Again Energy

Again Energy

Interesting that I had hardly sent an essay stating no sign of the government changing anything about drilling, than Bush announced a 4 point plan basically for doing that. Of course the dems will oppose it as they have the several times previously that he has called upon them to allow drilling. This is an election year and he may not be expecting anything, just doing it for politics. There is something different this time though, public opinion polls (for what they are worth) show 2/3 of the public now favor drilling, up sharply from less than half, just a few months ago. Maybe something is finally beginning to seep into some brains out there, or maybe $4 a gallon for gas is the tipping point. At any rate, we may actually get something done this time. I am not urging you to contact politicians either way, what you want to do is up to you. I am not interested in politics, just energy. Unfortunately, the current main problem with energy is political, and energy needs are getting critical.

Also, I am appaled that this once proud nation has been reduced to begging the Saudis to increase their production, rather than increasing our own.

I intend to give you facts, along with some opinions. The facts you need, the opinions, well, take them or leave them. The first thing to consider is the large population in this country, on the order of 304 million. The only way such a population can be supported on this amount of land is with a fairly high technology. That requires energy. Now we don't really need SUVs, we don't need to heat to 75 in winter and cool to 65 in summer. We don't need to live 50 miles from work and expect to drive there. However, I think it reasonable to stay somewhat comfortable, have adequate food, and a job that can be reached reasonably easily without living next to it. Without adequate energy at a reasonable cost, we are headed back to the stone age. An estimated 1 million indians lived here, that was all the land could support with stone age technology. Do you really want around 303 million people to die or have to move, just to avoid adequate energy supplies?

The point is that this many people need a good bit of technology and that technology absolutely requires a lot of energy, Energy needs are not optional.

The facts are these: currently our energy comes from petroleum, natural gas, and coal. It will continue to do so for some time. Currently our supplemental energy comes from nuclear, hydro, wind, solar, and bio. Wishing differently will not make it happen, steps have to be taken. Alternative energy is oil shale. Period. You can consider nuclear as it can be developed a great deal more, if we can get people to get over their fear of it. You can also add deep hot dry rock likely and methane hydrates, possibly . That is it. Ironic that the politicians are talking about taxing big oil to pay for alternative energy, when they prohibit the development of the only form of alternative energy currently possible. But that is politicians.

Wind and solar can be developed some more, but they are SUPPLEMENTAL sources, not ALTERNATIVE sources. The wind does not blow all the time. What are you going to do when it is not blowing? How are you going to move the energy around? Much the same goes for solar, which is not available half the time (predictably, day only), and often not even then (cloudy day). Solar also tends to cover up the land, which can not then be used to grow anything. These should be used wherever they make economic sense, but nowhere else, and you better not try to count on them for more than about 10, maybe 20% of the total. Wave is just another variations of wind. Tide is only supplemental.

Bio is even worse. By the government's own admission there is only enough land for about 25-30% of our fuel needs. There are other things land is needed for, not the least of which, we have to eat. Remember the law of conservation of energy, you can't create energy, only move it around. In effect, bio is merely collection of solar, using plants. The plants, or parts of them, are then turned into fuel. You can't get more bio than the land can raise.

Incidently, you may have heard something sounding like insect droppings can be converted into fuel. That isn't quite it. The "bugs" are micro-organisms, specifically yeast. Now yeast has long been used to produce ethanol from starch, by the well known fermentation process, long used to produce alcoholic beverages. Yeast digests the starch, producing ethanol, CO2, and water. These could be considered waste from the "bugs", but product of digestion is probably better. Ethanol is not a good fuel for several reasons and fermentation involves lots of water. Removal of water takes a lot of energy, making the overall efficiency even poorer. Someone has come up with a genetically engineered yeast that digests cellulose and produces a reasonable facsimile of crude oil. It can be refined just like petroleum crude, so is versitile, and without all that water and a more energetic fuel like gasoline, it is much more efficient. This is a good and importatnt development, but remember, it depends upon bio input, so can never be more than supplemental. It is a good way to clean up waste material.

It makes sense to convert waste material, lawn clipping, used cooking oil, etc. into fuel as you have to dispose of it anyway, but to grow crops for fuel does not make much sense. Switch grass on marginal land not used for anything else makes some sense as it protects and builds the land and you can have it collect a good bit of solar, but growing corn for ethanol is insane. Anyone who passes on blather about we could shift to alternative sources such as bio, has not done their homework, checked the facts, done the math. With one tenth the present population, bio would be feasable, with the present population it can only be supplemental.

And the population is growing. China gets a lot of flak for their one child per family policy, but it makes a lot more sense than everyone having a whole bunch of kids and not taking into account the population growth. At 2% a year, our energy needs must not just be met, growth has to be accounted for. We can't sit still. Most people seem to understand we have to build a lot more houses and apartments for all those additional people. What is so hard to understand that we also need to build lots of power plants and some refineries? As long as the population grows, energy supply must grow. I am all for conservation, but with a growing population it only buys you a little time. You still need an ever larger supply of energy.

Nuclear makes a good deal of sense. There is the waste to get rid of, but it can be sequestered and really is not that much of a problem. It takes a long time to build a nuclear plant and they are expensive, but they produce much more power than typical plants, do it for less, and produce no pollution at all, except heat. Very clean, very good sources, we need a lot more of them. We are unlikely to get them because people are afraid of them.

The deep hot dry rock will probably get here on its own, but it might be well if the government would speed it up a bit by taking a few hundred million of the 10 billion annual ethanol subsidy and finance a few pilot plants to prove the concept and get things rolling. Absolutely no ongoing subsidy. Pay as you go or don't go.

Speaking of alternative, plug in cars are sort of alternative uses of energy, not sources. They allow grid energy to be used instead of fuel. Incidently, California is requiring 10% of cars sold in the state to be zero emmission, yet they don't even allow an adequate power system for their current needs. Makes a lot of sense.

In a way, our oil can be considered alternative energy, since we now import 2/3 of our oil. Wouldn't more of our own be a nice alternative? Now oil will not last forever and we need to have something else on line by the time it drops off, but that is not going to be as soon as many expected or still expect. There is a lot more oil than thought just a few years ago. New seismic techniques allow spotting oil that could not be seen just a few years ago, and it can be located to within 100 feet. Drilling can now be controlled amazingly, so is able to hit those tiny reservoirs, often several with one hole, kinda like stringing beads. They can turn a 90 degree corner in as little as 100 feet and drill horizontally about 4 miles, as well as going down 6. They can find and reach lots of oil that was not seen or was out of reach just a few years ago. The amount of known untapped oil has actually increased. For all its faults, oil has a lot of advantages and needs to be used at least until replacements are on line. The activists are looney for wanting to block it in favor of other, "alternative energy", before such is on line. Especially since many of their suggestions for alterative energy simply can't provide enough energy to meet current needs, let alone, future.

Note: that for ANWR, there is no real concern for the polar bears and other critters, as a mere 8 acre drilling site can drain about 50 square miles of oil. You would only need one every 6 or 8 miles across the frozen wasteland. The bears and caribou would hardly notice them, nor would the wolves, mosquitos or flies, and that is about the roster of critters in ANWR.

Note also that just as there is no such thing as a free lunch, there is no such thing as a business tax. Any business, in order to stay in business, has to pass on the tax to the consumers. They end up paying for it. Put more tax on big oil (Exxon Mobile reported $32 billion last year), and it will mean higher gas prices as they are a publicly held corporation and obliged to make money for their shareholders, which probably includes you if you have any sort of retirement plan. They would want to maintain their current profit margin, which is the same as it was clear back in the 70's. Their record profits result from record sales, both from increasing demand and the steep drop in the value of the dollar, which means the numbers are higher even if the value is the same. Look it up, they are all publicly held and have to report this stuff.

The idea that the government should tax their "windfall profits" and use it for "alternative energy" is a blatant money grab and is a misuse of terms. It is not a windfall, just the result of sales going up while the profit margin stays unchanged. How much of it do you think would actually go for energy of any kind, and how much into general funds or other projects? Maybe now is a good time to point out that if people are sloppy about the meaning of words it is easy to put things over on them. Maybe you don't care that a chimpanzee is not a monkey and should not be called one, but be careful about windfall profit. Also consensus of scientists. When a commitee of some scientific organization reports a consensus without even asking their members, that is a misuse of the term. Words mean things and a consensus is not a minority opinion. There are far more scientists who have signed statements of opposition to positions than the "consensus" signers of such things as man made CO2 causing global warming. Pay attention to words and their meaning and don't go along with misuse. Supplemental energy sources are not good alternative energy sources. They are different things.

Incidently, California pulled a big one a few years ago when they "deregulated" their power industry. Power companies were forced to sell generating capacity to wholsellers, then buy their power from them at whatever they charged, then sell to the consumers at fixed price. Predictably they ran out of money, with some declaring bankruptcy and others being bailed out by the government, which pretty well took over. All this regulation is not deregulation, but it sure gave deregulation a bad name. Now the government can do much as they please and people are glad to be protected from "deregulation". Words mean things.

Politiicians like to call things something else than what they are. For example, calling an amnesty bill "Immigration Reform". Later they can brag about their record showing they are for immigration reform when in fact they are no such thing. Watch words and what they mean. Don't be duped by assuming they are properly applied.

Keep in mind that renewable energy is currently only capable of supplemental energy needs. Except for nuclear (which is way behind) and hot dry rock (which isn't even much in development yet), all we have is carbon based fossil fuels. We have to use them, we have to produce lots of CO2. This makes the uproar over CO2 very important, critical even. More and more I am getting disgusted with it. I know I have probably bored people with info about other effects and I am going to add to that, but I think it is important for people to be informed that there are other explainations, more plausable explainations, and more going on here than you would think from the media coverage.

Always keep in mind the Goebbels Principle: Any lie told often enough will be believed. Global warming caused by man's use of fossil fuel usage is all pervasive, so much that a lot of people simply accept it now without a doubt. It is even in children's books and stated as simple fact. Any doubter is ridiculed, and "evidence" is presented with little thought and with no alternate explanation. Also keep in mind that science is what is reliable, scientists are not. They are simply people and have opinions and agendas too. Science insists on being open and claims being defended. That is what makes it work.

Little by little, it is being realized the sun is not such a steady star as often thought. Sunspot activity can vary its radiant output by almost a percent. Now that is not enough to notice as you stand in the sunlight on a bright day, but over time, it can add up, for example, The Little Ice Age. Someone checked on the possible effect of radiant increase over the last two centuries to show it could not account for the observed warming, but they left out an important secondary effect. When the sun is active, it sends out a lot of material, the solar wind. This cuts down on the cosmic rays reaching deep into the earth's atmosphere. Cosmic rays cause a shower of ions when they hit something, and those act as nuclei causing water to condense into clouds. These low clouds reflect sunlight and have a cooling effect. Active sun, fewer deep cosmic rays, fewer low clouds, less cooling, more heating. There is only good data available for the last century, so this cannot be ran back to cover all fossil fuel usage, but for the last century alone, it can account for 85% of the heating claimed for CO2 from ALL fossil fuel burning.

This is just one more of the larger effects known, such as the Malankovitch Cycles. I have mentioned some, by all means not all, and need not list them again. The point is that CO2 warming, if it occurs, is much less than a lot of known effects. In among all them, CO2 warming may not even be noticable, yet it is getting credit for all, and the other effects are being ignored. CO2 is a gnat. They are getting all carried away about a gnat buzzing around their nose while eagles are tearing off their scalp.

There is an old saying in Missouri: "If you don't like the weather in Missouri, just wait awhile". Weather changes. Often. Global warming can change weather patterns, so now it is popular to blame any change on global warming, not just changable weather. Unusually hot, global warming. Unusually cold, global warming. Too much rain, global warming. Drought, global warming. Wind, global warming. And of course fossil fuel burning causing the warming. Just because it could be does not make it so. You have to consider other possibilities. One of the common fallacies of formal logic is "Post hoc, ergo propter hoc". After this, therfore because of this. It can be extended to: if two events occur together, they are related. If you drive for hours on the interstate, at some point a car may run alongside for a ways. It it related to your trip? Do either of you have anything to do with each other?

If CO2 levels increase and the temperature rises, did it cause it? Perhaps the other way around? Perhaps each caused by a third factor? Perhaps neither has anything to do with the other? You cant just jump to conclusions, but a lot of people have. This whole thing has the bit in its teeth and is headed for a cliff. One thing you must consider is that there is a lot of power and money involved. Large amounts, huge amounts, even immense amounts. There may be many well meaning people involved, but there will no doubt be others in it for the money and power. Any time the UN is involved, watch out!

Real scientists who are not signatory to the bogus consensus, will tell you that human activity has probably had an effect on climate, but that they cannot yet even tell you whether the net effect is warming or cooling, let alone how much. Clearing land for agriculture has occured for about 5000 years whereas fossil fuels have only been burned for about 150 years and to any extent, for only about 100. I understand Algor's movie makes a big deal about glaciers that have shortened markedly since about 1850. Happen to remember what happened about then? The end of The Little Ice Age. So the melting was well under way before burning of fossil fuels to any extent. Doesn't that kinda indicate something else was more important?

I probably should wrap this up with some observations. If you think these are just opinions, look up the facts and come to you own conclusions.

There is firm evidence CO2 concentration has gone up from about 250 ppm to 380 ppm during the time of burning of fossil fuels, and firm evidence most of it was caused by the burning of the fossil fuels. There is shaky evidence for a slight temperature rise during that time. There is no consensus among scientists that significant warming has occured, and absolutely no consensus that it was caused by CO2. Anyway, if you consider what consensus actually means. There are other greenhouse gases, most notably water vapor, which is much more effective than CO2 and is responsible for the earth being warm enough to live on. There is no clear evidence yet what effect human activity has had, even whether it is warming or cooling. There are many and far stonger effects on the earth's climate than CO2, such as water vapor and clouds, not to mention solar activity and cycles.

Both candidates are in favor of cap and trade. Hang onto your wallet!