Rev. Sensing, in his post below, sets out the difficulty in replacing oil as a means of providing and distributing energy.
I’ll agree – that replacing oil in one swell foop is somewhere between unlikely and impossible.
But I don’t think that matters; I think he’s asking the wrong question. Let’s step back for a second and talk about what problem we’re really trying to solve.
Let me do a fast gloss on my position on global warming (something I haven’t blogged on before because it kept coming out as a PhD dissertation by someone who didn’t know the subject).
It’s happening.
It’s not clear how much is anthropogenic (although the answer is probably a lot), and it’s not clear what the impact on climate would be if we just stopped producing CO2 tomorrow.
It is clear that it doesn’t matter, because we’re not going to. Neither, to agree with Friedman here, are we going to take on the pain of cutting our carbon emissions enough or fast enough to impact climate in the next decade. And if we did, the ensuing economic collapse would probably kill more people than climate change will.
That may or may not matter so some deep greens; but since the odds of it happening are about where the odds of asteroid collision in the next decade are, I think we can shelve that concept.
The fact that we can’t do enough doesn’t mean we shouldn’t do something. Even if you’re a die-hard skeptic, wondering why there is global warming on Mars if there are no SUV’s (there is, by the way), it makes sense to look hard at our energy economy.
From my point of view, there are three reasons energy is worth some serious investment:
1. Slow the rate of carbon emissions, in the off chance that they will have an impact on global warming.
2. Slow the rate of investment in jihad by the oil-rich Arab states, who have been the principal financiers of the spread of the core religious ideology that – when combined with alienation and anomie – leads to recruits who blow themselves and others up.
3. Shelter our domestic energy infrastructure from disruption – whether through embargo, terrorism, or system disruption caused by error or chance.
The goal is to have cheap, low-impact, sustainable, and local supplies of energy. Cheap to maximize the benfit to our economy and the disruption to the Saudi economy; low-impact because if it involves massive changes in infrastructure or behavior it won;t happen; sustainable because we’re not looking for a one-time hit, but for an energy economy that can keep going indefinitely; and local because when all other things are equal, local energy supplies are more efficient (less transmission loss) and harder to disrupt.
The cheapest, lowest impact, most sustainable, and most local form of energy production is what the utilities call ‘negawatts’ – energy we are currently using that can readily be saved though investment or changes in behavior.
Before everyone starts painting pictures of unheated Stalinist apartment blocks, filled with people wearing dingy clothes (no hat water to wash in) walking down ten flights to catch the smoky diesel tram to work – or the positive vision of the same image, which is hemp-clad families hopping onto their bicycles to commute the five miles to their office above the day care center – feature this:
(I’ve told this story before, so forgive me) Six years ago, I needed a new car to replace the minivan I gave my ex- in the divorce. I had three sons, we camp and ski, and so the mandate was three rows of seats (so I don’t have to Tase them too often on long trips) with space in back to put the plastic Tupperware boxes of gear that we travel with.
There were only three cars (plus several 12-passenger vans) that fit the requirement. Ford Excursion, Chevy or GMC Suburban, and a Honda Odyssey minivan.
The Excursion was Right Out. It came down to the Suburban or the Odyssey.
I chose the Odyssey, and never looked back. It has been fun to drive, reliable as a brick, easy to park, and worked in every kind of environment I’ve tossed at it, from taking TG and me to the opera or taking three heavily armed men to the dire road leading to Gunsite for a class.
And – I saved about 42% of the gas I would have used. The Suburban, with the base engine, gets 14.7mpg EPA; over the 110,000 miles I’ve driven, I’d have used 7,483 gallons. In the Honda – using the EPA figure of 25mpg, I used 4,395. And I sacrificed – what, exactly? Self-image? Not terribly much.
It’s a small thing, but the error I think that Sensing (and others) are making is that they are looking for One Big solution when in reality there are a hundred small ones. This idea – substituting minivans for SUV’s is a small idea, but there are probably hundreds of them – ideas big enough to have an impact but small enough to be doable without changing the whole world.
So, over the last six years, we’ve sold about 40 million SUV’s (figure roughly 50% of new car sales of 14 million units/ year – not a figure I’ve checked, but it’s close to correct).
So 21 million SUV’s (half the number sold) times six years (duration) times 3,000 gallons – we would have saved 58 BILLION gallons of gasoline if everyone who had bought a SUV bought a minivan instead. Yes, the numbers are approximate and skewed because not all SUV’s are as thirsty as a Suburban…but not all minivans are as thirsty as an Odyssey.
To put that into some kind of reference, the annual gasoline consumption in the US for 2005 (US DOE Energy Information Agency) was about 3.33 billion barrels, or 140 billion gallons (42 ga to a barrel). We would have saved about 10 billion gallons/year (total savings/6) or 7% of our gasoline budget with that one change.
That’s about 3% of our national energy budget. Just from driving minivans.
Are there ten changes like that which we could make?
Here’s one more vehicle-related one.
Back when I was a young violator of the California Vehicle Code, I had a hopped-up BMW 2002. It was a quick car for the day, and it did 0-60 in about 10 seconds. A 1969 Porsche 911 did it in about 8.5 or 9.
My Odyssey does it in 10.3. A Subaru Legacy does it in about 7.5 seconds, and a Legacy GT does it in about 5.5.
We’re consuming all the great engineering that has been done in the last 30 years in a mix of higher performance, lower emissions and better fuel economy.
What would happen if we simply cranked the dial back to the performance levels of the 70’s or 80’s? How much better would the fuel economy of these modern engines be? Another 3%?
At what cost?
Look this is a long post, but it’s meant to do one thing – to cast some doubt on Rev. Sensing’s certainty.
I don’t think we need a Big Bang energy solution – yet.
I do think there are a lot of little ones we could do – while still leading our suburban lifestyles – that would get us a lot of the way there.
Where would you find 3% in our energy budget?
–
I certainly agree with the substance of what you are saying. There are ways we can save fuel an energy that don’t inconvenience us in any meaningful way.
But, I’m not yet convinced climate change is “primarily anthropogenic”. For one, the science behind those conclusions is often very, very poorly executed. So much so that I’d like to see many of those involved disciplined for misconduct. But it isn’t going to happen, it’s too popular a point of view. They’re also ignoring and in some cases suppressing historical evidence of climate variability which puts today into perspective. Climate change is not something new, it’s been happening for millions of years.
Anyway, regardless, there’s no point wasting energy is there? It’s a resource like any other, which is not free nor is it infinite.
P.S. If I try to put my blogspot URL into the link field it says my comment is spam and denied š
_3. Shelter our domestic energy infrastructure from disruption – whether through embargo, terrorism, or system disruption caused by error or chance._
I regard as a nonsense to ask Europeans to be tougher on certain Arab countries when we are completely dependant on their dosed oil production or, even worse, Russian’s, controlled by ex-KGB mobsters.
Today’s energy cartel has to be overcomed in order to make this world a safer place.
OK 3%. Do you have any idea what it would take to reduce our oil useage by 3%? (I’m not interested in reducing electrical energy consumption because electrical energy is not a problem, and besides wwe have solutions coming down the pike for that problem i.e. wind, solar voltaics).
I’d say that the focus on electrical energy when our real problem is oil is misdirection.
So let us talk about oil.
The autos currently on the road represent capital investment. That capital has a life of about 15 years. Which means that current production is capable of replacing about 7% of existing stock. Except that for the results desired the current production mix is wrong.
It takes about 3 years to design and produce a new vehicle.
If we assume at the end of those three years all the vehicles you want produced are available then change in fuel economy will happen at about a rate of .2% a year. Which is a good thing. Except that fleet size is increasing faster than that. i.e. at best we could stay even with no increases in America for oil consumption. Also note that typically when vehicles are more fuel efficient more miles are driven.
Then you have India and China.
China is not very energy efficient. Also, due to poor investment decisions in infrastructure they use a lot of oil for electrical generation.
So the very best place to exchange electrical generators for oil burners is China.
So how do you get the communist government of China to build more coal, nuke, and wind plants for electrical generation?
No way. When the government owns the country, bad investment decisions are inevitable. We actually have a similar (though lesser) problem in America. Lots of oil available on the continental shelf where we can’t drill due to government regulation. ANWR is only the most visible part of the problem.
Really. The problem is not oil. It is bad government.
Same goes for India to a lesser extent.
How about them Saudis? Bad government coupled with very bad religion.
And Iraq and Iran. In those countries gasoline is sold at way below market rates.
As much as you may hate (or love) it Bush has the right solution. Better government. Market economies.
The immediate solutiion is political, not technological.
All but banning incandescent lights in this country, replacing them with LEDs and fluorescents would do much to attain 3% over time. As much as efficiency and conservation has improved, there’s much more room for improvement.
TCS has a similar article to AL’s ‘Big Bang Energy Solution’ by Glen Reynolds, The Silver Bullet Fallacy. No one technological innovation is the solution. They all are.
Encourage telecommuting. What percentage of your driving is commute? Mine was about 80% when I worked outside.
Marcus Cicero,
LEDs are not efficient enough to compete with flourecents (yet). In addition they have a very high cost per lumen.
No need for a government ban on incandescents. (besides they have their uses)
The market is fixing the problem. My first mate bought a box of 60W equivalent flourescents at $.50 per bulb.
At that price why buy incandescents, if for no other reason than eliminating the hassle of frequent bulb change?
m simon, did you read the post? I specifically set out two things that each would save 3% of the national oil budget.
So please step back, read it, and comment on what I actually wrote…
A.L.
Marcus,
I think your points are interesting. We know lots of ways to use electrical energy more efficiently that require low capital investment. With steadily declining capital costs.
Now as to oil……..
In any case the low hanging fruit is not in America. It is in China and India.
#7 A.L.,
I would agree with you if driving habits didn’t change and you could make the changes all at once.
They will and you can’t.
Miles driven go up as cost per mile goes down so even if you could change all the required autos overnight you will not capture all the efficiency increase.
The best way to get better gas mileage from the fleet at low cost would be to put a mpg meter on every dash. (Or a vacuum guage).
Bad habits are probably the biggest wasters of fuel. (which goes to your question of high acceleration vehicles).
BTW vacuum guages could be put on every vehicle (new and used) over a period of 5 years or less. Much faster and lower cost than changing the fleet.
AL,
Good post – but I don’t agree with your basic assumption that Sensing is _only_ looking for a silver bullet. My take on his post was that there are none- no silver bullets. And we will have to rely on oil for quite some time. Several commenters here seem to agree with that in reference to what we can _do_ about using less oil.
On the other hand, your analysis of the gas reduction by using technology, essentially, is supporting the contention in Sensing’s article that we need to reduce the rate of increase, though a difficult task. And you have correctly pointed out ways to do that. I don’t think there is a silver bullet either. But the accumulation of little things may be more effective than a silver bullet anyway. I have always liked solar solutions – not the electrical type or the megawatt array fields, but the personal homeowner efforts. I have seen that work. Costs are not prohibitive and maintenance is not complicated. It just takes effort, even if it’s pre-analysis as you did prior to buying.
PS – I wouldn’t buy a Surburban either. But I do have a Jeep which gets better mileage – but not much. But it’s better – a little thing.
Re #10,
Biofeedback works.
Dude, minivans are gay.
The problem is petroleum, not electricity. Changing light bulbs will have next to no impact.
If you think things are bad now, wait till the Iranian regime is replaced with something rational and the price of oil falls to $25 per barrel.
The best thing we could do is impletment a floating import duty that assures that the price of imported oil will not fall below $50 (with inflation adjustment) per barrel. This would provide a floor for investors in capital intensive domestic petroleum sources, such as tar sands. It would also restrain reemergence of demand for Suburbans and muscle cars.
The degree to which one believes global warming is anthropogenic is an excellent indicator of one’s political persuasion.
It isn’t a technological problem, there are often more efficient choices. It’s a people’s behavior problem, incentives and preferences. The heavy handed and typically liberal approach is government regulation.
Actually, IIRC, the SUV fiasco was a side-effect of government regulation. CAFE and safety standards applied to “passenger vehicles” made station wagons and (later?) minivans relatively expensive while SUVs were not classified as passenger vehicles so were relatively cheap. Station wagons practically disappeared. In recent years, SUVs have gotten a lot of the safety features required of passenger vehicles (and IIRC, many SUVs are going to be covered by passenger vehicle saftey standards shortly).
Celluosic Ethanol is our future.
40% of our trade deficit is energy. Worse, this money is supporting an industry led by radical islamic regimes and America hating commies like Hugo Chavez.
If we can instead pay American farmers and distillers for fuel (instead of paying them not to grow potatoes and tobacco to maintain viable agricultural industry in this country) then I’d say we’ve got a tangible intangible that really levels the playing field.
BTU per gallon of ethanol is lower but, once widely available, E85 can run at much higher compression ratios than current pump gasoline in combustion engines yielding similar milage/performance numbers.
The bridge technology of flex-fuel vehicles is already upon us (so much that many with flex-fuel vehicles don’t even realize that they are driving them).
Celluosic technology that uses enzymes to break down agricultural wastes and hearty native grasses into fermentable sugars is fast approaching market viability and this will America’s fuel of the future.
Is there an error in your math?
“So 21 million SUV’s (half the number sold) times six years (duration) times 3,000 gallons – we would have saved 58 BILLION gallons of gasoline”
Isn’t 3000 gallons the savings over the six year life of the vehicle? Multiplying it by 6 would give you the savings over 36 years, I think.
John Lederer – yes there is, dammit. You’re absolutely right, and this has a pretty significant impact on the whole point of my post.
OK, let me draft an update and get it up.
Thanks for the catch, and color me embarassed.
A.L.
“The problem is petroleum, not electricity.”
I’d say A problem is petroleum. If you buy that global warming is caused by humans, consider that over half of the countrie’s energy needs are filled via combustion of hydrocarbons.
“At that price why buy incandescents, if for no other reason than eliminating the hassle of frequent bulb change?”
Well, if you don’t care about ugly, unnatural light filling your living area, by all means.
Check out the wikipedia entry on “Compact flourescent lamp”, and note the “Quality of Light” section. Flourescent bulbs simply do not render colors properly and thus you’re left with an environment in the home that looks like a dystopian nightmare of artificial color.
But then, I’m a lighting designer by training, so I feel a little more strongly about quality of light than most. š
I wrote up a little reply to “Glenn’s Silver Bullet Fallacy column at TCS”:http://www.tcsdaily.com/article.aspx?id=070606C and I find my thinking much more in the Armed Liberal camp than the Sensing/den Beste camp.
In a nutshell, my argument is simple: if you can raise your daily commute car from 40 MPG to 400 MPG (assuming purchase of nifty new hybrid) and recover those costs required to implement the increase in 2-4 years, why wouldn’t you?
You can read my post “here.”:http://www.nopundit.com/archives/2006_07/06/000313.html
Nope, John, I just checked, and my kneejerk reaction was wrong…my initial #’s were right. Here’s the full calculation:
7,000,000 SUV’s sold/year
x 6 years =
42,000,000 SUV’s sold
/2 for the average number on the road =
21,000,000 SUV’s
x 3,000 gallons saved over 6 years =
63,000,000,000 gallons saved
/6 to get annual savings =
10,500,000,000 gallons saved per year.
So I’ll stand on the number, unless there’s a hole in this calculation…
A.L.
There is one flaw in your argument: Historically, greater efficiency leads to greater consumption not less. People with more fuel efficient vehicles simply drive more. People with more efficient light bulbs use them more etc. Consider that the efficiency of both production and consumption of energy has risen dramatically over the last two centuries and every boost in efficiency causes a rise in consumption. Conservation never helps in the long run.
To really understand energy use I highly recommend “The Bottomless Well” by Huber and Mills.
Well, I’m an engineer by trade, and it simply offends my sensibilities to use a lighting design that emits much more power (20 times more) as heat than as light. It’s worth putting some research money into rectifying that little problem, don’t you think?
Not me. If I had the magic 400mpg car, I would NOT drive seventeen times as far, no matter how much your analysis says I will. When I went from having a 30+mpg-about-town car to a 23mpg-about-town car, my yearly mileage did not change by any substantial amount. There is probably some increase in driving to make up for efficiency, but I doubt you’ll ever make a case that such increases will overcome the gains made by efficiencies.
With money, it’s different: save me some money, and I’ll spend it all on something else. Driving, though, is just not equivalent to money.
Your cite just shows that as fuel gets more expensive, people will use less of it. *How* they use less of it is up to the consumer.
#15 Jimmy:
E85 gets roughly 20% less MPG than regular fuel.
Cellulose based ethanol production is far too small to even make a dent in US gas consumption (at least right now). Canadas Iogen produces only 1 million gallons a year, not enough to run California for a day.
Is it viable? Perhaps, there are studies that say that US could produce something close to a billion tons of biomass for use in Cellulose ethanol production, but of course the US doesn’t have the refining capability to do much with all that mass.
Perhaps its a good step forward to the 3%, but there will have to be profitablity in it that outstrips the profitability in oil. And right now Ethanol based fuels are more expensive than gasoline, and will continue to rise as demand increases.
Ok
First – note of admiration to Armed Liberal. When pointed out with an error in your calculation, you admitted it, thanked the poster, and went to correct it. Too many bloggers and posters I have seen immediately see anything like that as opposition or argument – and attack the poster, attack the poster’s arguments/POV, etc. You didn’t. Props to you.
Second – Glenn is right – there is no silver bullet. The solution (to the overall energy crisis) is a variety of methods which will emerge over time. Better efficiency, a better mix of power generation, distributed generation, etc. Simple things like much more efficient homes, leading to less heat loss in winter and less chilled air loss in summer. There will be things like solar panels on home roofs that can supply the energy for homes, and when the home doesn’t need it – will push that extra energy back out on the grid.
Third – the flaw in everone’s reasoning is that as all of these things are developed, they in themselves will alter people’s behavior. And setting a ‘floor’, as one reader suggested, at $50/barrel – is not economically not wise. Every company will know that they can charge right there at $50, because of that floor. There is no incentive for the wholesale price to fall, because there is no price signal below $50. The only way a tax would work is if it is a fixed amount – so as to continue to communicate price signals up and down the commodity chain.
Fourth – people need to realize that we are but one piece of the equation in the energy world. If we found a solution tomorrow – China, India, Indonesia – all those poor nations would still be growing in leaps and bounds, and using more and more energy to try to increase their standard of living. We can’t just convince them to stop in the name of global warming (of which I am skeptical).
Finally, Mrs. Davis – the degree to which people tend to believe in global warming is not so much because of your political persuasion – but how you view governmental authority. If you view ‘govt’ as the overall arbiter of good/bad and the maker of all things good – you probably want it to impose all the carbon limits. If you think markets tend to solve problems better than govts, you probably take the opposing view.
Shannon, actually not so much. Miles driven have gone up by about 9.3% from 88 – 2001, while fuel use has dropped by 2.9% in the same period (source the indispensible “EIA”:http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/rtecs/nhts_survey/2001/index.html
So we’re seeing a correlation, but we’re driving more than we’re saving fuel – I’ll suggest that changes in housing patters have a lot to do with this. Another place we could save energy…
A.L.
Just thought I’d drop off a quick request.
Has anyone done a really good critique of this website?
http://www.junkscience.com/Greenhouse/
I read it and my BS detector didn’t go off, but I’m not educated enough to know if he’s leaving something out. Anyone want to throw me a bone? Preferably well sourced.
I have a very strong distaste for a number of the people interested in science and research. Dogma and ego become so irritating, especially when it comes from learned scientists and professors who base their lives on logic and reason. It blows me away the things people will preach as fact when in reality they are at best good guesses. It blows me away the assumptions and logical fallacies that people in many fields make (my favorite is correlation != causality).
So, when I come across an article that says “we don’t know, but ____ may be happening” quite a bit, I am intrigued. I’m not convinced either way, but I’m curious, so if anyone can throw out some info or a critique of that website with sources which avoid logical gymnastics and overreaching scientific conclusions I would be most grateful.
Cheers
Couple of questions:
Where does anyone think they can get 400 miles per gallon in a hybrid?
Also, your calculation assumes that ALL SUV’s get the same mileage – which is incorrect. Plus, it assumes all minivans get the same mileage – also incorrect. It assumes that the average miles driven per year is the same and the ratio of highway to city is the same.
I think, in the end, the gallons saved would be much less.
“Where does anyone think they can get 400 miles per gallon in a hybrid?”
If the use of 400mpg as an extreme example wasn’t obviously hyperbolic, my apologies. But let’s look at 60mpg, which isn’t far off from what hybrids are at least claiming. If I had a car that got, say, 20mpg and could replace it with a car that got 60mpg, would I drive three times as far? I say no. Maybe just me, but I don’t enjoy driving as recreation all that much.
I’m certain that more than 3% could be saved by timing and optimizing traffic signals. Take note of how often you are unnecessarily stopped at a red light, i.e., when there is no cross traffic or when a slight timing adjustment could have kept you moving. On some commutes for me, it can be more than 10% of my travel time. With each stop, energy is wasted by the disposal of the vehicle’s kinetic energy (braking), by idling time, and re-acceleration.
> recover those costs required to implement the increase in 2-4 years
Greenlee ignores the cost of the car.
I bought an econobox about a year ago. The fuel costs for the next 100-150k miles roughly equal the cost of the car.
It’s unlikely that I’d replace my car today with a car that had 0 fuel costs because the cost of said new car exceeds what it costs to run my near-new car. (I’m assuming that the existence of such a car would drive the value of my current car down.)
A year ago, I’d have considered a 0 fuel cost car, but only if the TCO was lower. I didn’t buy a hybrid because even with $4/gallon gas and the tax incentives, it didn’t make sense.
As diesel fuel becomes increasingly expensive vs. electricity, we will see more electrification of rail lines. Diesel locomotives use (IIRC) about 6% of the diesel fuel consumed in the US, and cargo shifted from trucks to trains could save even more.
I’ve read that one thing inhibiting electrification of rail in the US is tax policy. Electrified lines are subject to local property taxes; diesel locomotives are not. Maybe this is a good area for the federal government to intervene (under the commerce clause, which actually seems to apply here.)
I think the point is this: Last year I looked at buying a Honda Accord versus an Accord hybrid. The numbers were clear – the hybrid was NOT a better deal. For $7,000 more, the gas savings would have had to have been 150,000 miles at $7.00 a gallon to be worth the extra money. Hybrids are a great idea, and over time will make a huge difference, but they aren’t necessarily worth it now.
If your car goes from 40 – 60 mpg, you WILL drive more. You won’t be as sensitive to gas prices, so the extra trip to the store, the movies, etc won’t matter as much. Maybe once a year you drive to a relative’s house instead of flying. Maybe you commute via your car to work instead of the bus a couple of days because of errands. You end up driving more. The correlation is not 1:1. But i’s there. Increased efficiency translates into more miles driven because of the optionality it gives people.
AL,
I agree that we need to do small things more of the time. My wife and I both drive VW diesels. I average 48 mpg in my Golf and I have seen it as high as 54 on a long Interstate run. She averages 42 (automatic vs. manual) in her Jetta. If I need to haul something I fire up the Dodge Cummins 2500 (21 mpg average). I’ve replaced most of the lights in the house with fluorescents, at least where they make sense. Fluorescents work best when they are on for long periods. An incandescent is still better for a light that is turned on and off frequently, say a closet light.
All this may not make much of a difference on a case by case basis, but the cumulative effect should help.
The problem is, if you replace a 20MPG car with a 60MPG car, I’m assuming the 60 car costs more. So first you have to make up for the intial costs, plus the increased costs of any maintanence.
But yes, I wouldn’t drive three times as much, but some people may, and I’m sure many would at least drive 1.5 times more. I have not seen a good study to show what level of help hybrids actually are when it comes to consumption and oil prices, but I would like to with all these factors taken into account.
Seriously, if there was a hybrid car that was only marginally more expensive than a normal car and could fit my entire family, I’m sure I would get it. Unfortunately, for now, they are notably more expensive as well as more expensive to maintain if something is to go wrong. However, I’m hopeful that the technology will improve enough to where I won’t have to second-guess my purchase. At least within another 10 years.
#20 Kenneth Greenlee,
Going from 40 to 400 MPG is a fantasy.
Most vehicles don’t even do 40 MPG.
=======================================
The bulbs I buy are warm white. They do a good enough job.
If I want the colors to look like daylight, I can wait til daylight and open the curtains. I wonder how people with candles and oil lamps managed to get proper color rendition?
Simple things like much more efficient homes, leading to less heat loss in winter and less chilled air loss in summer. There will be things like solar panels on home roofs that can supply the energy for homes, and when the home doesn’t need it – will push that extra energy back out on the grid.
First off, homes are vastly more efficient today than even 20-30 years ago. I think we’ve pretty much snagged the low-hanging fruit here and there isn’t too much more in that department. Once you hit the big stuff like double windows and fiberglass insulation, even more weatherstipping doesn’t make a big difference.
Second, “distributed generation” is an engineering nightmare. The power company needs total control over exactly how much power goes out to protect the grid from big voltage swings. The management of a megawatt solar or wind plant is hard enough because you need a 100% redundant non-renewable system next to it and the ability to spin that system up fast in the event of clouds moving in or wind dropping off. Try distributing that megawatt plant over a million rooftops with questionable maintenance and backyard electricians and you have an immense and insoluable problem.
Actually, just the usage fluctuations caused by the existence of all those mini-power plants is a problem, never mind the issue of “pushing power back out.”
I’m not opposed to rooftop solar, but it frankly only works in quantities too small to matter. If we ever get more than a tiny percentage of our power from it we’re going to have some real trouble managing instability on the grid.
#27 A.L,
Your numbers say that the actual capture of increased efficiency in MPG is on the order of 20 to 30%. The rest goes into driving farther.
Good point, Rob: there’s going to be real problems if we ever approach situations where the grid is a net producer of power in daylight and net consumer at night. Where do you put it all?
This is covered in Sensing’s post, to an extent.
Another way of putting it. To get your 3% you must improve MPG by 10 to 15%.
If the fleet is getting 25 MPG then you need to get it up to 28 to 30 MPG.
However that is not good enough as the auto is around 50% of fuel consumption for transportation. Hauling stuff and farming uses most of the rest. Which means that you need to double the gains. That means a fleet average of 31 to 35 MPG. That is going to be tough.
Good grief, people – you keep thinking we have to replace the current energy infrastructure – that we will get rid of utility-run generation plants with rooftop solar or small cogen. That’s not the goal; the goal is to shave a few BtU off the margins.
The average American house uses 10,660 KwH of electricity/year (“EIA”:ftp://ftp.eia.doe.gov/pub/consumption/residential/2001ce_tables/enduse_consump2001.pdf again); if local sources generated
All we have to do is generate about 10% of our own consumption – to make up about 89KwH/month – to drop domestic electricity use by a few percent.
My overall point is that we don’t need home runs to win; a lot of singles and an occasional double get us trhere just as well.
A.L.
Slati,
We’re going to have huge problems if we get to the point that photovoltaics accont for 25% of energy generation during peak loads. Probably a lot less than that if the source is distributed rather than concentrated at a big megawatt solar facility. Forget storage, how do you manage the load? Who pays the capital costs for the excess capacity necessary to cover for cloudy/windless days?
I love free markets and individual empowerment, but electricity distribution is one of those few areas where central control is very important. After all, when the “invisible hand” of physics takes over, it’s not $75 oil, it’s a voltage spike that destroys your computer and starts house fires all over the place.
On automotive fuel economy: internal compustion engines turn something like 30% of the energy of gasoline into movement, tops (less for some cars). So assuming we go to 100% efficiency (sounds crazy, and is at this moment, but hydorcarbon fuel cells might get close), we can count on at most a factor of 3-5 in efficiency. Factors of 10 are right out.
M Simon –
The current fleet doesn’t get nearly 25mpg; per the EIA again, it gets about 20.3.
So to improve car mileage by 15%, we’re looking at going from 20.3 to 23.4. Brutal.
And trucks are just as subject to improvement – I saw a lot of areo devices on the trucks on my weekend road trip, but not every truck – not even 2/3 – had them.
A.L.
#38 Rob,
Gas fired peakers are low in capital cost and high in fuel costs. Wind turbines are high in capital cost and zero in fuel cost.
If you have sensors or enough wind farms spread around, wind output can be predicted 30 minutes in advance. About the time it takes to fire up a natural gas peaker. They are complimentary.
Wind tariffs include the cost of the idle back up peaker.
Go to the earlier thread around post #60. I have left some links.
I’d recommend that people research, run the numbers on, and do little things like that to the extent that they save them money… but that’s just prudence, not environmentalism. Yes, please do so. If you feel so inclined, feel free to spend a little more up-front than you will ever receive back, and make up the deficit in social capital or something (witness many Prius owners).
Just don’t expect it to move the needle much.
If you drop domestic gas demand by 3% over what it would have been 6 years from now, it will still probably be higher than today, just not by as much. I can’t even begin to speculate as to what that will do to the price of oil, as there are too many larger factors (Iran, China, Venezuela) on both the global demand and supply sides already.
As folks have pointed out in the other thread, gas and electricity are not directly interchangeable in this country–but there is still the potential, via H2 or really, really good batteries, that they may be someday. Cars don’t have to be silver bullets, after all, they just have to get power roughly equivalent to today, range of 300-400 miles, easy, common fill-up infrastructure, and less bottom-line expense than today. That’s all. š
#44 A.L,
The truckers are very cost sensitive folks. If they don’t have aero devices they probably don’t make economic sense (not enough high speed driving).
Suppose every one bought a 30% more fuel efficient vehicle (assuming that the rest of the transportation system, since it is commercial, is better optimized). It will take 15 years to get your full 3% improvement.
If every one in 2006 had bought a magic fuel vehicle that got double the average fuel economy of the 2005 fleet you get a 3.5% increase in fuel economy. That is probably the best you can do. Reality is likely to be 3 to 5 times worse.
The quick hit is still the MPG meter or vacuum guage. Minimal capital. Minimal installation time.
GM’s fuel cell powered Sequel is currently at 39MPG equiv, has a range of 300 miles, and does 0 to 60 in slightly under ten seconds. As a concept car it’s undoubtedly ungodly expensive but it looks like GM’s hitting its milestones for a hydrogen powered vehicle in the showrooms in the 2010-2012 timeframe.
Ballard’s technology roadmap show that GM’s not alone in hitting their numbers and we’re likely to have several powerplant entries in the next decade that can take us beyond the engineering limits of Carnot heat engines and beyond the tyranny of oil. A “thin” national infrastructure of hydrogen stations put out by the government every slightly less than 300 miles of interstate highway would be well under $100M dollars, in other words eminently doable. The free market will put in additional pumps depending on demand.
Hydrogen vehicles are likely to be a mid-term double in this game, ramping up and allowing us to reduce our oil dependence without doing a rip and replace of our entire infrastructure. If improvement in non-hydrocarbon based hydrogen generation comes as fast as the optimists think it will, it has the potential of turning into the home run that Donald Sensing and SDB are convinced doesn’t exist.
I want to clarify comment #20 (I’m the author). I should have explained this (it is clearer in my post): The magic 400MPG car is 400MPG for the first 20 miles of driving every day. After that it drops down to 40MPG (typical hybrid range). Say what? Read the “post”:http://www.nopundit.com/archives/2006_07/06/000313.html if you’re interested, but the thumbnail sketch is the first twenty miles of commuting per day are purchased from the sun and not the pump. After that, it’s just another hybrid.
While its true that increased fuel efficiency will be offset by some increased use of the vehicle by each individual consumer, I think the point of “Jevon’s paradox”:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox is at the macro level. If we become more fuel efficient as an economy, then the price of gas will drop. At a lower price level, people might use their cars more *or* we might find other uses for gas (such as for electricity). Also, at lower price levels, poor people and poor countries that might have gone without gas-powered conveniences might find them affordable.
But some of A.L.’s objectives would still be met. Lower gas prices would hurt the Sauds and as a lower demand commodity would pose less of a threat of financial shock.
If the price of gas drops, a lot of interesting ideas in these threads become unsellable. Sales taxes, coupled with income tax breaks, seem to be necessary to make new energy uses sustainable.
There are a few problems.
One, as Sensing noted, you can’t just decrease gasoline consumption alone, you have to decrease consumption of all oil products, including the plastics that make up just about every consumer product you can buy now.
Two, there may be no silver bullet but, that doesn’t mean you can get the same stopping power from a few BB’s. All efforts to become more efficient are salutary but, they are not really going to help significantly.
Three, I and, more importantly, members of my family, are not going to start driving smaller cars until you get all these drunk drivers and big trucks off the road. In the last three years, we have had one highway death and one critically serious accident in our family. The former was from a crazy drunk who rammed the vehicle my brother was in. The latter was from a head-on collision with a Ford F-350 pickup truck that crossed over the center line, the kind with the double tires and 3 tons of heavy metal plus another ton or two of load. My wife’s mid-size SUV essentially disintegrated in a fraction of a second. It could have been worse. In our area, where there is fast growth, we have to share the road with a plethora of dump trucks and cement mixers and other heavy vehicles, many driven by unqualified drivers and even illegal aliens (the truck that hit my wife was driven by one) with no license or driving record for their employers to use to gauge their fitness to drive.
_#25 from Gabriel
“E85 gets roughly 20% less MPG than regular fuel.”_
That is true in our current crop of flex-fuel vehicles.
Once E85 is widely available, though, we can switch from flex-fuel vehicles to vehicles optimized to burn E85.
The problem with flex-fuel is that the engines must conform to the lowest common denominator. In this case it’s around an 8:1 compression ratio on pump gasoline. Anything higher results in ‘pre-ignition’ or ‘detonation’ where the gasoline explodes before the compression stroke completes.
E85 running in an 8:1 compression engine (even one optimized for flex-fuel by controlling the timing and fuel delivery) is running at lower than optimal compression. E85 can run at 11:1 and even 12:1 compression; mitigating much if not all of the mileage / performance difference between E85 and gasoline.
When taken in whole; between helping to reduce the trade deficit, minimizing our reliance on an ever more hostile oil market, minimizing our necessity for farm subsidies, reducing environmental concerns, and a virtually painless transition via flex-fuel technology; then cellousic ethanol will make the most sense. This truth has just not sunk in to many people who are clinging arguments against ethanol that were perfectly valid 5 – 10 years ago but no longer apply.
Even if it will make the Greens happy, we should be working on increasing our energy efficiency and reducing our fossil fuel consumption. In ten or fifteen years, the Islamist menace will burn itself out, but we’ll still have to contend with Chinese rivals (like Russia in the Cold War) and Indian economic rivals (like Japan in the same time frame). When that time comes, having America operating at peak efficiency will assure that we remain preeminent as those two nations reach economic maturity and can’t just keep growing on the strength of previously untapped potential.
The genius of America is that while it’s had some pretty bad times, the long term trend is of growing a lot, then growing a little, then growing a lot, because we keep wringing out little efficiencies till the next big thing comes.
I’m not sure about global warming, what the data actually mean, or how much we can do about it. But if we can simultaneously strengthen our long term economic position and reduce our impact on the most worrying data points, I don’t see why we wouldn’t, especially if cleaner air and cheaper to operate homes – both quality of life boosts – are part of the process. Mandating that I drive a tin can – not a quality of life boost – doesn’t sit well with me. Having a reasonably good sized car that costs less to operate and a nice home that costs less to run, though… where’s the problem?
Ethanol is fundamentally very inefficient solar energy. It is never going to fill more than a fraction of our energy needs.
#48,
The car may be in the show rooms by 2012. Question is: will they be for sale?
And if they are for sale will any one buy them?
It is hard to believe GM will get the price of a fuel cell down by a factor of 50 to 100 in time for production in 2012. And solve the storage problem. And have hydrogen vendors in every city. etc. etc. etc.
GM has a nasty habit of producing concept cars and some times concept fleets (EV1) that make no economic sense. They are advertising or political gimics.
E85-fueled vehicles are only going to be getting 77% of the energy of gasoline-fueled vehicles. Not sure how fuel economy scales, though.
I have a hard time taking Armed Liberal seriously. Is he advocating nuclear energy? If not, why not? Why is he focussing on alternative fuels of debatable value? Nuclear power is a proven commodity. What’s going on?
You know, I find it interesting that nobody has mentioned that of all technologies for energy production, ethanol is the only one that takes CO2 out of the atmosphere. It’s consumption will have a zero effect on CO2 in the atmosphere since you had to take it out of the atmosphere in the first place.
Some of the articles that I read today that linked to this one almost sounded like an article I read as a kid in the early 60s: “Why man will never reach the moon.” It went into great detail how accurate the computations for trajectory, thrust, timing etc would need to be and that the technology didn’t exist and was not likely to exist. Yeah, right. We’re almost 40 years PAST the moon landings, so that shows you how much that guy knew. He was obsolete in less than 10 years. When I was in college in the late 70s they told us it was physically impossible to get where our computers were 10 years ago…
When it comes to ethanol, it may be a less efficient fuel, but if you solve the cellulose to ethanol problem, a solution now in sight, plants are really easy to grow, they’re renewable and no net CO2 is added to the atmosphere. Cool solution if you ask me.
We’ve found solutions for other problems, we’ll find solutions for the energy problem.
Dalcius:
I did fact check his site in the beginning, and his numbers have been sound.
I used IPCC and found, based on their numbers, that while the CO2 concentration (there is some arguement) was suppose to be at 288ppm pre-industrial it rose to 368 (or so, I think in 98? from the report- my excel file is MIA) since then. From their report, of the now current 368 or so ppm, 11 were from mad made sources.
That makes the increase in CO2 from natural causes to be 85% natural, and 15% human, totalling a whopping 3.22% of the total CO2 in the atmosphere to be from human production.
IPCC numbers, mind you.
Then the arguement goes into water in the atmosphere and the ratio of absorbital energy. Since there is 12,750 Megatons of water, and only 750Mt of CO2, and they both absorb over very similar portions of the IR spectrum, CO2, and especially the amount produced by humans, becomes a small portion of the scenario.
.11% IIRC.
So why the scare? If CO2 becomes twice the current percentage, it could (COULD) increase the potential of trapped heat, and if so, would produce a whole max potential of 4mw per square mtr of extra heat. But since only 3% or so is from Human production, it seems silly to think we are going to produce 30 times that in the next 100 years. IIRC, we are suppose to run out of oil and such before then……(that is sarcasm)
Compared to changes in the ocean currents affecting the retained heat by 20-30mw/m2, and cloud cover by as much as 120mw/m2 we should be far more frightened by what water is doing.
IMHO. But who am I, right? š
Josh
#58 Jeff,
Totally agree with:
We’ve found solutions for other problems, we’ll find solutions for the energy problem.
The question seems to be: do we let the system evolve at it natural rate (near lowest cost) or do we force it – getting faster but less than optimum results (the more steps you skip the more likely you are to fall into a local minima instead of an absolute minima).
Evolution is best. Moderation is good. Evolving at a moderate rate.
We ought to be trying lots of stuff.
Stuff that shows promise in cost and scalability ought to be manufactured. In the case of wind that is happening. At a very satisfactory rate I might add.
pbjosh,
Thanks for the feedback. Sorry for the threadjack folks.
Cheers
Hydrogen is not really viable because of the energy needed for hydrolisis to release the hydrogen and further the amount of energy needed to compress enouggh hydrogen into a space small enough for practical transportational use.
Solar cells are just not efficient enough yet and don’t really hold the promise of replacing oil anyway because no one is predicting or even cares about a solar car in the next 50 years. It’s great for remote cabins and such where grid power is inaccessible but does nothing really to ween us off of oil.
Electric holds some promise with better batteries and powering them off the grid (very inexpensive) but battery life is no where near what it needs to be now for practical transportation… and hybrids are OK I guess… if you’re into that.
I just know the american consumer and his love for power and it’s not going to be satisfied less than with a viable liquid fuel. By increasing compression ratios as I’ve described we can get comparable power/mpg performance out of Ethanol and with cellousic technology we will soon build capacity to reduce our consumption of gasoline substantially.
And in truth Ethanol is simply another form of clean solar energy that’s been available to us for many hundreds if not thousands of years. We’re stupid if we don’t leverage it heavily to help arrest our incessant oil woes.
AL,
I agree that we should be looking for many small solutions rather than one large one, but disagree with your final comment about going back to 70’s level performance.
The current (standard not Si) Honda Civic sedan will out accelerate and out stop your old BMW and get better mileage doing it under all conditions.
My 1987 Mustang V8 would have shamed most of the storied 60’s vintage mustangs in a drag race and still got 25 mpg on the highway (as good as I ever got in any of the VW Beetles I owned).
The fact is that advances in fuel injection has resulted in cars that produce more horsepower with less fuel than at any time in the past.
The problem with today’s cars is not too much power, it’s too much weight. Today’s cars contain a raft of safety features that were non-existant when your 2002 was built (ABS, traction control, air bags, energy absorbing bumpers) and luxury features that were truly luxuries (air conditioning, rear window defrosters, power seats, windows, and locks). All these things add weight that can only be taken off via the use of expensive aluminum, carbon fiber, and other composites, or through more expensive components such as forged suspension pieces.
The way to save gas and thus oil is not to choke our engines, it is to lighten the load those engines have to carry.
Hydrogen is not really viable because of the energy needed for hydrolisis to release the hydrogen
You mean electrolysis, not ‘hydrolysis’ (which is the decomposition of a chemical bond by adding water to it.) However, even this is a hoary misconception. The ‘hydrogen economy’ would produce hydrogen by thermochemical processing of fossil fuels (including coal) or biomass; electrolytic hydrogen is not cost competitive except in small niche markets. Because the CO2 from this process would be at large, fixed installations, it could be trapped and sequestered.
The US already produces millions of tons of hydrogen each year, for various chemical processes (such as synthesis of ammonia). Almost all this hydrogen is produced thermochemically.
11 were from mad made sources. […] That makes the increase in CO2 from natural causes to be 85% natural, and 15% human,
This is utter nonsense. You have completely misunderstood what was being said. The increase is CO2 since pre-industrial times is almost entirely anthropogenic.
You got one thing really wrong: The goal is to have cheap, low-impact, sustainable, and local supplies of energy. Cheap to maximize the benfit to our economy and the disruption to the Saudi economy;
Lower oil prices don’t hurt the ME producers nearly as much as they hurt other producers. SA is one of the world’s lowest cost producers of oil. As such, they will be the last ones hurt by dropping demand for oil.
Sorry…
“… the energy needed for _hydrolysis_ to release the hydrogen”
should have been _electrolysis_ instead of _hydrolysis_.
Also please excuse spelling and typos… no time to proof today.
Paul Dietz:
Uhm- No.
I am looking for my previous refences, and since I am quite busy right now, I don’t have to time I would like to find it. My numbers were pulled straight from an IPCC graph. As soon as I find it I will post.
Josh
Some interesting points (sorry, I’m late to the party):
1. The US already has reduced per-capita emissions, and has been doing so since 1990. Here’s a report
Note that while US emissions have gone up 18% since 1990 according to the report, US population has gone up by 19%. (The spam-eater didn’t like the URL I had citing the figure)
And all this happened while US GDP more than doubled. Meanwhile, supposedly “green” Europe largely stagnated both economically and in terms of per-capita CO2 emissions.
The trend has actually accelerated during the period of the Bush Administration – probably due to higher energy prices and improved communications/Internet/e-commerce/supply chain management making commercial transportation and communication more efficient during this time.
Frankly, I’m still not 100% convinced that CO2 emissions is the main driver of climate change (it could be solar output, some other factor, or it may just be an observational blip that will go away mysteriously, as did the observational blip that got everyone in the 1970s thinking that global _cooling_ was kicking off an ice age). But my point is that emissions are actually going down in a per capita sense already, and will probably go down faster now that people are paying attention to the issue.
My fear is that the CO2 discussions will turn into wrong-headed policies and a dangerous buy-in to the “management” strategy behind Kyoto.
I am going to have to go backwards here- since I can’t find my chart.
Currently 3.22% of atmospheric CO2 is from anthropogenic (that means human) activity.
If CO2 was at the 280ppm level pre-industrial, and now is 381ppm (as of March 2006) then the increase since then is about 10ppm. 3.22% of the current total means 12.26ppm were produced by man in the past 100 years. That means the increase of 88ppm or so is natural over the past 100 years. That is means about 88% was completely natural in production since the pre-industrial era.
Yes, there has been an increase in CO2 levels, but MOST of it is natural in cause. Partially, and this is my opinion, because our pre-industrial measurements show some serious flaws.
Josh
M. Simon (#60): _The question seems to be: do we let the system evolve at it natural rate (near lowest cost) or do we force it – getting faster but less than optimum results (the more steps you skip the more likely you are to fall into a local minima instead of an absolute minima)._
What is your view of a gas consumption tax, offset by income tax reductions? Right now, we have a cartel fixing the market to extend our dependency on oil. So the market is already distorted against whatever the “natural rate” might be.
Found it!
Carbon Dioxide (CO2) (all concentrations expressed in parts per billion)
Pre-industrial baseline 288,000
Natural additions 68,520
Man-made additions 11,880
Concentration Percent of Total 368,400
A quick look shows 11ppm is about 3% of 368ppm.
From the DOE report October 2000
h*tp://cdiac.esd.ornl.gov/pns/current_ghg.html
Which comes from the IPCC report.
Enjoy!
Josh
Kyoto is not an environmental treaty… it’s an economic treaty intended to send US wealth to underdeveloped nations under the direction of a UN appointed committee.
They wouldn’t even let us offset our own CO2 production with our own vast carbon sinks (forests). It’s absurd and only a idiocy would subject our country to such measures.
_Where would you find 3% in our energy budget?_
Cut *all* gov’t expenditures by a “real” 10% next year…
—Fed, State, and local governments _easily_ consume over 30% of both GDP and *energy*- cut 10% of _that_ = 3%!
*Next!* ;o)
“As diesel fuel becomes increasingly expensive vs. electricity, we will see more electrification of rail lines”…freight rail is already 3-4X more energy efficient than trucking, and the business is doing very well right now, due both to the growth of imports and to the cost differentials created by this energy efficiency ratio. RRs are going to need to spend a lot of capital just to keep up with demand by eliminating bottlenecks. Electrification might make sense for some extremely high-traffic routes, but doubt that it will cover a high % of the trackage anytime soon.
BTW, the hybrid approach can work for locomotives as well as cars/trucks.
Modern locomotives are already electrical – they carry diesel powerplants that generate electricity that is used to drive the wheels. Using electricity gets rid of the need for a transmission, which would be a massive thing in a heavy-duty locomotive.
foobarista..correct. What the hybrid locomotive (under development by GE Transportation and others) does is to add a battery array so that energy generated during dynamic braking can be captured instead of dissipated in a resistor array as is now the case.
taking three heavily armed men to the dire road leading to Gunsite for a class.
I’ve been down that road, and it didn’t look particularly dire to me. Not at all, in fact.
I suppose it would have been more so if I had been bent on any kind of criminal mischief; I can scarcely imagine a place of more dire peril for an urban knucklehead.
It is certainly a dirt road, however.
Why isn’t anyone talking about nucler power? What am I not getting? Many of our current troubles are due almost solely to our virtual abandonment of this energy source some two decades ago.
Nuclear power is the elephant in the room as far as greens are concerned – it’s clean, it works, it doesn’t do CO2, and it’s frankly a whole lot less dangerous than coal or other types of power. And to their credit, many greens who actually care about this sort of thing – as opposed to Making a Statement – realize it. A hundred or so nice big nuke power stations would run a whole lot of plug-in hybrids, along with the cities where their owners live, without an ounce of greenhouse gas emissions.
But enough others cut their activist teeth by protesting atomic weapons and championing “peace”, that swallowing nukes over “cool” techs like wind&solar just sticks in their craw. And nothing draws out the inner NIMBY like a nuke plant.
A huge saving could be made without drastic changes. Simply outlaw automatic transmissions.
bq_”Manual transmission”:”http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_transmission#_note-fueleconomy” Increased fuel economy with a properly operated manual transmission vehicle versus an equivalent automatic transmission vehicle can range from 5 % to about 15 % depending on driving conditions and style of driving — extra urban or urban (highway or city)._
Of course that would mean that everybody would have to learn to drive a standard shift, but if my mother, who was 5 ft and weighted 100 lbs on a good day could regularly drive a 1946 Chevy Carryall I think that it would not be asking too much.
It would vary, but there’s your 3%. But it’s not going to happen because people just won’t stand for it.
Somebody explain to me why an increase in global biomass and crop yeilds, and areas
that are now marginal or nonagriculturally useful
bloooming
Is something we have to destroy the world’s economy to PREVENT?
“It’s happening.” as for me I do not so stipulate, with the proviso that we do seem to be coming out of a Mini Ice Age which followed the Medieval Warm Period,
Yes it has warmed up some, no I do not conceive of it as a catastrophe, except maybe for Holland.
As for the hysteria? In the Last hundred or so years there has been a slight increase of about 0.6 degree the Computer Model used by the Gobal Warming fanatics would calculate 3 degrees for that time period, a error of a 5X?
Oh and I understand that same computer model also thinks it is raining in the Sahara desert now.
Clinton made a big splash about it that is true.
“On July 24, 1997, President Clinton held a press conference at which he announced that the catastrophic effects of man’s use of fossil fuels was now an accepted scientific fact, not a theory. To underline this, he produced a list stated as being of 2,500 scientists who had approved the 1996 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report preparing the ground for Kyoto. That sounded conclusive, and most of the world at large accepted it as such”
But they forgot to tell the public about the 4000 scientists including 70 Nobel Prize winners who issued a
“condemnation of irrational ideologies opposed to scientific and industrial progress.”
“Nor do the media publicize the Leipzig Declaration, based on an international symposium held in Germany in November 1995, which contains the statements “there does not exist today a general scientific consensus about the importance of greenhouse warming” and “we cannot subscribe to the politically inspired worldview that envisages climate catastrophes and calls for hasty actions.” This was reissued in 1997 prior to the climate treaty conference due to be held in Kyoto in December, signed by almost a hundred atmospheric specialists, and carried the caveat “we consider the drastic emission control policies likely to be endorsed by the Kyoto conferenceālacking credible support from the underlying scienceāto be ill-advised and premature.” 161
“So how did atmospheric physicists, climatic specialists, and others with scientific credentials feel about the issue? To find out, Dr. Arthur Robinson, president and research professor of the Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine, also publisher of the newsletter Access to Energy, in February 1998, conducted a survey of the professional field by circulating a petition calling for the government to reject the Kyoto agreement of December 1997, on the grounds that it would harm the environment, hinder science, and damage human health and welfare; that there was no scientific evidence that greenhouse gases were or were likely to cause disruption of the climate; and on the contrary there was substantial evidence that such release would in fact be beneficial. 165 After six months the petition had collected over seventeen thousand signatures.
At about the same time the German Meteorologisches Institut Universitat Hamburg and Forschungszentium, in a survey of specialists from various branches of the climate sciences, found that 67 percent of Canadian scientists rejected the notion that any warming due to human activity is occurring, while in Germany the figure was 87 percent, and in the US, 97 percent. 166 Some consensus for Kyoto!”
BTW Winds of Change has banned the ENTIRE
angelfire domain because of some spammer?
I will have to use a blogspot mirror with a link to my website in the URL
HAH you have blogspot banned too?
OK I have another holding page I can use
Reduction of man contributed global warming is the least of our reasons to move away from fossil fuels.
The larger reason is that we are bank-rolling anti-american ideologies with 40% of our trade deficit that could easily be spent in our own back-yard instead.
Two extremely good points missed by both sides of the discussion. A) Small steps as applicable will do the trick. B) The state of the art in engineering has been improving.
Something else that needs to be covered is energy storage. Battery technology is also getting a lot better, which means there will be a point where long lasting, high capacity and fast charging batteries will become cheap enough to make true electric cars viable and charging them will be off cheap grid electricity. Earlier than that, using “off the grid” solar systems will start being cheap enough to get a return on investment worth installing a system. (The solar systems sans batteries are getting more efficient also.) Now tie in increasing efficiency of electrical devices and there are more ways to save energy.
A positive side effect of one nuclear generator design does solve the car problem also.
Pebble Bed Reactors from wikipedia:
“Tsinghua’s program for Nuclear and New Energy technology also plans in 2006 to begin developing a system to use the high temperature gas of a pebble bed reactor to crack steam to produce hydrogen. The hydrogen could serve as fuel for vehicles, reducing China’s dependence on imported oil. Hydrogen can also be stored, unlike electricity, and distribution by pipelines may sometimes be more efficient than conventional power lines.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pebble_bed_reactor
Which would cover both major uses of oil refining.
Still not worried about CO2 production, but I think it is great technology, and should be persued.
Josh
#71 PD Shaw,
Uh, the cartel is fixing prices, distorting the economy and you want to add another weight (taxes) to the mix? Not me.
Let consumers decide whether more insullation for the house, a more efficient furnace, a shade for the air conditioner, or a more fuel efficient car is best for them in their circumstances.
#81,
I hate stick shifts in hilly country. Something like the Studebaker hill holder could eliminate that problem. Do they still make Studebakers? LOL.
Basically it was a one way valve that held the brake pressure when on a hill. With some kind of mechanism to release it when the vehicle was moving or the clutch fully released.
My secret sources say the release was part of the clutch mechanism.
The madd mullahs in Iran and whacos like Hugo Chavez are fixing the price by their instability… that’s why it’s bid up so high on the spot and futures markets and it’s just the way they like it. This is why we must have an alternative domestic liquid fuel power source that doesn’t vary in price when these whacos throw a tantrum.
Hydrogen is great and all but you’ve got to compress the crap out of it to get enough for a trip to the grocery. Ever how plentiful this stuff could be; it’s way behind celluosic ethanol on the engineering timeline for fueling automobiles.
The management of a megawatt solar or wind plant is hard enough because you need a 100% redundant non-renewable system next to it and the ability to spin that system up fast in the event of clouds moving in or wind dropping off. Try distributing that megawatt plant over a million rooftops with questionable maintenance and backyard electricians and you have an immense and insoluable problem.
This isn’t a gotcha, it’s a yes-but. It’s a problem that would have to be solved if we go this route. You call it an insoluble problem, but we might change what we consider the problem to be.
There’s an intrinsic value to having your own power plant even if it’s as unreliable as wind or sunlight and not enough to do everything you want. Ask any iraqi.
There’s an intrinsic value to having your own power plant
Well, sure, that’s what Honda generators are for. But my point is that if such little mini-powerplants become common enough–either because of environmental fervor, a desire to save money, or because Jennifer Aniston gets one–they destabilze the grid on which we all depend.
Is anyone in the USA even thinking about district heating/electricity combo stations?
In a few places, mainly in Scandinavia where they REALLY have a problem keeping warm in winter, it’s quite common to have steam or hot water lines as well as power lines running out of power stations.
Why is this a good idea? Simple. The best a power station gets is about 45% as far as I know. Which means that over half the usable energy in the fuel is going into the air for no benefit. Since domestic heating (and heating of industrial premises, too) is a large fraction of any country’s energy budget, then some fuel saving ought to be easy. I believe waste cooling water from a power station typically runs at about 80 deg C, easily hot enough to run central heating.
It would also be possible to use some of the steam from a power station boiler for process heat, but this would need some redesign.
I believe there is somewhere in Denmark where not only is this routine, but the waste SO2 is captured in limestone and used to make gypsum for plasterboard, as well.
And in that particular case, no government meddling was involved – all the parties concerned did it because they made more money that way.
Ian,
Yes, that got a mention up-thread. But it does no good in summertime (when electrical demand is highest) and is tough to make successful in the US 1) because of population density (low) and 2) because nobody really wants a powerplant close enough to run hot-water lines.
It would work in Manhatten if you could find the place for the plant.
things that only save energy part of the year still save energy.
While I don’t necessarily agree that Global Warming is “the least of our reasons”, Jimmy has in my opinion hit an important nail right on the head:
“Reduction of man contributed global warming is the least of our reasons to move away from fossil fuels.
The larger reason is that we are bank-rolling anti-american ideologies with 40% of our trade deficit that could easily be spent in our own back-yard instead.”
If nothing else, energy security is national security.
As far as the 3% solution being difficult or impossible? Looking at the fact that the US accounts for aproximately 25% of global oil consumption, and the fact that approximately 60% of the oil used in this country goes for gasoline, improvements in gasoline efficiency would go a long way to helping stretch oil supplies and perhaps more importantly cutting back on the amount of money that eventually finds it’s way into the hands of terrorists.
So, what brilliant automotive technological innovation, one that can be incorperated into the current fleet immediately, do I suggest? Simple. Car pooling.
Take three guys at work, Joe, Jack and Kevin. Say each of these guys have big ‘ol trucks or SUVs that on a good day get 15 MPG. Now, lets say that these three guys decide to start car pooling to work because paying $100 per week on gas is really starting to hurt. Now the *effective* MPG of that SUV has jumped from 15 to 45, because we’ve tripled the number of passangers it’s hauling the 20 miles or so these guys commute to work. It means a little less convience for these 3 guys, but it seriously impacts the amount of gas they consume per year since most of their miles per year are spent on their daily commute and most of that commute is spent jammed up idleing in traffic jams — not the most efficient speed to be running an SUV. And if a *lot* of Joes, Jacks and Kevins started car pooling their commutes, commute times might actually get shorter since there wouldn’t be so much bloody traffic.
Before you tell me that it’s not likely that Some Three Guys are gonna get together and do this, I personally *know* a Jack and Kevin where I work that I could car-pool with. Why don’t we do it now? One, we live closer than 20 miles from where we work and two, we don’t actually drive huge-ass SUV’s to work. I drive a 4 door car with plenty of room for the baby seat in back that still gets by on less than $30 of gas per week. But trust me, before civilization ends due to Peak Oil, you can bet that me, Jack and Kevin would be car pooling in our semi-economy cars.
That’s just one example of easy ways that serious improvements in energy efficiency could be achieved without folks having to return to a Stone Age existance. Another example I’ve already mentioned is living a little closer to where you work. One way I’m seeing that happen now is the “gentrification” of the downtown in my city. There are folks buying condo’s downtown and new projects going up, so that they can literally live within walking distance of where they work. So maybe instead of living in a suburb of (insert your favorite huge metropolitan axis here), you might move a little closer to where you work or you might live in a smaller city, like I do, where you don’t have to commute through hellish traffic.
Then there’s the fact that energy efficient 4 door diesel sedans exist, right now, that get 52 MPG. And before you rightly point out “what about diesel particulates?”, these come equipped with diesel particulate filter systems that cut the emmision of particulates by a factor of 10,000.
Lets not even look at the fact that in 2005 there were more bicycles sold in the US than cars. Yeah, there are guys that decided to commute to work on 10-and-12 speeds.
Only point I’m trying to make is that there are things that everyday folks can do right now that would have a definite favorable impact.
Carpooling is inconvenient.
If you’re driving by yourself and you’re running a little late, you just run out to your car and then try to drive a little faster. But if you carpool and you’re a little late you make 2 other people late. If you need to work a little late, 2 other people are waiting for you.
If one of the secretaries decides tonight is the night she seduces you, you have to take her car. Unless she’s carpooling too.
Americans don’t want to be inconvenienced. We won’t carpool much until the price of gasoline is high enough that not carpooling means giving up something more important. It means making a painful choice.
Far better if we can find something that gives us lots of better choices. If we can get a cheap alternative to fossil fuels then everybody will be happy with it (except maybe some environmentalists who’re likely to see ways the new energy source is bad too).
It’s much much easier to get americans to agree to send the army out to do whatever it takes to solve the problem, than to get them to put up with any inconveniences.
I agree with the idea of focus on 3% solutions, for the present, but I really don’t agree with the argument that silver bullets are not to be expected within the next few decades. Note that the “paving over Georgia” estimate could be replaced with a
square 100 miles on a side with current technology, according to Stirling Energy which is already a large player in solar energy. It’s not a current option, but that and better options will be available. I’m playing with ideas about them at
my blog (linked as a tinyURL because it was rejected as “questionable content”; I wonder if that will work) if you’re interested.