posted 2 years, 2 months ago 45 Responses

The solar-failure against-all-support mystery

Sunflower wrote: Don't fall into the trap that if it worked somebody would have already done it.  New ideas run into the buzz saw of disbelief, industrial inertia, and vested resistance.

We live in a world populated by literally millions of entrepreneurial solar zealots. Entire nations have pledged themselves to solar-power or bust. If that's a trap, then I guess I have fallen into it.

Sunflower wrote: Further afield, China is in our technological past.

You mean like 30 years ago when the United States was producing a quarter-billion cellphones every year?
news.google.com/news?q=china+cellphones

If China is not doing solar-thermal-electric right now, it is because solar-thermal-electric is more-expensive than hydro, coal, and nuclear. This should tell us something, since a labor-intensive technology like solar-thermal-electric would benefit from China's cheap labor; and a capital-intensive scale-dependent technology should benefit from China's ability to dictate massive projects in single 5-year-plan swoops. If it is too-expensive for China, then it is even-further too-expensive for the United States.
On Coal insider reveals the truth about carbon sequestration posted 2 years, 2 months ago 45 Responses

The unbearable ever-cheapness of oil

Odograph,

Gasoline is not oil. Oil has not been near its peak (some $110/barrel, in terms of monthly averages), not to mention exceeded it, in decades. The 2007 CNN article you linked states, "The price of $1.35 in 1981 works out to $3.15 in current dollars, [Trilby Lundberg, publisher of the survey] said." Perhaps Lundberg is mistaken. Tom's inflation calculator says that $1.35 in 1981 equals $3.31 in 2007.

By the way, Trilby Lundberg is a sibling of the famous Peak-Oil/tear-up-the-roads activist Jan Lundberg.

Comments on: Oil Price Queen Encourages Increased Consumption ...
Trilby Lundberg is basically telling us the Earth is flat. ... She spews big oil propaganda and he (Jan Lundberg) runs culturechange.org and speaks out ...

Audubon: InciteJan
Lundberg tore up his driveway to make way for a garden. ... (His sister, Trilby Lundberg, who runs the company now, declines to comment. ...

Uranium may push Peak Oil far into the future

Justlou,

Heavy oils, tar, and shale oil are hydrogenatable via nuclear power. (This is why heavy crude is more-valuable than light crude. It has more carbon, and the carbon is what is valuable since it can act as a hydrogen-carrier. Hydrogen, and hydrogenation, thanks to nuclear-power, are available essentially free-of-charge.) All discrete resources are rechargeable, but general bound-energy is not rechargeable. The earth's crust happens to contain 40-trillion tons of uranium, which works out to billions of years worth of present-burn-rate general bound-energy -- or half a millennium of 10-trillion-fold-per-millennium (3.04% per year) civilization-energy burn-rate growth.
google.com/search?q=uranium+crust+cowan+grl

World petroleum extraction rates can continue increasing yearly for many decades, and probably for many centuries. There really is a lot of oil in the crust, and even $500 for a barrel of heavy crude would still work out to a gasoline cost of only $5/gallon (assuming a 42-gallon barrel of heavy-crude, tar, or shale-oil can be nuclear-hydrogenated into 100 gallons of gasoline {or other light hydrocarbon fuel such as iso-octane, ethanol, or methanol}). Again, the nuclear-hydrogenation is essentially cost-free, so the cost of gasoline simply depends upon the price you set for the oil on the land you own.
On A gaggle of URLs posted 2 years, 2 months ago 24 Responses

31.4 billion barrels of oil NE of Greenland

Justlou wrote: Note that they said gallons, and not barrels

Apparently, the latter was meant.
spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,503755,00.html

Last week, the project -- called the Circum-Arctic Oil and Gas Resource Appraisal -- released its first results, for an area of some 500,000 square kilometers off the east coast of Greenland. According to the USGS's best guess, the so-called East Greenland Rift Basins could hold some 31.4 billion barrels of oil or natural gas>. If proven, the area would rank northeastern Greenland 19th on the list of proven oil and gas reserves.
[...]
should the ice eventually disappear as a result of climate change, the Arctic promises to become the target of a geo-political gold rush. By next summer, the USGS study may provide the competitors with a good idea of just what they are rushing for.

31.4 billion barrels * 42 = 1.32 trillion gallons.

Note that the area in question is tiny. The entire crust may hold thousands of times the quantities of oil currently estimated.
reason.com/news/show/36645.html

The USGS figures that the total world endowment of conventional oil resources is equivalent to about 5.9 trillion barrels of oil. [...] The USGS calculates that humanity has already consumed about 1 trillion barrels of oil equivalent, which means 82 percent of the world's endowment of oil and gas resources remains to be used.

The USGS has a long history of continuous exponential-increases in its oil-reserve estimates.
runet.edu/~wkovarik/oil/5oilreservehistory.html

• 1920 -- David White, chief geologist of USGS, estimates total oil remaining in the US at 6.7 billion barrels. "In making this estimate, which included both proved reserves and resources still remaining to be discovered, White conceded that it might well be in error by as much as 25 percent."
  
• 1980 -- Remaining proven oil reserves put at 648 billion barrels
  
• 1993 -- Remaining proven oil reserves put at 999 billion barrels
  
• 2000 -- Remaining proven oil reserves put at 1016 billion barrels.

Gristmill pornography

Caniscandida wrote: [Pornographic description] [...] It is odd, unexpected and unfortunate that the verb "to suck" should have come to mean

I do not think it means what you think it means. Suck, meaning "be inferior", derives from animal-husbandry.
http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?search=suck

Suck hind tit "be inferior" is Amer.Eng. slang first recorded 1940.

Setting wages by whim, rather than by market

Wildleaf wrote: These are businesses that [...] pay the lowest wages they can

Would you suggest adopting a different compensation strategy?
On Karl Rove says history to view Bush as 'far-sighted leader' posted 2 years, 2 months ago 25 Responses

A 30-meter^2 solar panel might work for this

Sunflower,

If the sunshine in Colorado has an average power of 100 watts for the sunniest five hours of the typical December day, 3 square-meters of 12%-efficient solar-panels would produce 180 watt-hours in a day, and 5.4 kWh for the month.

How did you come up with 50 kWh?
On DIY renewable energy projects posted 2 years, 3 months ago 12 Responses

Danes say wind is more-expensive than coal

Amazingdrx wrote: Wind is far less expensive than fossil fuels with carbon capture.  In initial cost as well as per kwh cost.

http://www.cphpost.dk/get/102560.html

Bjarne Lundager, managing director of the Wind Energy Association, an industry trade group, warned against removing the subsidies too quickly
[...]
He noted that [...] on paper wind energy appeared more costly compared with coal energy

http://www.cphpost.dk/get/103061.html

said Rosa Andersen, an advisor for the Danish Wind Industry Association [...] `But [...] Denmark only installed six new wind turbines all of last year, and that's embarrassing.'

http://www.cphpost.dk/get/102966.html

Vestas [...] found itself in trouble last week. The world's largest maker of wind turbines slid 3.5 percent after Indian-based Suzlon, a major competitor, released disappointing quarterly data. Particularly hard hit was Suzlon's component division, which bodes ill for Vestas.

http://www.cphpost.dk/get/102943.html

Stalled plans to build new high-efficiency wind turbines could get a jump start thanks to a government plan to pay residents for decreased property values

Property owner resistance over plans to replace the country's 5000 existing wind turbines with fewer high-efficiency models has the government suggesting that homeowners living in the shadow of the 150-metre giants be compensated for lost property value.

Most politicians and citizens are in agreement that wind power is the way to a cleaner, more environmentally friendly future, but many also believe rows of wind turbines are an eyesore and destroy the harmony of the nation's gentle landscape.

The new initiative to compensate property owners comes on the heels of a report from a special commission created by parliament to determine the most aesthetic means of erecting new wind turbines across the country.

Although about 20 percent of Denmark's energy is generated by wind power, the amount needs to rise significantly if the country is to achieve the 2009 wind power goals set by a parliamentary agreement three years ago. Replacing existing models with a reduced number of larger ones has been proposed as a way to reach those goals.

But citizens' groups concerned about the effects the new wind turbines have on the landscape have managed to stall the process. Connie Hedegaard, the environment minister, believes the new initiative will help get it back underway.

`If you live near a new wind turbine, you should be able to receive compensation from the state,' she told Weekendavisen newspaper. `But note that it is only if one can document that they've suffered a financial loss from the placement - in the same way as those who live close to a new motorway.'

Hedegaard has called together the mayors of 22 cities to discuss the issue in August and to work out the details of such a plan. The opposition, however, is pushing her to bypass the meetings and use her authority to dictate where the wind turbines should be placed, putting up as many of the new wind turbines as necessary to meet the country's targets for reducing carbon dioxide emissions.

Hedegaard said she would rather have the debate on a local level.

`I still think it's best to discuss the situation out in the communities,' she said.'There are cultural lines in the landscape that you can't necessarily see just by looking at a map.'

When wind turbines began to sprout up in earnest at the beginning of the decade Uffe Ellemann-Jensen, the former leader of the prime minister's Liberal Party, expressed the feelings of many when he called wind turbines `politically correct, economically questionable and ugly'.

http://www.cphpost.dk/get/102388.html

Wind energy advocates and the opposition are welcoming the Liberal-Conservative government's long-term strategy for boosting renewable energy production.

The new proposal increases subsidies for wind energy
[...]
According to the plan, subsidies for a kilowatt hour produced by a new wind turbine would be increased to DKK 0.20 from the current DKK 0.123
[...]
Kim Mortensen, the party's energy spokesperson said, however, that it would push to raise the subsidy to DKK 0.29 per kilowatt hour.

Virtual presence vs. the $20,000/year commute

I would imagine that these commuters did not experience any commute problems.

Approximately 34 percent of CIOs whose companies allow telecommuting cited improved retention and morale through enhanced work-life balance as the greatest benefit. Increased productivity due to reduced commute time was cited by 28 percent of respondents.

The Tesla Roadster has never been crash-tested

GreyFlcn wrote: Which test? This test.

That is a special electrolyte-spillage test that does not measure acceleration-forces on crash dummies. This is the comment that Gar was responding-to:

I think it's an open question if carbon fiber (or other ultra-light) cars are ever going to pass our US safety laws.

This is crash-testing:
iihs.org/ratings
safercar.gov/pages/ResourcesLinksBSC.htm

Apparently, the Tesla Roadster has undergone no such crash-testing.
On Really posted 2 years, 4 months ago 44 Responses

A123 vs. NiMH on price

Biodiversivist wrote: Not only are the A123 M1 cells good for thousands of cycles, their price is now about the same as NiMH per WH.

greencarcongress.com/2007/02/sdchemie_to_inv.html#c60221820

From the selling price of the Dewalt pack ($169) we can estimate that 1kWh of the A123 battery cost about $2400. This is competitive for powertools and e-bikes but it needs to drop to about $1200 to be competitive for use in HEVs (the current NiMh cost about $1200 /kWh but they are heavier and more space demanding than lithium). [...] For the battery price to be competitive for a mass market for PHEVs I believe that the price must hit about $600 /kWh or lower so that a 8 kWh pack would cost about $5000 per vehicle.

US autoworkers make $150,000/year

Nicks wrote: This was a comment on another blog.  It's consistent with what I see in the press, but I haven't found an authority for it:  "U.S. automakers pay $30 to $35 more in labor costs per hour than their Asian counterparts, according to Reuters news service. When wage, health-care and pension benefits are included, Detroit's Big Three pay their union workers $70 to $75 per hour compared with the $40 to $45 per hour that Asian automakers pay workers at their U.S. plants."

Here is an authority of sorts:
autoblog.com/2007/07/13/u-of-m-economics-professor-tackles-tough-question-of-uaw-wages

A tip sent us to the blog of Dr. Mark J. Perry, professor of economics and finance at the University of Michigan, who points out that hourly union workers at the Big 3 make on average 57.6% more in a year than a university professor with a Ph.D. Using figures from the automakers themselves, Dr. Perry tells us that a union worker at Ford makes $141,020/year including wages and benefits. A worker at General Motors makes $146,520/year and one at Chrysler earns $151,720/year. According to another report he cites, the average annual salary for a college professor in 2006 was $92,973, which happens to be close to the $96,000/year a Honda, Nissan or Toyota worker makes in the U.S.

Speculations on the taste of Cowan's apple

Jon Rynn wrote: solar/wind/geothermal [...] It seems to me, per Gar Lipow and others, [...] there is plenty of [...] on the other hand, we'd have to get into all kinds of arcane data and discuss the long-term soupply of uranium
[...]
here's an article talking about the decline of uranium supplies, then there's this long article about the supply/demand problems

I have a question for you, Jon. I ask this in all seriousness, and I would appreciate an answer. Given that you, Jon Rynn, know that the earth's crust contains some 40 trillion tons of EROEI > 1.6 uranium, given that you know that the 16% of the world's electricity that is currently produced by nuclear power only consumes 73,000 tons of uranium per year, given that you know that that computes to over half a billion years worth of nuclear electricity, given that you know that the current 34% thermal-efficiency of nuclear reactors might easily be doubled-or-more over the coming millions-of-years therefore dropping the uranium requirements in half and doubling the nuclear-electricity years to more than a billion, and given that you know that employing breeder-reactors would multiply that to more-than 60 billion years, why would you, Jon Rynn, bother clicking on a link labeled /why-the-uranium-price-is-set-to-soar.html or /seven-reasons-the-uranium-price-will-hit-100-this-year.html unless you were interested in engaging in short-term (e.g. less than a million years) metals speculation?
On Blue plus green equals sustainability posted 2 years, 4 months ago 22 Responses

n

If -- under a given set of assumptions -- solar and wind are cost-free resources, then what are uranium and thorium?On Blue plus green equals sustainability posted 2 years, 4 months ago 22 Responses

Diffuse power is human-capital inefficient

Jon Rynn wrote in the original post: It's actually a good thing that wind turbines are complex -- they could support a vast range of manufacturing firms, the kind of firm that provides the basis for industry in general, such as machine tool makers, ball bearing makers, steel companies, etc

That is the very problem with windpower and other diffuse energy sources: they inefficiently leverage human-capital. America's Portland-cement industry, on the other hand, is an example of one that has improved its human-capital efficiency:

Efficiency Gains

Employment in the U.S. cement industry has declined dramatically during the past 20 years. In 2005, the cement industry employed 16,859 workers--a 23% reduction compared to 1985 levels. This drop in employment is the result of industry efforts to increase efficiency by automating production and closing small kilns. The average kiln in use today produces nearly 70% more cement than an average kiln produced 20 years ago: 504,000 metric tons in 2004 compared with 297,000 metric tons in 1984.

Jon Rynn later commented: NYTimes [...] they're talking about coal and nukes, like $2000 to 3000 per kwhr when wind, according to Gar Lipow, is closer to $1500.  The cost of materials (e.g., nickel) and transporting the equipment is skyrocketing.  So why doesn't "the market" stampede to wind?

Windpower does not leverage its upfront capital costs with 70% capacity-factors (like coal) or 90% capacity-factors (like nuclear). It does not achieve less-than 2% unscheduled downtime (as nuclear does). It does not feature production-costs of under 2-cents/kWh (as nuclear does). It dies not have its upfront capital pay for a  plant that lasts 40 years (as coal does) or 60 years (as nuclear does).

At the same time, though, it does take most of the very same recently-expensive materials to build windpower plants.

Jon Rynn even-later commented: It has occurred to me that a tremendous advantage of solar/wind/geothermal is that the source is free -- it is essentially fuel free.

Wind, solar and geothermal are not fuel-free. All three actively-mine their fuel. Due to their inefficient leveraging of human capital, the fuel for the former-two is more-costly than for any other major type of energy generation. The fuel for the latter-one is competitively-priced only in a few select locations, such as Iceland.
On Blue plus green equals sustainability posted 2 years, 4 months ago 22 Responses

Nuclear-power reduces environmental radiation

Sarah van Schagen wrote: Radiation under ground


phyast.pitt.edu/~blc/book/chapter12.html

When uranium is mined out of the ground to make nuclear fuel, it is no longer there as a source of radon emission. This is a point which has not been recognized until recently because the radon that percolates out of the ground originates largely within 1 meter of the surface; anything coming from much farther down will decay away before reaching the surface. Since the great majority of uranium mined comes from depths well below 1 meter, the radon emanating from it was always viewed as harmless. The fallacy of this reasoning is that it ignores erosion. As the ground erodes away at a rate of 1 meter every 22,000 years, any uranium in it will eventually approach the surface, spending its 22,000 years in the top meter, where it will presumably do great damage. The magnitude of this damage is calculated in the Chapter 12 Appendix, where it is shown that mining uranium to fuel one large nuclear power plant for one year will eventually save 420 lives! This completely overshadows all other health impacts of the nuclear industry, making it one of the greatest lifesaving enterprises of all time if one adopts a very long-term viewpoint.

The Chevy Volt, and its built-in Segway

GreyFlcn wrote: I checked [...] the Volt won't be out in any numbers till 2011

Where was it that you checked?

By the way, the Volt may come with a built-in Segway.
carmagazine.co.uk/news.php?sid=830&page=1On Consumer Reports' real-world mpg figures make the Prius even more appealing posted 2 years, 4 months ago 22 Responses

Philpott and Pollan on parts-vs.-wholes

JMG wrote: Someone (probably Tom P, maybe not) commented on another thread about the error we make in thinking that food is a simple combination of traits that we can engineer by procuring and mixing simpler substances together that possess those traits.

It was indeed Tom Philpott, and neither he nor the party he referenced -- UC Berkeley journalism professor Michael Pollan -- made a good case for it. It was in a blogpost titled Edible Media: Gene blues.

Yet as Michael Pollan reported recently, the theory is unraveling in scientific circles. It turns out that human bodies require more than a bunch of isolates mixed together, dyed, and packaged. Nutrients work not alone, but within the context of whole foods. The vitamin C bound up in an orange gives us more than the equivalent amount of ascorbic-acid isolate; the latter can't replace the former in a healthy diet.

The peculiar SsangYong Actyon unpopularity

GreyFlcn wrote: Thats why sexy electric cars are so important :)

For instance:
http://greyfalcon.net/phoenixsuv.png

Would you care to speculate about why SsangYong Motors' Actyon sports truck is not sold in the United States?
google.com/search?q=phoenix+suv+korean+SsangYong

Given that gasoline is given-away virtually for free in the United States, why do you think any American would put much priority on a buying a vehicle that runs on less, or even none, of it? And given that fuel actually is a significant expense for commercial vehicles, why do you focus on private cars?On Namely, for someone else to pay for it posted 2 years, 5 months ago 15 Responses

Alternate link

mparent7777-2.blogspot.com/2007/06/just-how-insane-are-neocons.htmlOn Take a National Review cruise to find out posted 2 years, 5 months ago 22 Responses

n

David,

As long as you are predicting, you could throw in a catastrophic accident -- CO2 is poisonous.On Random observation of the day posted 2 years, 5 months ago 19 Responses

Geothermal comments from plant operator

GreyFlcn wrote:

Southern California Edison (SCE) announced 2006 renewable energy purchases and deliveries led the nation with 7.5 billion kWh of Geothermal energy, which is over three 3 times the energy delivered by SCE from wind sources and over 12 times the amount from solar sources.

topics.energycentral.com/centers/gentech/view/detail.cfm?aid=1254

2.24.07
David Walters

As a power plant operator in a conventional gas fired plant, I wanted to add a few comments. These will be disjointed some, but, points needed to be made.

1. I've worked Geothermal. It's rare to be able to build it because there are so few sites in th world. Secondly, after tapping the steam, the steam flow tends to decrease over time, even with water injection of waste water from the turbine condenser. Thus, in Calorinia's geo-thermal plants at the Geysers, megatt output has dropped by almost half, from over 2,000 MW down to 1,000.

1.2 Geothermal stinks. It is heavily polluted, lots of sulpher, lots of CO2 that escapes.

1.3 It can be used for base-load and is easily dispatchible, since we are talking a conventional steam turbine (with Earth as the boiler).

1.4 Because there are all low pressure steam supplies from the Earth, building turbines is expensive as they have to have larger, and longer turbine blades.

1.5 Waste abatement is a pain in the butt because each unit produces tons of chemical waste.

Social-interests regarding electricity

JMG wrote: I certainly would be in favor of some sort of electric pricing scheme that would cause heavy consumers to pay lots more

Generally, commodity-suppliers charge less per-unit for larger volumes, since they benefit from economies of scale. Does society have a shared-interest in reducing electricity-consumption?On Getting rid of the remnants of the sell-more-power utility model posted 2 years, 5 months ago 10 Responses

Used bicycles and the Wealth of Nations

Rune wrote: used bikes.  That is a great way to go [...] because [...] you do not create new demand for the manufacture of a whole, new bike

Actually, you do.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supply_and_demand

Buying a used bicycle makes the value of used bicycles go up, which in turn makes the value of new bicycles go up, which in turn makes the value of importing a new bicycle go up, which in turn makes the value of manufacturing a new bicycle in Viet Nam go up -- like a ripple from a stone dropped into a lake.On Ultimate Seattle hybrid plug-in posted 2 years, 5 months ago 25 Responses

n

Ron,

Why would a state, as opposed to an entrepreneur, get involved in insurance?On We can have both posted 2 years, 5 months ago 31 Responses

Real-time insurance featuring risk-feedback

Ron Steenblik wrote: As prices for used big SUVs and pick-up trucks drop, they will be snatched up by 25-year-old young men, who as the accident statistics show are much more likely to cause an accident

The most-scalable resolution to that might be to simply require that all drivers be continuous-real-time insured, reduce all non-insurance-checking police-traffic-enforcement to zero, and deregulate/demonopolize the insurance industry. A low-risk driver might pay a total of $5 or $10 per year in insurance. A high-risk driver might pay $100,000 per year in insurance -- if he does not change his behavior. In reality, since drivers would receive real-time feedcack on their driving, virtually all drivers would reduce their risk, insurance costs to drivers in general would fall, and profits to insurance companies (since there would be less accidents to pay for) would go up.

The few drivers who failed to respond to this real-time risk-feedback would (unless wealthy) simply not be able to afford to drive.On We can have both posted 2 years, 5 months ago 31 Responses

Carbon-capture and storage as oil

GreyFlcn wrote: Likely that would be something comprable to unmining coal.  For instance grow a lot of biomass, heat it with zero oxygen into a charcoal, bury it.

Or capture carbon with lime, mix it with hydrogen and bury it in -- or pump it into -- the ground.On The chair of the Select Committee on Global Warming weighs in posted 2 years, 5 months ago 40 Responses

Argument to the cudgel and planned-economics

Amazngdrx wrote: In case no one has noticed this is a very serious crisis we have here.   No time to fiddle while the earth burns.  Drought and fire alone are very alarming.  Whole regions are at risk.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argumentum_ad_baculum

Argumentum ad baculum (Latin: argument to the cudgel or appeal to the stick), also known as appeal to force, is an argument where force, coercion, or the threat of force, is given as a justification for a conclusion. It is a specific case of the negative form of an argument to the consequences.

nononsenseselfdefense.com/profile.html

5) Bullying - This behavior is especially dangerous. Does this person use overt or subtle threats to get his way? A bully uses the threat of violence more than actual violence.

The argument from personal conviction

Charles Barton wrote: 227 HP is enough for me.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_ignorance

The argument from personal incredulity, also known as argument from personal belief or argument from personal conviction, refers to an assertion that because one personally finds a premise unlikely or unbelievable, the premise can be assumed not to be true, or alternately that another preferred but unproved premise is true instead.

Cognitive Therapy of Personality Disorders - Google Books Result

individuals with OCPD are stingy with themselves as well as others.

Charles Barton wrote: i think we need to tax fossil fuel power motors on the basis of horse power and displacement.

There is no such thing as a fossil-fuel powered motor. There are motors that are powered by gasoline and diesel. Gasoline and diesel are not exclusively fossil fuels.

Taxing of specific technologies is typical of planned economies.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planned_economy

Charles Barton wrote: It is interesting that a supposedly CO2 concerned Gristmill reader would turn up his nose at a 227 HP hybrid.

Please explain that comment, including all of its implied assumptions. Please include quotes in your explanation, where appropriate.On We can have both posted 2 years, 5 months ago 31 Responses

Modern consumer power-expectations

Charles Barton wrote: I looked at the specifications of the Ford Escape Hybrid. [...] 227 hp on tape is quite impressive.

1. That car-based SUV weighs 3,839 pounds.

2. It is not 1985 anymore. 227 hp is not impressive except in the case of an extremely light and/or inexpensive car.
   

12,900 hits.On We can have both posted 2 years, 5 months ago 31 Responses

Gerardo Sandoval: US should not have military

Jon Rynn wrote: So, we would work with Russia and other nuclear states to dismantle as many nuclear weapons as possible, mothball whatever else seemed possible

What was your take on the Gerardo Sandoval incident?
foxnews.com/story/0,2933,190867,00.html

COLMES: Should we not have a military?

SANDOVAL: I don't think we should have a military.

COLMES: We shouldn't have a military?

COLMES: Hold on. The United States should not have a military?

SANDOVAL: Well, what good has it done us in the last five years? That's right. What good has it done us in the last five years?

HANNITY: Good grief.

COLMES: Gerardo, wait a second.

SANDOVAL: You know, if we took the billions that we're spending in Iraq right now and we spent it on schools...

COLMES: I just want you to repeat that: The United States should not have a military?

SANDOVAL: That's correct.

All high-temp heat-engines are more efficient

GreyFlcn wrote: the more accurate thing to say is that Stirling Dish Solar just isn't affected by heatwaves.

If you meant less-affected by heatwaves, that would be true of any heat-engine with a high inlet-temperature. Choosing lower or higher core temperature is simply a matter of capital cost vs. value-gained. If the value of thermal efficiency is increased, then a more-efficient heat-engine becomes more-affordable in perspective.

There are several examples of high-thermal-efficiency heat-engines here:
google.com/search?q=supercritical+coal
google.com/search?q=supercritical+nuclear
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generation_IV_reactor

These are not built today, because thermal-efficiency at that level is irrelevant today.On In the summer heat posted 2 years, 5 months ago 16 Responses

Reallocating the entire US military budget

Jon Rynn wrote: there's over $500 billion of pork in the military

Are you meaning to suggest cutting the military budget to zero?On Johnny jumped off the Brooklyn Bridge ... must ... jump ... posted 2 years, 5 months ago 110 Responses

States deciding for consumers is socialism

Amazingdrx wrote: Not socialism. Incentivise small business to build out solar, wind, and geothermal heating/cooling. incentivize a boom in renewable distributed power generation and storage and plgin vehicles.

You are indeed talking about socialism. Those incentives are all for specific solutions picked for the consumer by political committees. That is socialism:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planned_economy#Planned_economies_and_socialismOn Johnny jumped off the Brooklyn Bridge ... must ... jump ... posted 2 years, 5 months ago 110 Responses