Comments Solarspike has made

DoE budget

Just a comment on DoE. I have know several of the top people at DoE and if I had the choice of DoE or the mafia to make decissions on the future of the planet I wouldn't choose DoE.
The annual budget is in the area of $20 billion. Of that $19 billion goes to nuclear weapons, nuclear waste and nuclear power. One year of that budget towards RE and we could quit having this discussion. It is not only feasible to shift to a renewable energy/energy efficient near zero carbon energy society but once we have done so we will wonder why we waited so long. Quit talking and get on with it.On We've run out of time to wait for an unknown techno-fix to save us posted 1 year, 7 months ago 11 Responses

Nuke revival

I was thrown out of a pro nuke panel discussion at the University of Colorado last month for offering the moral arguments against nuclear power.

If you want to know how much "progress" is being made in the nuclear power revival just check out the headlines http://www.energy-daily.com/Civil_Nuclear_Energy.html

I count thirty countries with plans for developing new nuclear power plants. Last month when Bush was in Turkey he said the proliferation issues had be solved.

http://www.csmonitor.com/2008/0328/p07s03-woam.html

FARC acquired uranium, says Colombia
Sixty six pounds of uranium was for a 'dirty bomb,'

I guess maybe his statement was a little premature.

"No degree of prosperity could justify the accumulation of large
amounts of highly toxic substances which nobody knows how to make safe
and which remain an incalculable danger to the whole of creation for
historical or even geological ages. To do such a thing is a
transgression against life itself, a transgression infinitely more
serious than any crime ever perpetrated by man. The idea that a
civilization could sustain itself on the basis of such a transgression
is an ethical, spiritual and metaphysical monstrosity. It means
conducting the economic affairs of man as if people really did not
matter at all."
E. F. Schumacher Small is Beautiful 1973

It is a sad and unfortunate thing that we as a society are even having
this discussion. Nuclear power, along with its even more evil
joined-at-the-hip twin, nuclear weapons, are exhibit #1 in the reasons
why our species doesn't even deserve to exist on this planet (and may
not for much longer if we don't wake up).
 There is a failure of responsibility not just for the morally
challenged nuclear advocates (this is giving them the benefit of the
doubt that they are not actually intent on the evil that is the likely
result of their work) who are still proposing this insanity but for
the institutes of higher education who do not provide scientists with
any education in values, morals and ethics. By simply turning these
highly educated people loose on the world to create without conscience
is unacceptable and dangerous in the extreme. A society lives by it's
values and the educational institutions are failing society. When will
this change?
 It seems that scientists often fall into thinking that if an idea
does not violate the laws of physics, and that we can do the
engineering to create it, and we have government tax money (so even
the economics don't have to work), that such an idea should be
pursued. They seem incapable of questioning assumptions much less of
understanding the ethics and morality of their work. Simply because
they have learned some tricks of physics they never seem to wonder if
these concepts might violate the laws of nature or the laws of any
higher metaphysical reality.
 Many very well educated people are apparently not smart enough to
act in their own best interests. Advocates of any nonrenewable
environmentally destructive thermal power plant technology, either
coal or nuclear, have failed to question the basic assumptions of our
energy hungry society. Does it make any sense to go on up the ever
increasing energy use curve at any cost?  The answer for those who
cannot tell the difference between right and wrong is "Of course it
does not."
 Nuclear advocates such as Patrick Moore seem to flaunt their
inability to understand ethics by readily providing disinformation,
illogical arguments and outright lies in support of their cause. In
Mr. Moore's well known article Going Nuclear: A Green Makes the Case
he states that only  56 people died from the Chernobyl melt down. He
fails to mention the 50,000 children who are dying of thyroid cancer
from the radiation released by that nuclear disaster.
 We need not pursue dangerous and destructive technologies to meet
our energy needs. There is 15,000 times more renewable energy resource
available than the amount of energy we presently use every day.
Renewable energy technology is available to harvest this clean energy
and safely meet all our needs and at less cost.On Déjà nuke posted 1 year, 8 months ago 11 Responses

Truckloads of BS

Vinod you are still totally clueless about energy issues. You may have made money in other areas but you will loose on this one unless you wake up and question the assumptions.
The flawed assumption is that it makes any sense to transport 150 lbs humans in 2 ton 10% machines. Most of the flaws in biofuels become obvious when you change the system to one that is over 90% efficient. There is no ICE vehicle that can compete in the marketplace with EVs on Miles Per Dollar(MP$). If your car gets 10mpg and gas is $3/Gal you are getting 10MP$. Any electric car will get you 100MP$. Wake up Vinod!
As for celuosic ethanol its total BS and thats not just for the fertilizer.
There is no solution in crops for machines that are so inefficient that they require 10 million barrels a day for the US. To produce the equivalent of 1 million barrels of ethanol fuel from something solid and woody like switchgrass would require hundreds of thousands of truck transporting the switchgrass to the processing plant every day. That simply is not possible in areas where you could grow that much switchgrass on marginal land there aren't enough people to drive the trucks. Do a well to wheels calculation and you will see its simply unworkably inefficient. On The most critical assumption on cellulosic biofuels: yields posted 1 year, 10 months ago 14 Responses

Bio fuels VS EVs

Several people (including Ken Regelson in Colorado) have done calculations comparing the number of miles per acre per year for biofuels vs photovoltaics and electric cars. The range for various biofuels is between 6,000 and 30,000 miles per acre per year. PV is between 1 and 2 million miles per acre per year. The show stopper for all biofuels is the inefficiency of the internal combustion engine. Kohsla may know how to make money but he fails to understand basic energy issues. I have no idea why he hangs onto this ethanol issue. He is dead wrong but so are all the politicians. (among presidential candidates the exception is Gravel and possibly Kucinich)On A pragmatic view of cellulosic biofuels posted 1 year, 10 months ago 5 Responses