Tuesday, May 29, 2007

Free Gas

Did I say free gas? Who needs it? 

Tuesday, May 01, 2007

A Great Idea

An Arizona student came up with an idea for wind turbines powered by the wind cars and trucks generate on the freeway. The only problem with this idea is that there would be no wind generated during rush hour. Still, it’s the kind of idea we’ll probably see a lot more of as we search for more ways to generate clean energy.

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Monday, April 09, 2007

The French Do Something Right

And we did something wrong when we all but banned nuclear power plants in the US. But the French we the opposite way and look what happened.

When much of the world spurned nuclear power, 30 years ago, the French, being French, decided to go their own way and embrace it. Paris, the “City of Light,” is lit by nuclear energy, which powers just about everything else in France: its homes, its factories, even its high speed railroads.

Nearly 80 percent of the country’s electricity comes from 58 nuclear power plants, crammed into a country the size of Texas. Pierre Gadonniex, the head “Electricite de France,” the country’s national utility says it all began with a French obsession for energy independence.

“In France, we have nearly no coal. We have no oil. So clearly, nuclear appeared to be the best way,” Gadonniex explains. “And 30 years later, it appears to be a very smart decision.”

Because nuclear plants emit no greenhouse gases, France has the cleanest air in the industrialized world, and because the price of oil is now around $60 a barrel, it has the lowest electric bills in Europe. In fact, France has so much cheap electricity, it exports it to its European neighbors. French nuclear plants supply power to parts of Germany, Italy and help light the city of London.

The greens were wrong in the 70s, as they were in the 60s over DDT and in the present over global warming. In fact, but blocking nuclear power plants, we were stuck with a lot more pollution than we would have. And our dependence on oil is much greater as a result.

Nuclear power is not only the cleanest form of energy, it’s one of the safest. The amount of serious accidents in the US can be count on one hand in 60 years, and none of them caused any fatalities or environmental damage. The only downside is nuclear waste, but we have a good facility to deal with that. The greens have been trying to shut that down for years. Ignorance is not good for the environment.

If people really care about greenhouse gasses and the environment. If they think we need to be more energy dependent, not less. Then they should embrace nuclear power. 

Thursday, March 01, 2007

Why Nuclear Power

The Oil Drum, which is an energy studies blog, does a detailed analysis of Nuclear Power and explains why it’s our best bet for our energy needs. I have been saying this or years. But this article details the whys and the wherefores. Excellent piece. 

Monday, February 19, 2007

Plasma Converter!

If this is true it’s another example of people creating things with science to solve problems science had created.

74 year old Joseph Longo, founder and CEO of Startech Environmental Corporation, is fast becoming known as “The Prophet of Garbage” because he has developed a Plasma Converter that can turn the world’s most dangerous and toxic waste into clean usable energy.

This promising new technology straight out of Star Trek holds out the promise of making landfills and other troublesome toxic storage sites a thing of the past and with further research and development become a viable alternative energy source for homes, transportation and space travel.

Startech’s trash converter uses superheated plasma to reduce garbage to its molecuar components. Longo’s multimillion dollar technological marvel dubbed the “Plasma Converter” has taken almost 20 years to design and build and can fit easily within a space the size of a two-car garage. Yet, it has the capability to consume almost any kind of waste or toxic product through a process called plasma gasification.

This annilhilation process is described like something similar to the the big bang, only in reverse in that you get nothing from something, instead of something out of nothing. Inside a sealed vessel made of stainless steel and filled with a stable gas—either pure nitrogen or, as in this case, ordinary air—a 650-volt current passing between two electrodes rips electrons from the air, converting the gas into plasma. Current flows continuously through this newly formed plasma, , creating a field of extremely intense energy very much like lightning. The radiant energy of the plasma arc is so powerful, it disintegrates trash into its constituent elements by tearing apart molecular bonds.

The by-products are an obsidian-like glass used as a raw material for numerous applications, including bathroom tiles and high-strength asphalt, and a synthesis gas, or “syngas”—a mixture of primarily hydrogen and carbon monoxide that can be converted into a variety of marketable fuels, including ethanol, natural gas and hydrogen. The only type of waste that it cannot break down is nuclear waste since the radiation is already in its natural atomic state.

They’ll figure that one out sooner or later. But turning trash into energy is something we would have managed sooner or later. The landfill can someday be a thing of the past. 

Monday, February 05, 2007

Power from Trash

This is a very useful and interesting development.

A group of scientists have created a portable refinery that efficiently converts food, paper and plastic trash into electricity. The machine, designed for the U.S. military, would allow soldiers in the field to convert waste into power and could have widespread civilian applications in the future.
Tactical biorefinery
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caption below

“This is a very promising technology,” said Michael Ladisch, the professor of agricultural and biological engineering at Purdue University who leads the project. “In a very short time it should be ready for use in the military, and I think it could be used outside the military shortly thereafter.”

The “tactical biorefinery” processes several kinds of waste at once, which it converts into fuel via two parallel processes. The system then burns the different fuels in a diesel engine to power a generator. Ladisch said the machine’s ability to burn multiple fuels at once, along with its mobility, make it unique.

Roughly the size a small moving van, the biorefinery could alleviate the expense and potential danger associated with transporting waste and fuel. Also, by eliminating garbage remnants - known in the military as a unit’s “signature” - it could protect the unit’s security by destroying clues that such refuse could provide to enemies.

Researchers tested the first tactical biorefinery prototype in November and found that it produced approximately 90 percent more energy than it consumed, said Jerry Warner, founder of Defense Life Sciences LLC, a private company working with Purdue researchers on the project. He said the results were better than expected.

See. People are constantly inventing ways to usefully recycle and provide alternate energy. I suspect that in a few years, we’ll see more and more amazing inventions like this. People are focused on it now. When our attention is on something, we often produce great things. 

Friday, February 02, 2007

Meltdown

The Fourth IPCC TAR report comes out today, and like the last one, it’s a pile of jury rigged conclusions.

Scientific evidence for human-induced global warming will receive a significant boost Friday when the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) releases the summary of a key report, according to environmental activists and top Democrats in Congress.

But wait.

Some climate researchers and environmental scientists previously associated with the IPCC claim the public relations summary of the panel’s fourth assessment report distorts the actual scientific findings and that the discrepancies are driven by a political agenda.

The IPCC Summary for Policymakers, roughly 20 pages long, is primarily the work of political appointees, not of scientists, according to Richard Lindzen, professor of atmospheric science at MIT.

The full text will not be available for another three months, as two further documents making up the fourth assessment report are scheduled to be released in April and May.

Lindzen specialized in the study of clouds and water vapor for IPCC’s third assessment report, which was released in 2001.

He told Cybercast News Service the rules for the fourth assessment report specifically require changes to be made to the body that will bring it into line with the summary statement.

“If you were doing that with a business report, the federal trade commission would be down your throat,” Lindzen said.

Whenever people from one side of a political fence are screeching about something, and you can be sure it’s an agenda of some kind. All you have to do is drill down, objectively, to see that it’s all about the Benjamins. While pro GW people like to claim all skeptics are tools of the greedy oil companies, it never seems to dawn on them that they are parroting propaganda from the leaders of this GW movement, who are bureaucrats and grant grubbing scientists.  Bureaucrats love manufactured crises because they can use them to get laws passed that give them more tax dollars and power. Grant grubbers use these kind of crises to get more grant money. After all, many scientists live on grant money. That’s their income. So they will do anything to insure the gravy train is running, including lie and falsify reports.

When you consider that their best evidence is computer models which are easily faked and not the weather, which conveniently is unseasonably warm sometimes, but not consistently. And the fact that most of the arguments used by the GW proponents are based in logical fallacies it becomes clear that the man-made global warming theory is just that, a theory, based more on assumptions than real facts. Theories are made to be criticized. To be held up to analysis.

But when they use the evil oil companies are behind the critics defense, that’s clearly a straw man argument. Another logical fallacy. Just because someone disagrees with man-made global warming doesn’t make them an oil company shill and it does nothing refute the merits of the critics position. In fact, even if energy companies hold an anti-global warming position, that doesn’t mean they’re wrong.

Personally, I am all for getting rid of fossil fuels. But until we have a working replacement for them, it’s not practical. And radically transforming society to cut back on energy use when it’s not necessary is only going to hurt people’s livelihoods and well being. People are not going to give up their jobs and their comforts for some half baked theory. Nor should they.

New energy sources will come on line in the near future. Progress marches on. Someday, in most of our lifetimes, this will be a moot argument.

UPDATE: See what I mean about liars? The new IPCC report cuts a lot of the previous GW estimates, which should tell you how accurate they are at all. 

Wednesday, January 10, 2007

More US Oil to Come

President Bush lifted the drilling ban Tuesday for Alaska’s Bristol Bay, clearing the way for the Interior Department to open the fish-rich waters to oil and natural gas development.

Alaska officials as well as local communities had asked for the ban to be lifted, but environmentalists have warned against drilling in the bay, which is also a major fishing area for salmon, crab and cod.

Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne said one or two lease sales in about 5.6 million acres of Bristol Bay will be considered for leasing in the department’s upcoming five-year 2007-12 lease plan.

Separately, Bush lifted a drilling moratorium in an area of the central Gulf of Mexico known as Lease Area 181, making that area available to drilling.

The Gulf waters acted upon by the president is a small part of a much larger 8.2 million acres that were approved for oil and gas development by Congress last month in one of its last acts before adjournment.

Of course, the usual suspects are up in arms over this. But it’s a good move to cut our dependence on foreign oil. We should just stick with our NAFTA partners, if we can. No more Mid-East Oil. 

Thursday, January 04, 2007

W.A.G.D.!!! * (We’re All Gonna Die!!!)

I really think modern leftism is largely a depressed mental outlook. Witness the doom and gloom they constantly peddle in eco-disasters and claims the government is going to imprison everyone or was behind Katrina and 9/11, Another idea being peddled by the left is peak oil. The idea is that we are reaching the limits of oil production and soon, it will all come to and end.

Food shortages, cars abandoned, another depression. It’s the stuff of nightmares — and the type of future an eclectic group of engineers, computer experts and others in Seattle believe could await us. (sounds like Bill Murray’s speech from Ghostbusters. H)

They’re not religious zealots predicting Armageddon, nor survivalists digging bomb shelters. They believe the world is about to start running out of gas. (And how does that not make them zealots? H)

Literally.

Members of Seattle Peak Oil Awareness expect world production of oil and gasoline to peak soon, if it hasn’t already, and hard times to follow. Similar groups are popping up around the country from Boston to Portland, despite oil-industry assertions that there’s nothing to worry about.

How bad things could get depends on whom you talk to. Some peak-oilers expect car travel to largely disappear and food supplies, which depend heavily on fuel to produce and distribute, to decline.

“We’re probably going to end up with some sort of die-off in the world, of people,” said Rocky Willson, a Seattle Peak Oil Awareness member with an unsettling outlook

Gosh, another doom and gloom scenario. Except, we can switch to ethanol at any time (and should have by now except for a lack of urgency in the government), Oil prices have been falling again recently. Oops.

The fact is, we keep finding oil all over the place. And we have vast amounts of oil in oil shale deposits in North America that are vaster than the fields of Saudi Arabia. We’re just starting to tap into them. Saudi Arabia has been selling their oil since the 1940s. I think it’s safe to assume we’ll be fine, considering we have large oil fields still untapped in the US.

Here’s what an article says about the tar sands fields in Canada, by way of example.

Oil sands currently represent 40% of Alberta’s total oil production and about one-third of all the oil produced by Canada. By 2005, oil sands production is expected to represent 50% of Canada’s total crude oil output and 10% of North American production. Although tar sands occur in more than 70 countries, the two largest are Canada and Venezuela, with the bulk being found in four different regions of Alberta, Canada: areas of Athabasca, Wabasha, Cold Lake and Peace River. The sum of these covers an area of nearly 77,000 km2. In fact, the reserve that is deemed to be technologically retrievable today is estimated at 280-300Gb (billion barrels). This is larger than the Saudi Arabia oil reserves, which are estimated at 240Gb. The total reserves for Alberta, including oil not recoverable using current technology, are estimated at 1,700- 2,500Gb.

More importantly, the rush is on to replace oil with other fuels and energy sources and we’re making great progress.