make getting rid of oil and coal as our primary energy sources his/her top priority

Reasons

1) The sooner we stop depending on oil, the sooner we can stop giving a fuck who is in power in the Middle East, Venezuela, etc., etc. This would solve so many of our foreign policy problems as it would allow us to intervene wherever we are needed and not where WE NEED to intervene because of threats to our oil (and no I don't think that is the primary reason we invaded Iraq, but oil has definitely colored our relationships with oil producing countries).

2) Assuming we switched to some clean form of energy (i.e. hydrogen) this would have the added bonus of benefitting the environment.

3) Becoming the leading exporter of new alternative energy technologies would benefit the economy.

It's a three for one deal and I'm not sure why nobody has ever seriously made a push for it. I have a hard time believing everyone in power is on the oil companies' payrolls. If our President would push making this a top priority the way JFK made putting a man on the moon by the end of the decade, one of his top priorities, this could be accomplished by 2020.

6/12/2007 12:03:23 AM

6/12/2007 12:07:24 AM

Because a president has the power to do this.

6/12/2007 12:19:30 AM

^^^babe in the woods here.

Quote :

"2) Assuming we switched to some clean form of energy (i.e. hydrogen) this would have the added bonus of benefitting the environment."

Do you even have any idea how much energy is needed to separate hydrogen from other elements for use as a fuel? I mean I like your thoughts and agree they're good ideas but they're not very feasible with current technology.

[Edited on June 12, 2007 at 12:21 AM. Reason : ^]

6/12/2007 12:20:50 AM

Quote :

"Do you even have any idea how much energy is needed to separate hydrogen from other elements for use as a fuel?"

probably nothing a few nuclear reactors tasked for fuel production couldnt handle.

6/12/2007 2:30:05 AM

And then what happens when there's no more fissile material left to use?

That aside, it makes absolutely no sense (thermodynamically speaking) to literally make your fuel. If we do what you propose and use nuclear reactors to make hydrogen to power fuel-cell cars, why not cut out the middleman and just use nuclear reactors to recharge batteries that are used to run electric cars? At least coal and oil make sense from an energy perspective; that energy is already there. Sure you have to expend a little bit of energy to recover and process that fuel, but that's nowhere near the amount of energy per unit fuel than you would be getting out of that fuel. If you try to electrolyze hydrogen, you might as well propose trying to make artificial fossil fuels.

6/12/2007 7:29:40 PM

fossil fuels are dirty. they hurt the environment at all stages: extraction, refinement and combustion.

fossil fuels are finite. they're going to run out. and as we are currently seeing, it is taking more and more energy to convert whats left into usable products.

who is going to fight the never ending energy wars over the dwindling supply of fossil fuels?

hydrogen is clean and safe on small scales (vehicles)

nuclear has a proven safety record on large scales. such as would be needed for hydrogen fuel production.

battery powered cars are not powerful enough for extended use. try and tell farmers and ranchers in the plains states, they're going to be using battery-powered vehicles.

and you wont want a mess of small-scale (portable?!) nuclear reactors to be used to recharge them either.

Quote :

"then what happens when there's no more fissile material left to use?"

we mine the asteroid belt.






[Edited on June 12, 2007 at 7:48 PM. Reason : ]

6/12/2007 7:40:06 PM

[Do you even have any idea how much energy is needed to separate hydrogen from other elements for use as a fuel? I mean I like your thoughts and agree they're good ideas but they're not very feasible with current technology.]

Admittedly I don't know more than the average person when it comes to using hydrogen energy to power anything. So I should have said "hydrogen, for example" as this is different from "i.e. hydrogen". My mistake. Although I do not think enough research has been done in alternate energy forms to dismiss hydrogen or any other potential energy source as being too costly to be useful. Hell, everyone is all gung ho about ethanol, and it takes almost as much energy to produce ethanol as can be yielded from it.

In response to:
[Because a president has the power to do this. ]

I'm not so naive or uninformed to think a President could push this through without the backing of Congress, but I do believe if he expended the majority of his political capital to convince the American people and Congress that alternative forms of energy are not only feasible (given the required amount of funding for research and development) but beneficial in more ways than just the environment, I don't see why he couldn't do this. I mean the man who can't even pronounce nuclear convinced the majority of Congress and the American people to go to war in Iraq, so I doubt pursuing something that can't hurt and can only help is beyond a President's power of persuasion.

6/12/2007 8:48:59 PM

Quote :

"I do not think enough research has been done in alternate energy forms"

I don't have a list of scholarly articles to quote you, but I'm pretty sure that huge amounts of research have gone into hydrogen, particularly into the problems of storage and distribution. I also know that power companies (such as Progress) are beginning to put a great deal of money into conservation, nuclear, and 'alternative' (not fossil and not combustion turbine) generation. And a lot of this is occuring without a great deal of government intervention (certainly less than what you're proposing).

Quote :

"everyone is all gung ho about ethanol"

You can thank Archer-Daniels-Midland for that.

Quote :

"so I doubt pursuing something that can't hurt and can only help"

It can hurt...if the government doesn't invest in the 'right' research (i.e. productive/viable research) or if the government becomes too involved in mandating the direction of research.

6/12/2007 9:29:00 PM

^^Ethanol can be produced cheaply and easily, just not from corn, which is what domestic lobbyists(ADM) are pushing...if we could import sugar cane, it makes a MUCH better source for producing ethanol and is actually relatively efficient.

Politics, B, Politics. You will never escape it. Anyone who claims to push alternative fuels exclusively is lying or will not get elected, because right now, that's not where the money is.

6/12/2007 11:37:49 PM

The problem with sugar ethanol is that it's produced overseas which means that we'd still be dependent on other countries for our energy needs. I'm not sure how the carbon savings of ethanol works out when large scale, long distance oceanic transport is considered.

Corn ethanol produced in the US and pushed by ADM is much less efficient. There are ethanol plants in the US that operate at or below breaking even on carbon emissions, i.e. the carbon savings of burning ethanol are offset by the carbon emissions involved in transportation and production. From an environmental point of view, there's not much point in running those facilities.

A major problem with ethanol is that it uses foodstuffs in production (sugar, corn, etc). As ethanol production increases, food and fuel manufacturers are going to compete for supplies and food prices are going to rise.

6/13/2007 6:24:30 AM

Don't worry, we're fucked no matter what.

I hate to use such a fanatical sounding site as a source, but his site is replete with real sources, so I'm going to anyway
http://www.lifeaftertheoilcrash.net/SecondPage.html

Oil will run out.
Biofuels are, so far, completely unrealistic.
Even if we could use hydrogen, you need a catalyst, like gold or platinum, which are finite.
Solar panels use silver, which is finite.

An alternative energy source that actually is renewable would be great, but the reality is that nothing is. We will eventually run out of all possible means and have to keep coming up with new ones, and it will get to the point that we need to come up with new ones more and more quickly, and then we'll be fucked.

A single hydrogen fuel cell requires approximately 20-50 grams of platinum. Let's say we want to replace 1/4 of the world's petroleum powered cars with hydrogen fuel cell powered cars. Twenty-to-fifty grams of platinum per fuel cell x 210 million fuel cells equals between 4.2 billion and 10.5 billion grams of platinum required for the conversion. Unfortunately, world platinum production is currently at only about 240 million grams per year, most of which is already earmarked for thousands of indispensable industrial processes.
http://www.purchasing.com/article/CA263497.html

It would take every single one of California's 13,000 wind turbines operating at 100% capacity (they usually operate at about 30%) all at the same time to generate as much electricity as a a single 555-megawatt natural gas fired power plant.
http://canadafreepress.com/2005/driessen012905.htm

The numbers for solar are ever poorer. For instance, on page 191 of his book The End of Oil: On the Edge of a Perilous New World, author Paul Roberts writes: " . . . if you add up all the solar photovoltaic cells now running worldwide (2004), the combined output - around 2,000 megawatts - barely rivals the output of two coal-fired power plants." Robert's calculation assumes the solar cells are operating at 100% of their capacity. In the real world, the average solar cell operates at about 20% of its rated capacity. This means the combined output of all the solar cells in the world is equal to less than 40% of the output of a single coal fired power plant.
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Global_Economy/GA15Dj01.html

And Nuclear? Well...


And say we're able to double our uranium reserves


Even coal is going to peak soon




[Edited on June 13, 2007 at 8:46 AM. Reason : .]

6/13/2007 8:36:43 AM

what about aluminum:
http://www.physorg.com/news98556080.html

6/13/2007 10:25:06 AM

I don't know the numbers, but I know it's finite. I do know also that mining and processing aluminum takes considerable energy and manpower.

[Edited on June 13, 2007 at 11:22 AM. Reason : .]

6/13/2007 11:19:32 AM

^^ dude w/ eyepatch is a hardcore researcher

6/13/2007 11:45:10 AM

I don't see us running out of coal anytime soon
http://www.eia.doe.gov/neic/infosheets/coalreserves.htm

6/13/2007 12:00:28 PM

well, that graph says otherwise. obviously we don't know which is more correct, but it has pretty definite numbers.

[Edited on June 13, 2007 at 12:03 PM. Reason : .]

6/13/2007 12:03:20 PM

to me that graph says in the US we have 120000 Million Tons of Oil Equivalent and we use 600 Million Tons of Oil Equivalent per year

120000/600 = 200 years

but I'm not sure when Peak Coal occurs? maybe 30 or 40 years?

At any rate I might have to unseal that old coal chute in my house someday.

6/13/2007 12:17:31 PM

Quote :

"DirtyGreek: Don't worry, we're fucked no matter what."

lol

does alarmism ever get old for y'all, DG?

6/13/2007 1:41:13 PM

Quote :

"If our President would push making this a top priority the way JFK made putting a man on the moon by the end of the decade, one of his top priorities, this could be accomplished by 2020."

The only reasons that we made good on that are
1) Cold War
2) Kennedy got shot so people wanted to do it in his memory

Every single president since Kennedy has set some crazy milestone, but we never reach them.

6/13/2007 1:54:59 PM

Quote :

"Oil will run out. Biofuels are, so far, completely unrealistic. Even if we could use hydrogen, you need a catalyst, like gold or platinum, which are finite. Solar panels use silver, which is finite."

I agree with TGD, stop being so alarmist.

All these "limiters" that you are mentioning is so narrowly short sighted that I don't know why I bothered to respond. If there is money to be made, someone will innovate a way to get around the limitations.

Current technology says we need gold or platinum as the catalyst for hydrogen. Well damn, might as well not keep looking for a different way to catalyze the reaction.

Solar panels use silver, and silver will run out. Well damn, we are fucked again, no use in trying to find some other means to harness the suns power.

6/13/2007 2:25:01 PM

Im tired of hearing about ethanol.

The corn needed to produce ethanol to meet our current consumption would mean there would be no corn left for livestock. No livestock at all= fucked. People seem to think that ethanol is the end of oil dependency, but we would just be subjecting ourselves to something worse.

6/13/2007 3:40:04 PM

i'm not that crazy about ethanol either but your reason is stupid. we have a market for corn and a market for livestock fed by corn. so what?

http://www.ers.usda.gov/AmberWaves/April06/Features/Ethanol.htm

6/13/2007 3:58:27 PM

also ethanol doesn't have to come from corn.

6/13/2007 4:18:45 PM

I'm not being alarmist, I'm extrapolating. Obviously I'm exaggerating when I say we're definitely fucked, but as far as I can tell, we have a few decades to totally change the way we think about energy. We're not doing what needs to be done. Extrapolating, therefore, we're kind of fucked.

^ whatever it comes from, we have to grow it and have the energy and space and water and other resources to grow it. Then we have to transport it, process it, and distribute the fuel. And that process all has to take over oil within the next few decades.

[Edited on June 13, 2007 at 11:09 PM. Reason : .]

6/13/2007 11:08:34 PM

^^but for now the majority does

^^^I saw nothing about the corn being diverted from livestock in that article. Corn being used for fuel instead of livestock is a very large concern.

6/15/2007 12:43:10 AM

There has been lots of research on hydrogen power. BMW alone has been researching it for probably over 20 yrs by now.

6/15/2007 1:43:10 PM