Printable View
Nobody on this whole thread has mentioned water nor space. Where exactly are we going to grow all these crops for ethanol production? How are we going to water all these crops?
Using waste from what is currently grown? I'd be willing to bet there ain't a whole lot of waste from any food harvesting growage. What most folks consider waste is probably already being used in some form or another.
BobMc
BP came out with a solar panel a few years ago that was transparent and could be installed full length on the sunny sides of highrise buildings and supply most of the power for those buildings. A solar rooftop program with storage capacity on an efficiently constructed home could negate damn near all the need to be on the grid. Shit, while I was working on energy efficiency upgrades at Eielson AFB in Fairbanks, we ran the numbers on solar power there and calc'd a 14 year payback on solar panels that have a 30 year life cycle. Unfortunately, we had to hit a 10 year payback nut for the govt to buy into it. But that's FAIRBANKS! If the southern states employed solar power to it's maximum potential by blanketing roofs and walls with panels, people could power their homes and plug in electric cars. The pollution reduction would probably allow for coal fired mass transit that would still produce less pollution than a billion fossil-fueled cars on the road every day.
But, as the soon-to-be-late and not-so-great Gdub would say, "We're addicted..." as if to fortify the oil companies stranglehold through subliminal messaging. Unrealistic US oil consumption is a maneuver of greedy cocksuckers, not an addiction. But they'll tell you we have no other choice til they're blue in the face so the redundant message becomes fact instead of the bullshit it really is. just a thought.....
fool me once, uh, uh uh,uh.....
I havn't read the thread, but are we talking about widespread gallons of Ron 151 like the old Bacardi that used to dissove styrofoam cups?:eek:
E85? Fuck that.
IMO, we should be continue to work on technologies to convert to a hydrogen economy. There's plenty of hurdles to be overcome, but I think it's doable. To start with, we're gonna have to get over our fear of nuclear power plants.
And damn, it would be fucking sweet if we could tap the oil shale that Summit mentioned... I've heard the volume of oil contained in the shale dwarfs the middle eastern oil fields.
They've been on that for a while now....but the Albertans are getting most of their oil from shale, from what I understand.Quote:
Originally Posted by Summit
But I assume it's a bit more saturated.
pat - i bet lol johnny gets a bit more than a talking to if he puts a baseball through one of those windows
I thought the Albertans were getting it from sand, not shale, and it's easier to extract the oil... isn't there a Maggot or two who works in the Oil Industry up there? When I was in Calgary a few years ago for the G8 summit there was an NGO lobbying really hard to minimize the extraction because of environmental concerns. You can imagine how deaf the ears were that these cries fell on....
I had no idea that Ethanol was exempt. Nice thing is that exemption can (and will, if necessary) be overturned. When used as a blend the tax per gallon doesn't go down, does it?
Quote:
Originally Posted by Spats
i think this study contradicts your view http://www.berkeley.edu/news/media/r..._ethanol.shtml
From page one of this thread, ground already covered.Quote:
Originally Posted by up an down
Yes, that study does contradict the view that ethanol produces more energy than it consumes in production, but as this other scientist points out, only because Kammen eliminated several energy inputs.
"Quote:
We found unequivocally that it does not take more energy than you get out of the amount of ethanol. So it's a net good if you grow ethanol and use it," says Kammen.
David Pimentel, an agriculture scientist at Cornell University, disagrees. He is skeptical of the Berkeley team's research, which directly challenges his own conclusion that making ethanol takes much more energy than it produces.
"They criticize us for including the energy for the labor -- that is the farm laborer who is working on the farm," he says. "They deleted that. They also deleted another major input, that is the farm machinery."
Pimentel says when all of the important sources of energy needed to grow the corn and make the ethanol -- he lists 14 -- are included, it takes 70 percent more energy to make gallon of ethanol than it gives off. Since much of that energy comes from oil or coal, he says it's not a good alternative. Pimentel adds that ethanol does make considerable money for companies that grow corn.
Kammen disagrees with Pimentel's numbers, but acknowledges that the positive energy benefit he sees in corn-based ethanol is modest.
"It is not a massive savings, not like putting in 10 percent energy and getting out 100 percent. We find it is somewhat better than gasoline, but it's not a home run," Kammen says.
And in fact making and using ethanol does almost nothing to lessen the amount of greenhouse gases that warm the atmosphere.
The Berkeley and Cornell groups do agree on one thing -- corn isn't the best way to make ethanol. Plants with higher cellulose content like switchgrass or sugar cane are much better. Kammen says high cellulose plants are the future of ethanol, not corn.
It takes more energy to charge a battery than I can get back out of it, especially when you go back through the whole eletric distribution system, generation system, and fuel production for the generation system etc.
Does this mean electric cars or hydrogen fuel cells are evil?
It doesn't make ethanol evil either.
Evil?Quote:
Originally Posted by Summit
No
Dumb?
Hell yeah.
By that logic, battery powered devices, electric cars, fuel cells, etc are dumb.Quote:
Originally Posted by lemon boy
They aren't. You sacrifice somethign to transform energy into a portable practical form. The primary energy input for ethanol is THE SUN which powers the corn. The rest is processing.
If it reduces greenhouse gasses and dependency on foreign petroleum by switching us over to a renewable, it justifies SOME other tradeoffs, just as electric/fuel cell cars will.
I'm not saying it is perfect or without faults.
Summit-
I'm not against technology that moves the emissions around (a la battery power), ethanol though takes up so much energy to make that you're throwing good energy after the bad (70% MORE), and a good sized chunk of that 70% is the diesel fuel to grow the corn. Even if it isn't 70% how again does it make sense to make 1 gallon of ethanol using 1.1 gallons of diesel fuel?
It's gee whiz lookie what we can do tech/policy not how to we mitigate this serious problem tech/policy.
I've been following this discussion for some time now and decided to chip in - not specifically towards the ethanol vs. gas vs. diesel, etc. but more on what I see as the underlying factor: the current pattern of sprawling development in this country. Until a design that results in highly reduced emissions and is extremely easy and not labor and fuel-intensive to produce is made into mass-production, we are effectively trying to treat symptoms, not the problem.
Sprawl is probably one of the main reasons that the demand for fossil fuels, not only for powering a motor vehicle, but for the electricity required to light additional schools, strip malls, etc., has been increasing so much in this country.
Sprawl leads to increased commute times, which leads to more driving (which leads to more gas used), which leads to more highways and strip malls, which, as it becomes populated, leads to more sprawl because people want their own "piece of the pie" in terms of a quiet country life.
Changing our major fuel source is a step in the right direction, but its got to be combined with a multitude of other steps. We are simply being reactionary now to a problem; we need to be more proactive in dealing with some of the unerlying causes - of course how we do that with sprawl, I don't know. Education for sure, shifting demographics back to urban centers, but how is anti-sprawl actually instituted nationally? dunno. Statewide it could be done for sure and I don't think individual states are doing enough.
Maybe this is a topic for a different discussion, but it's what comes to mind. And of course, I commute 57 miles one way so I'm part of the problem (but at least I drive a diesel).
Rant over.
In the meantime, as for fuel, in the near term, I think this country should shift towards more diesel use (low sulphur is already here and being introduced elsewhere in 2007), such as already is popular in European countries.
Its in the sand man, in the tar sands that is. You can mine it or if deeper pump steam in to the formation and get it out that way. Its thick stuff though, won't flow unless its keep at around 90C. Working on a project thats 200,000 barrels per day.Quote:
Originally Posted by splat
Nuclear + Wind -> Electric/Fuel Cell (in my dreams)
Quote:
Originally Posted by Summit
Summit, I do see your point. Ethanol is a way to store energy, and we need ways to store energy, plus it is compatible, or nearly compatible with existing gasoline engines.
But it differs from a battery powered car, or hydrogen powered cars, etc, because gasoline and diesel is a more efficient way to store energy than ethanol, yet that is what we are using to make ethanol. Farm fertilizers are also made with oil, trucks that transport ethanol are powered by diesel, tractors are powered by diesel.
You can build a hydrogen powered car that gets it energy from solar, wind, or nuclear power. Too bad we can't figure out how to make hydrogen efficiently. Same with electric cars. I see a big difference.
Take a look through historic corn prices if you have a moment. Just click around. Its laughable how ethanol is sold as a way to help farmers increase demand for their crops. It doesn't because farmers are encouraged to plant as much corn as they can every year because of the $1.89 price gauranteed to them by Uncle Sam. Prices remain low, because production remains high.
http://www.agriculture.state.ia.us/historic.html
So instead of just cutting off subsidies to farmers to encourage the removal of questionable land (and generally the most prone to runoff) from production so that they would produce less and prices would go up (ala capitalism like the world most of us live in), we come up with this crazy pyramid scheme that promises to deliver better prices to the farmers under the top rung which is held by ADM and other corporate interests, and promises all of us bottom feeders a better fuel, cleaner air, and less dependence on foreign oil.
Unfortunately it works like most pyramid schemes. Speaking figuratively, those of us on the bottom take it up the rear, sending our money up to the farmers, who have no choice but to pass it on the the corporations like ADM, who make millions and millions, and in turn give a portion of the to the democrats and republicans who smile at the chance to use this money to stay in power, they spend some on propoganda, all to keep themselves in business by maintaining and even expanding the status quo when energy prices shoot up.
Americans all want somebody else to do something about this energy crisis, and by golly, their is ADM with their hand out and a big fake smile telling us all the right things. Like a flock of sheep, we do something that does nothing but redirect and concentrate our wealth somewhere other than in our own wallets.
Screw the wind part. Nukular is where we need to be focusing our efforts.
Just to throw in another factor:
Here in Maine the use of underwater turbines in high tidal flow areas is being explored - of course this power source would be limited geographically to coastal areas, and only those coastal areas with large tidal variations or high currents. I think there may be one of these in operation in the SF Bay area already.
Still in design phases here, but could be a good alternative.
There's one in Nova Scotia , visited it.. 20 years ago. I think one in France is even older.Quote:
Originally Posted by peterslovo
Are you aware of the output/success of these? I want to know more...google here I come...Quote:
Originally Posted by DougW
We shoudln't put all of our eggs in one basket. Wind is a good secondary (while running existing hydro and geo plants until they wear out).
Of course we will want breeder reactors and fuel reprocessing made legal again (fuck you, Carter).
Even in a Nuclear/Wind generation economy, I think we should mothball the coal and natural gas plants, even using .gov subsidies because backups to your power infrastructure are vital and we have lots of coal reserves.
My preference is to simply run Nuke-Coal till fusion comes online :)
Also, I don't really mind wind generation I just don't think that it is really gonna save us*
*recognizing that there is no one silver bullet and that a range of implementations is the only thing that will long-range work.
If we want more nukes, we'd better get a move on...
Yep.
Not gonna happen with an oilman in office or with some NIMBY eco-vangilist.
:(