If Ethanol Fuel isn't the answer, what is?

[battleknight24]

Electric cars? Or is there a type of renewable fuel out there that isn't getting much attention?

[muntrv]

1. Biodiesel is out there. I think the problem is more with CORN BASED

ethanol, since it uses food for fuel. Switchgrass and algae are better sources with greater yields.

[aint_no_life_nowhere]

2. Algae apparently provide both biodiesel and ethanol

After they squeeze the oil out of it, they can use the rest to make ethanol. And it can grow in salt water or brackish water, meaning that it doesn't necessarily have to use fresh water, a dwindling resource. And supposedly algae produces more biodiesel oil per acre than any other growing thing by far.

http://gas2.org/2008/03/29/first-algae-biodiesel-plant-goes-online-april-1-2008/

"...Microalgae have garnered considerable attention, since acre-by-acre microalgae can produce 30-100 times the oil yield of soybeans on marginal land and in brackish water. The biomass left-over from oil-pressing can either be fed to cattle as a protein supplement, or fermented into ethanol. ..."

[MilesColtrane]

87. Wow, cars can run on pond scum?

Cheney could power a fleet of 18-wheelers for a month!

[jwirr]

6. With any plant based fuel the problem is land use. If you use land

that can grow food for growing plants for fuel then you are in trouble. If they can come up with something that grows in marginal land then it might work.

[dysfunctional press]

46. how about algae grown in plastic tubes in the desert...??

http://www.ecogeek.org/content/view/1490/70/

[dkofos]

68. Like Hemp maybe??

[HeresyLives]

3. Hydrogen

[gristy]

5. Hydrogen is not a primary energy source

Most of it is made from natural gas.

[krispos42]

50. But it can be

Electralysis of water by renewable means. Natural gas is the cheapest, though. Frankly, we'd save more carbon by pumping that renewable electralysis energy into electric heating of our homes and hot water.

[Solon]

72. How many renewable powerplants would you need to create about 400 million gallons of hydrogen a day?

That is the problem, scale, there is no way in hell that hydrogen would ever be a practical alternative to gasoline.

[krispos42]

94. That's why we need to pump the renewable energy into regular use first

First to replace coal power plants, then to replace natural gas power plants, then to replace natural gas as a home and commercial heating source.

If after we get all that done, THEN we can start making hydrogen.

Or we can use renewable electricity to distill ethanol from non-food sources, such as hemp.

[lapfog_1]

7. Hydrogen is not a fuel

it's a energy carrier. To say hydrogen is to say "batteries".

(Hydrogen might be a very GOOD energy carrier, but it's not a fuel)

[HeresyLives]

12. Thank you. But it will be

hydrogen all the same.

[wildbilln864]

25. What!?

Hydrogen is an element and a gas. It's the first element on the periodic table and the lightest gas. Helium being the second. It's explosive in the presence of oxygen so it can be very dangerous. But it can be a fuel as long as oxygen is also used.
Energy carrier!? What does that even mean?

[HeresyLives]

26. I'm familiar with hydrogen

'Honda President Takeo Fukui, however, doesn’t seem too worried about that issue, confidently stating “When the demand is there, it will happen.” That’s the kind of forward thinking that seems to be leading Honda to make this major push in the first place. Now that the seal is broken, it’s likely that other automakers will follow with a sense of urgency.'

The Honda FCX Clarity is out this year.

We are moving to the hydrogen economy.

[wildbilln864]

27. Go hydrogen go. Thanks.

:hi:

[lapfog_1]

54. Yes, hydrogen is all that you say.

not to mention the most abundant element in the universe.

Unfortunately, there just isn't very much laying about HERE that is in the form of H2 or Hydrogen gas.

It has this uncanny nack for combining with other elements. Like, say, H2O. Thats great, but breaking the bonding energies to free hydrogen so we can use it requires a great deal of energy. In fact, the same amount of energy that is release when you "burn" hydrogen again (2H2 + O2 = 2H2O for example).

So, I run down to the local filling station and "fill 'er up" with hydrogen gas (safely storing H2 is another issues, but at least it's tractable). I start driving and either "burn" H2 in my handy dandy fuel cell, producing lots of energy and some water vapor OR I burn some H2 in my HICE (hydrogen internal combustion engine) and produce some heat and mechanical motion that I translate into wheels turning and I make some water and some other (trace) not so nice compounds.

Wonderful.

The only problem is WHERE did the filling station come up with the H2 I filled up with?

Well, they MIGHT have got it the same way you did as a kid in chemistry class. They stuck some electrodes in a vat of water, turned on the juice and collected the bubbles (only need to collect the H2 bubbles, the O2 can be in the atmosphere roaming around just waiting to combine with the H2 you collected and go back to being water). Unfortunately that takes just a whole bunch of electricity from somewhere. Just huge amounts.

So you are back to square one. How do you make the electricity in the first place? nuclear, hydro, wind, solar, coal, natural gas, or, god forbid, crude oil? And when you do that, you have made hydrogen into an "energy carrier" (by creating the H2 in one place - at the factory - you have created a great deal of potential energy - and now you "carry" that energy around by filling high pressure tanks with H2 - waiting for the time you will need the energy as kinetic energy. But it's the same energy that you "stored" at the hydrogen gas factory.


So, unless we develop technology to go to space and retrieve free hydrogen, hydrogen is NOT an energy source.

BTW, the most common way today to make H2 is to "split" natural gas or methane, usually using nuclear power as the source for doing so, and, as a result, producing CO2 as a byproduct. Oops.

[Solon]

71. It means that it takes more energy to make the Hydrogen than what you get out of it...

Hydrogen is made from water, and requires a shitload of electricity to be split from oxygen atoms. It doesn't create new energy, because you require energy to make it in the first place, so its an energy carrier, not a producer. It would be different if we had vast hydrogen deposits under the ground, and all we had to do was pump it out and fill our cars with it, but that simply isn't the case.

[lapfog_1]

76. Thank you...

Someone who understands.

The responses to my response show a great deal of not understanding.

[Solon]

78. I just don't understand why people argue so strenously against basic science...

Hell, I learned this in High School, even made hydrogen in the highschool lab, filled a balloon with it too after it was compressed. No big deal, it is quite easy to make, the problem is that it took a lot of electricity to do so. Hydrogen isn't like oil, natural gas, or coal, for those sources of fuel are sources of fuel because they are ALREADY in an immediately usable form. You can dig or pump any of them out of the ground and immediately burn them as a source of fuel if needed. Yes, in the case of oil, refining is used to distill it into more usable forms, but even then, you put far less energy into making those fuels than what you get out of them. That is what makes a fuel source, hydrogen isn't a fuel source.

[jmowreader]

84. It's called an energy carrier because of its current EROEI

EROEI: energy returned over energy expended

They refer to hydrogen as an energy carrier because whether you extract it from petroleum or from water, it takes more energy to split the covalent bonds binding it to either carbon or hydrogen than you get by burning it. There's no such thing as free hydrogen--it will ALWAYS find an atom of something else to hook itself to.

[dkofos]

70. Don't tell that to Mike Strizki

watch these

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xEdQRVQtffw
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tt1uN38EcoQ&feature=related

[lapfog_1]

75. Did you watch the video and understand what he says???

All of his power comes from two sources... his solar PV array and from his passive ground heat exchange loop.

His hydrogen storage system (and electrolysis unit) use his solar generated power to make hydrogen gas and store it... for his use later when the solar array is not producing. Hydrogen is his secondary BATTERY system (used to store potential electricity).

And, oh, BTW, he has about $200,000 in "stuff" there to get off the grid. Maybe more (the commercial fuel cell he uses to turn the H2 back into electricity might cost $50K or more).

But in any case, he makes my point exactly. Hydrogen is NOT a fuel source, it is an energy "carrier" or storage media.

[rustydad]

98. IROEI

This guy is a fool. Did you see his power boat in the background? Doubt it runs on hydrogen. There is no way in hell that 270 million Americans can install and run such a system. Bob

[Jack_DeLeon]

44. used in fusion power plants to generate electricity....

eventually someday hopefully...

Hopefully something like the GM volt is successful and in the meantime we need more nuclear power plants in this critical moment while the oil starts to run out.

[lapfog_1]

90. They have been working on fusion

since I was a kid... containment and sustained fusion reaction are the big issues.

I don't think I will live to see it in commercial production (I'm getting old now and I have a congenitally bad heart).

Would have been nice.

Sort of like holographic TV.

Or the personal air/space vehicle (the Jetsons!).

Sigh.

[rustydad]

101. here is the deal

We are at world peak in oil extraction. For three years running the world is extracting 85 million barrels a day and using the same. India, China and other Asian nations are going first world in oil consumption. Their thirst comes first as they have the money. We don't. Nuclear might be a replacement for natural gas power generation but not for transportation fuel which is 95% oil. And nuclear takes 10+ years to get approvals in the US. The US was designed with the concept of cheap available oil forever. We now suffer a terrible fate because of that major misunderstanding of reality. Bob

[insleeforprez]

60. My chemistry professor at MIT

says that Hydrogen is not the answer. It's too expensive to store.

His opinion is good enough for me.

[lapfog_1]

77. well... there IS a great deal of work being done on storage

both as a gas (high pressure storage tanks) and in chemical bonds. My favorite area of research is storage in a nano-scale material.

However, he is correct, current methods of storage are not very good. Not to mention that they all leak. And then there is the problem of hydrogen embrittlement of metals... so even the very tubing you use to move hydrogen from tank to fuel cell or HICE has to be replaced every so often.

And, of course, the big problem is that we use more power to create the hydrogen than we get from using the hydrogen.

[nashville_brook]

4. maybe we don't have an answer yet. maybe the answer is we need more people/money

looking for answers.

[lapfog_1]

35. Do you know how much wind and solar energy

could have been produced for the $700 Billion the Iraq war has cost (and likely to be well over a trillion even if we exited today)?


3kw system is about $7000 installed (with rebates).

700,000,000,000 / 7,000 = 100,000,000 3 kw systems.

Assume that a 3kw can produce that amount 200 days a year for 6 hours a day.

3kw x 200 days x 6 hrs/day = 3,600 kwhrs / year.

x 20 years life cycle = 72,000 kwhrs.

100,000,000 systems x 72,000 kwhrs = 7,200,000,000,000 kwhrs or

7,200,000,000 Mwhrs or 7,200,000 Gwhrs or 7,200 TWhrs

7,200 Tera Watt hours of electricity (at today's cost), only installed on current existing rooftops and office buildings.

That would heat and cool a lot of homes AND provide most people with plugin transportation AND provide most industrial uses of energy. And we wouldn't really spend $7,000 for each 3 kw system. Not when we can achieve some economies of big scale.

We don't need studies or programs or new inventions...

We simply need to will and the leadership to just do it.

[nashville_brook]

80. WOW -- amazing numbers! thanks for this.

i've prolly been reading too much Kunstler, but the OP mentions autos, which is still a somewhat sticky area tech-wise. thing is, we're making amazing leaps in battery storage capacity, which is one to skin the cat in terms of running autos (especially if the power to charge the batteries is coming from renewables like wind and solar).

[ret5hd]

8. Drastic changes of lifestyle and conservation...

I know it's scary, but it's the truth. And it will happen whether we face the reality now or later.

[noamnety]

29. Shhhhh.

Folks here still believe they can create infinite resources from a finite planet. It's like believing in Santa, it's not cool to spoil that little fantasy for them before they are ready.

[taterguy]

9. People power

Automobiles are good for some things but not all things.

Unless you're traveling long distances or carrying lots of cargo you'd be better off walking or riding a bike.

Sadly, this simple truth will never sink in, and people will endlessly quibble about the definition of "long distance" or "lots of cargo."

The basic fact is that people drive too much but no politician is dumb enough to say that out loud, which is one of the flaws of democracy. All things considered, democracy beats the alternatives though.

[Fox Mulder]

10. Uhhh...solar?

[CRF450]

11. Electricity, but then theirs the battarie problem...

[kristopher]

13. Biofuels are part of the answer, but battery electric is where the personal transportation

Biofuels are part of the answer, but battery electric is where the personal transportation sector is moving.

An internal combustion engine is very inefficient; around 12% of the energy in the fuel you pump into your car is actually used to push it down the road. The rest is mostly wasted as heat.
A battery electric drive using the latest lithium ion batteries transfers nearly 99% of its input energy to the motors, which are themselves over 90% efficient.

Lithium ion batteries use different elements to help store the electricity. One that they tried had a problem with catching fire. That material was changed. They are safe, but they are still expensive. Most automakers are planning to start offering hundreds of thousands of electric drive cars by 2011. That will help startup battery factories etc that make components. By 2015, you'll probably own at least one plug in battery electric, and you'll be able to drive more than 500 miles on a charge.

Liquid fuels have a great deal of energy packed into very little mass. We will still need that energy density in heavy industrial equipment and shipping. Biofuels are the best bet for meeting those needs.

All of that..... probably.

[notesdev]

14. The answer is nuclear power

There's no other source out there that can generate enough power to be significant while having that little impact on the environment.

[Liberal In Texas]

33. Storing nuculear waste for 10,000 years is not "little impact on the environment.".

Solar, geothermal, wind, and the power of the tides is renewable and CAN generate enough power for our civilization.

[bean fidhleir]

38. Nuclear is probably the best short-term solution, but it can't last

Fusion is the only real long-term solution, or, failing that, geophysical ones.

[madrchsod]

15. electric and bio/algae-fuels

[The2ndWheel]

16. What exactly is the question?

Can we use more energy, of any source, and decrease our environmental impact? The answer would be no. That goes for oil, coal, solar, wind, whatever. Simply existing impacts the environment. When we increase our ability to extract and harness energy from the environment, we increase our impact. We don't get to escape physical reality.

[baldguy]

17. There's not just ONE answer.

Ethanol, biodesiel, hydrogen, nuclear, solar, geothermal and probably a few others will all replace fossil fuels.

[nichomachus]

18. The answer is

that we will find alternative sources when the oil companies who run our government run out of oil to suck out of the ground, sell to us at extortionate prices, and make obscene profits. As long as petroleum is turning people into trillionaires, and those people run our government, nothing will change.

[juno jones]

19. HEMP.

Is edible, makes great biodiesel, plastics, etc, does what ever oil does. Can be raised on marginal land currently out of food production with no chemicals, etc etc etc.

HEMP! It's the real thing!

[underseasurveyor]

20. Hemp!

I am convinced hemp could save the world.

I'm sure there's gotta be a way to use it to power almost anything..

[JohnyCanuck]

21. The paradox of production

One of the things that makes the challenge of peak oil so insidious, and so resistant to quick fixes, is the way in which many things that seem like ingredients of a solution are actually part of the problem. Petroleum provides so much of the energy and so many of the raw materials we take for granted today that the impacts of declining oil production extend much further than a first glance would suggest.

Read through discussions of the energy future of industrial society from a few years back, for example, and you’ll find that many of them treat the price of coal and the price of oil as independent variables, linked only by the market forces that turn price increases in one into an excuse for bidding up the price of the other. What these analyses missed, of course, is that the machinery used to mine coal and the trains used to transport it are powered by diesel oil. When the price of diesel goes up, the cost of coal mining goes up; when supplies of diesel run short in coal-producing countries – as they have in China in recent months – the supply of coal runs into unexpected hiccups as well.

I’ve pointed out in previous posts here that every other energy source currently used in modern societies gets a substantial “energy subsidy” from oil. Thus, to continue the example, oil contains about three times as much useful energy per unit weight as coal does, and oil also takes a lot less energy to extract from the ground, process, and transport to the end user than coal does. Modern coal production benefits from these efficiencies. If coal had to be mined, processed, and shipped using coal-burning equipment, those efficiencies would be lost, and a sizeable fraction of total coal production would have to go to meet the energy costs of the coal industry.

The same thing, of course, is true of every other alternative energy source to a greater or lesser degree: the energy used in uranium mining and reactor construction, for example, comes from diesel rather than nuclear power, just as sunlight doesn’t make solar panels. What rarely seems to have been noticed, however, is the way these “energy subsidies” intersect with the challenges of declining petroleum production to boobytrap the future of energy production in industrial societies. The boobytrap in question is an effect I’ve named the paradox of production.

It’s crucial to understand that the problem with our society’s reliance on petroleum is not simply that petroleum will become scarce in the future, and will have to be replaced by less concentrated or less abundant fuels. It’s that a huge proportion of industrial society’s capital plant – the collection of tools, artifacts, trained personnel, social structures, information resources, and human geography that provide the productive basis for society – was designed and built to use petroleum-derived fuels, and only petroleum-derived fuels. Converting that capital plant to anything else involves much more than just providing another energy source.

Consider the difficulties that would be involved in building the sort of hydrogen economy so often touted as the solution to our approaching energy crisis. We’ll grant for the moment that the massive amounts of electricity needed to turn seawater into hydrogen gas in sufficient volume to matter turn out to be available somehow, despite the severe challenges facing every option proposed so far. Getting the electricity to make the hydrogen, though, is only the first of a series of tasks with huge price tags in money, energy, raw materials, labor, and time.

Hydrogen, after all, can’t be poured into the gas tank of a gasoline-powered car. For that matter, it can’t be dispensed from today’s gas pumps, or stored in the tanks at today’s filling stations, or shipped there by the pipelines and tanker trucks currently used to get gasoline and diesel fuel to the point of sale. Every motor vehicle on the roads, along with the vast infrastructure built up over a century to fuel them with petroleum products, would have to be replaced in order to use hydrogen as a transport fuel.

SNIP

Factor the impact of declining oil production into this equation and the true scale of the challenge before us becomes a little clearer. Building a hydrogen infrastructure – from power plants and hydrogen generation facilities, through pipelines and distribution systems, to hydrogen filling stations and hundreds of millions of hydrogen-powered cars and trucks – will, among many other things, take a very large amount of oil. Some of the oil will be used directly, by construction equipment, trucks hauling parts to the new plants, and the like; much more will be used indirectly, since nearly every commodity and service for sale in the industrial world today relies on petroleum in one way or another. Until a substantial portion of the hydrogen system is in place, it won’t be possible to use hydrogen to supplement dwindling petroleum production, which is already coming under worldwide strain as demand pushes up against the limits of supply. Instead, the fuel costs of building the hydrogen economy add an additional source of demand, pushing fuel prices higher and making scarce fuel even less available for other uses.

The same thing is true of any other alternative energy system that attempts to replace petroleum in its current uses. The costs differ, depending on how much of the existing infrastructure has to be replaced, but there’s always a price tag – and a large portion of the energy needed will have to come from petroleum, because that’s the energy source our society uses for a great many of its crucial needs. If the new energy source can be produced and used by existing infrastructure with minimal modification, this effect may well be small enough to discount, but it is always there.

http://thearchdruidreport.blogspot.com/2008/03/paradox-of-production.html

Another factor to bear in mind is that to date our economies have been based on continuous growth and that growth has been easy to maintain because, for the most part, as we needed more energy to allow for economic growth we simply pumped more oil out of the ground. If we can't rely on oil to provide ever increasing quantities of energy year after year, then whatever alternative sources we turn to will also have to be scalable and readily increased year by year to take up the slack left by declining oil production and at the same time provide ever increasing quantities of overall net energy to the economy. That is, if we insist that economic growth must be maintained come hell or high water - as most economists and politicians tell us is the case. Here are some more links in a post I started on this topic a few weeks ago:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x3201026

[otherlander]

22. Here's an idea

I have no idea if this could actually work, because I'm not a scientist or anything- but you know how there's garbage collection and recycling collection? What if there was some kind of plant-waste collecting truck that went to everyone's house and people left bins full of things like apple cores and banana peels and corn cobs and used tea bags on their curbs, and then the truck could take it to a place where it could be converted into fuel and sold at stations?

And then there could be sharks with motherfucking lazer beams on their heads!

[noamnety]

28. Or ...

people could just compost that stuff in their own yards, and grow their own vegetables, getting rid of the need for fuel to make fertilizers that poison the environment, getting rid of fuel to transport the fertilizers to the farmers, getting rid of the fuel to truck the produce to the stores, getting rid of the fuel we need to drive to the stores for produce and the fuel we need to make the plastic that's used to package the produce, and eliminating the need for the fuel for big trucks to drive all over the place collecting the stuff that should be enriching our own soils.

We need a shift in attitude, not more centralization of nutrients and high tech methods to convert those nutrients into something useful and ship them back to us.

Less trucks, more worms.

[MilesColtrane]

89. Nice idea.

But, most of the people on my block don't even mow their own lawns any more.

I'm one of the last renters of the old 50's cinder block duplexes that used to make up over half of my neighborhood. In the past ten years I've seen these replaced by $700,000-$1.2 million McMansions.

It would take an economic downturn of biblical proportions to get these people to grow their own vegetables.

[noamnety]

91. All the same, that's what needs to happen.

We will not find a sustainable solution to living in unsustainable ways. People will need to rip out their lawns and switch to permaculture.

I don't see the point in putting all the energy into trying to create and impose a resource-intensive system of recycling kitchen scraps, when that system is based on flawed unsustainable goals in the first place.

[wildbilln864]

23. I like biodiesels...

especially hempseed oil! :banghead:

[AP]

24. Solar & Hydrogen

Honda has a hydrogen car that goes about 250 miles on a charge. They're also selling a hydrogen generating unit that you can hook up at home. It runs on electricity. Honda bought a company that makes solar cells. This hydrogen unit -- it's designed so that it can charge your cars hydrogen unit...and so that you can run your house on the hydrogen too.

[dkofos]

74. Looks like Honda will be leading the charge in solar/hydrogen technology.

I'm not sure how big a reversible fuel cell or the solar cells to power it
would have to be to generate enough hydrogen to operate a small car, but I'm
guessing it would be smaller than a washer or drier.

Off to find some answers.

[CK_John]

30. Buy, build or invest in rickshaws and learn to weld. n/t

[aint_no_life_nowhere]

31. Or the Thai Tuk Tuk

[pinto]

32. Sugar cane, conservation, mass transit - as a start. n/t

[Selatius]

52. Not a popular answer with people who want to maintain the car lifestyle of now.

Mass transit like Europe would go a long way towards insulating against a depleted oil market.

[ColbertWatcher]

34. The answer is: don't listen to the oil companies for solutions!

Ethanol is part of the solution, but not the exclusive and omni-solution.

A mix of previous answers while avoiding dirty stuff like coal and batteries.

[Regret My New Name]

36. really big hamster wheels.

[JohnyCanuck]

37. We're Driving Toward Disaster

Wake Up, America. We're Driving Toward Disaster.

By James Howard Kunstler


Everywhere I go these days, talking about the global energy predicament on the college lecture circuit or at environmental conferences, I hear an increasingly shrill cry for "solutions." This is just another symptom of the delusional thinking that now grips the nation, especially among the educated and well-intentioned.

I say this because I detect in this strident plea the desperate wish to keep our "Happy Motoring" utopia running by means other than oil and its byproducts. But the truth is that no combination of solar, wind and nuclear power, ethanol, biodiesel, tar sands and used French-fry oil will allow us to power Wal-Mart, Disney World and the interstate highway system -- or even a fraction of these things -- in the future. We have to make other arrangements.

The public, and especially the mainstream media, misunderstands the "peak oil" story. It's not about running out of oil. It's about the instabilities that will shake the complex systems of daily life as soon as the global demand for oil exceeds the global supply. These systems can be listed concisely:

The way we produce food

The way we conduct commerce and trade

The way we travel

The way we occupy the land

The way we acquire and spend capital

And there are others: governance, health care, education and more.

SNIP

So what are intelligent responses to our predicament? First, we'll have to dramatically reorganize the everyday activities of American life. We'll have to grow our food closer to home, in a manner that will require more human attention. In fact, agriculture needs to return to the center of economic life. We'll have to restore local economic networks -- the very networks that the big-box stores systematically destroyed -- made of fine-grained layers of wholesalers, middlemen and retailers.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/05/23/AR2008052302456.html

[natrat]

39. population needs to come down by 2/3 rds

[aint_no_life_nowhere]

40. THAT is something few people want to discuss

But I think it's an essential part of the equation, not only for America but for the rest of the world as well. The problem is having the type of international leadership to get the people of the earth to do it voluntarily, without forcing authoritarian solutions on them.

[iaviate1]

43. The problem is also religion...

The silliness about birth control being evil is driving poverty and causing unsustainable populations.

[Zynx]

92. Most economic models call for ever growing populations.

Religion is but one reason. The atheistic government of Romania during the Cold War made abortion illegal to try to get population growth up.

[apocalypsehow]

49. Such sweeping statements about reducing human population tend to creep me out a bit.

What are your specific proposals to accomplish such dramatic reductions in human population, please? :shrug:

[natrat]

67. an overpoppulated dying planet in the midst of an extinction event kind of creeps me out

[apocalypsehow]

96. That wasn't my question. Take a peek at #49 one more time and try again. n/t.

[HughBeaumont]

53. I did MY part!

"But won't you regret it later on in life? Children are wonderful!"

Uh, why can't just ONE kid (which is what we have currently) be wonderful? Where is it commanded that a family must have a litter of them? Glad some people can be that generous to condemn me to a prison of debt for the rest of my life, all because of some weird societal quirk that families aren't really families unless they have more than one child.

I mean, if one can afford it (not sure the planet can), then by all means have them. If I had a nickel for every person who chided me for getting snipped (including my wife), I'd have gas money for the month. I call it a financially responsible and environmentally sound decision.

[insleeforprez]

61. As did I :)

but it was effortless on my part.

[HughBeaumont]

97. Literally as painless as going to the dentist.

I thought it'd be some big deal and I'd be walking around like I got kicked . . . down there. Nope. Never happened. I was walking up and down steps literally hours after it happened.

[LWolf]

58. The ultimate solution

that few want to confront. :(

[Pavulon]

64. In a closed system, it will self regulate

ie natural things will cause on overpopulation to return to its natural carrying capacity.

It does not require us to "cull the herd".

[LWolf]

65. Let's be clear:

I don't support "culling the herd."

I do support negative population GROWTH.

I'd prefer a conscious human decision to achieve optimum carrying capacity without impacting the rest of the living world, than I would the self-regulation of disease, starvation, and war.

[Pavulon]

79. Was not implying

that you did. People get really antsy with this subject. However it is a reality and development is not sustainable. We will continue to destroy important systems that regulate the planet and those systems will trigger events that have negative consequences.

[LWolf]

82. That IS reality,

if humanity does not consciously choose to reach that balance by choice.

It's probably easier for me than for many; I don't come from a large family, or a culture that venerates large families. I'm the only child of an only child. I chose to have 2 children, and they've chosen to remain childless, (one of them,) and to limit children to just one, in the case of the other.

Four generations away from my mother, there's still just one person in the family line.

There are many people in this generation who would not voluntarily limit their child bearing. We will never evolve to that point, though, if the conversation isn't opened.

If human society refuses to acknowledge the primary cause of so many disasters, we choose to embrace, rather than avoid, the consequences.

[bean fidhleir]

83. Better watch out - there are a lot of people at DU who are committed

to selfishness as a way of life. They see no reason why they shouldn't have as many kids as they want, and to hell with anyone who pleads the cause of non-humans.

[derby378]

41. Corn-based ethanol is threatening the world's food supply

'Nuff said.

[hornblast]

45. got numbers to back that up?

Trust me, I'm no fan of corn-based ethanol. But I heard recently that only 8% of the corn crop goes to human food. The majority goes to.. what then? Animal feed. High fructose corn syrup. Plastics and fabrics. Heat. Lots of stuff. I honestly don't know, and I am not trying to provoke a fight with you. But I don't think biofuels are the Great Evil they're being made out to be. I personally think high fructose corn syrup is a much greater "enemy" than ethanol. What good does HFCS do? Makes our children _and adults_ temporarily hyper, then depressed, and causes weight gain. (rant, rant, rant...)

Here's a curious note: According to the Wikipedia entry on maize (nee corn), the entry, January 2008, of maize among the commercial agreements of NAFTA caused "the price of maize in Mexico fell 70% between 1994 and 2001." That had a direct impact on Mexican farmers. And now, seven to fourteen years later, the price of corn has spiked. What causes this spiking of food prices? I wager it's not just one thing. Yes, demand for corn that goes into corn-based ethanol production will have an impact. But it's not alone. Could it be the speculators that drive our ever-fair and not-harming-anyone capitalist markets? Who says it's not them?

[natrat]

69. that's the other problem-livestock production is very inefficient and wasteful

[galledgoblin]

42. electric trolleys

no, I am in fact being serious. we should rebuild the old electric trolley system for day-to-day transit and cover the power with a mix of renewable resources like hydro, solar and wind.

if you still need a car (or truck, or tractor), alright, hybrid engines and such should cover that- but very few should need automobiles.

we also need to free up money for development of cleaner, eco-friendly technologies. we've WASTED the brain power of every generation since about 1955 or so. what have we asked our engineers to do? build bigger and more wasteful. we actually asked them to develop technology that BREAKS DOWN and needs replacing every 5 years.

I hope that future generations will look back and be shocked by how stupid this nation was. I hope even more that we haven't been so stupid as to eliminate a future for our next generations.

[apocalypsehow]

47. Nuclear. Solar. Wind. In that order. n/t.

[Horse with no Name]

48. What many fail to realize

is one of the MAIN REASONS that anyone is hustling to come up with alternative fuels is because THEY want a piece of the pie and with prices the way they are...they are willing to throw their hat in the ring for some of those record profits. It doesn't matter if they can make gasoline out of the most abundant source on earth...the price is NOT going to go down. It will NOT be to the benefit of the people...it will be to the benefit of the corporation. There is NO turning back now. We have paid these prices so we will continue to pay the prices.
The FIRST thing that needs to be done is to nationalize the oil companies. Screw Exxon et al. Screw their interests.
They have gotten their profits in spades for what they have contributed.
Of course, that isn't going to happen...but it needs to.

[krispos42]

51. Electric cars using ultracapacitors

"Gas stations" would be able to recharge an ultracapacitor in only a few minutes, as opposed to overnight for battery.

Ultracapacitors hold their charge mechanically, not chemically, and so they can recharge and discharge much faster and at higher amperages than conventional batteries like litium-ion or nickel-metal-hydride.

The question becomes, "where do we get the extra electricity to charge up these ultracapacitor?"



Obviously the dramatic expansion of both domestic and commercial solar and wind power. In fact, there is no reason we can't have acres of solar cells floating on top of otherwise-unused ocean. Just mark it on the charts so people don't go fishing or whatever among them.

Also things like hydroelectric power plants and ocean-wave-generators. How about tapping into the geothermal potential of the West Coast?



If we ever got around to building the Space Elevator, we'd have a cheap, easy, and dependable transport to space. Simply make the tether as shown in the picture, but instead of a counterweight you just keep extending the tether out about 40,000 miles or so. At the end of the tether is Earth escape velocity. We could dump tons of toxic material into the empty reaches of space just by hauling to the end of the tether and letting it go at the right time.

We could build electromagnetic accelerators at various altitudes on the tether to launch satellites into orbit. More specifically, we could build solar-power collecting satellites that would have acres of photovoltaic cells each, and beam the power down to collection grids via microwaves.

[krispos42]

66. Oh, forgot to post the pic

[NuttyFluffers]

55. Love... oh wait! sorry.

:blush:

[slackmaster]

56. Everyone keeping their tires properly inflated would make a big difference

:hi:

[Vinca]

57. I swear I heard a blurb about Volvo working on a car that creates

its own electricity with something in the wheels. That would make sense.

[nashville_brook]

81. that's a Hub Motor -- here's more -->

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hub_motor


Hub motor


A hub motor is an electric motor built directly into the hub of a wheel. A purported advantage of this design is that no additional transmission system is needed, thereby increasing the efficiency of the drive system. However, because electric motors are most efficient at high rates of revolution, direct drive hub motors tend to be inefficient. Integrated planetary gear drivetrains are sometimes included, but re-introduce transmission losses. They are commonly found on motorized bicycles. Hub Motor Electromagnetic fields are supplied to the stationary windings of the motor. The outer part of the motor follows, or tries to follow, those fields, turning the wheel to which it is attached. Energy is transferred to a brushed motor through physical contact of brushes to the rotating shaft of the motor. Energy is transferred to a brushless motor electronically, requiring no physical contact between stationary and moving parts. Brushless motor technology is more expensive, but most are more efficient and longer-lasting than brushed motor systems. Most of the hub motors made in China are designed for bikes with Chinese dimensions but these conversion kits are made to suit western bike dimensions. Hub motors are not a new idea. In 1902 Ferdinand Porsche at age 27 working for Lohner developed hub motors which initially ran on lead acid batteries and soon after had a petrol generator to charge the batteries: the first Hybrid vehicles. <2> Hub motors can also be found on buses.

The proposed Zap-X Electric Vehicle envisioned to enter the market in 2010 "would use high-tech electric hub motors at all four wheels, delivering 644 horsepower to the ground from a lithium-ion battery pack. The hub motors would eliminate the need for transmission, axles and conventional brakes, opening up space beneath the floor for a giant battery pack."<1>

[Vinca]

88. Thanks for the information. It sounds like it might work on cars. nt

[NNN0LHI]

59. We need to start manufacturing real big versions of these

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yk71GY02diY

[Geek_Girl]

62. Improved hybrid technology that will eventually be a care that is majority battery operated

I have a hybrid now and I think as the technology improves one day will see cars who's battery is charged 100% using Kinetic energy. Solar panel cars may be another way to go or a combination of both.

I don't believe electric, ethanol or hydrogen are the way to go because they are not using renewable resources.

[Pavulon]

63. Westinghouse reactors and plug in hybrids ad $12,000

subsidized. Use the existing distribution grid. With the money we have wasted on Iraq we could have put them all out of business. We put men in space and on the moon. We could beef up the grid and swap people into safe plug in hybrids. This would cause a crash in the petroleum market. All remaining equipment can burned subsidized biofuel. Not because it it the solution but because it would help kill a problem.

The oil economies would die on the vine.

And it is a greenhouse gas saving plan. As none is created by splitting atoms.

[Solon]

73. I created a thread about that here...

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=389&topic_id=3329845

Just shows the reality of the situation.

[sarcasmo]

85. Put a few side panels and a front window on a four seater golf cart and ad

an extra battery, blinkers, and you have the intownmobile.

[GliderGuider]

86. It depends on how much time we have left before the oil supply begins to decline.

And whether or not there is going to be a global financial crunch (i.e. recession/depression) before or while that happens.

There are no liquid fuel alternatives that can directly replace any substantial fraction of the gasoline, diesel and jet fuel the world uses today. Neither ethanol (crop-based or cellulosic) nor biodiesel can be produced on the scale required. That inconvenient fact means that any replacement for ground transportation will have to rely on electricity. That shift means an enormous capital requirement for vehicle replacement and infrastructure upgrades. While that capital may be available in the USA and Europe, it may not be available in much of the rest of the world, especially if the global financial system completes its destabilization over the next two to five years.

Peak Oil analysts are now projecting a decline in the world oil supply of 25% or more within two decades, and perhaps a 50% decline in the oil available on the international export market in the same time period -- with all the price escalation and economic dislocation that implies.

We will need a complete global restructuring of society do deal with it. Nothing else will do the job.

[Sam Ervin jret]

93. Ford had Hemp in mind not just to run the car but also for the body of the car.

Why would anyone stop growing food to grow fuel?

Hemp fuel crops can be grown in less hospitable places than corn crops. There will need to be many roads to the place of fuel independence. We can not let parochial ideas of drug use stand in the way of development of one such resource.

[Doctor Cynic]

95. This:

[jeffrey_X]

99. Algae

http://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla%3Aen-US%3Aofficial&channel=s&hl=en&q=Algae+farm+alternative+energy&btnG=Google+Search

[Ferd Berfle]

100. It has to be a multi-pronged approached

Electricity is probably the best bet form the foreseeable future because we cannot afford to produce more greenhouse gases. The only question is how to harvest it.

Wind
Hydro (falling, tide, river flow, temperature inversion, etc)
geothermal
solar
Hydrogen(on demand as a stop gap)

Each implemented where it makes sense.

[shimmergal]

102. Two -and-a-half possible solutions:

1. Biofuel (This could be implemented pretty fast if someone would design a fairly inexpensive retro-conversion to be applied to existing cars. I hope some engineeers are working on it!

2. Biofuel + electric hybrids

or,

3. The compressed-air car an Indian company is developing.

We need to cut the market for those expensive oil products, and do it fast. Our society has grown up around the automobile; trying to eliminate it soon would probably be more expensive and socially disruptive than those pushing "everybody walk, or ride bicycles," can imagine. For one thing, a fair number of people aren't physically able to transport themselves by either of those means. Do we have the resources to provide them all with meals-on-wheels, for example? And that's just one type of the disruption; there are dozens of others.