Centerfield

Regarding bio-fuel and corn: isn't there any reason to hope that some OTHER form of bio-fuel can be developed? To get ethanol from corn, you have to grow the corn, which takes months, and then ferment it.

I know that some work has already been done with some other, much more simple forms of organic life, I remember seeing something about algae or plankton or whatever. That seems like a much smarter tack than ethanol, although the corn lobby is bound to disagree.

Basically, with bio-fuel (and oil is basically a bio-fuel too, BTW, it just takes way too long to make), the idea is that photsynthesis captures the energy of the sun and stores it in a plant. The challenge with bio-fuel seems to be (and I know very little about this, so whoever kno.ws more feel free to correct me) to find a way to grow the plant matter as quickly as possible, condense the energy into a form that's energy-rich and stable enough for our purposes, and extract it by some form of chemical process that releases the enerrgy in a sound and efficient way.

As a gardener, I can't help but note that off the top of my head, corn doesn't see like a very quick and efficient way to store the sun's energy in order to eventually get ethanol. Corn takes a long time to grow, needs a lot of sun and food, and there's as much waste as their is corn that potentially can produce ethanol...all that stalk and cob, which granted might be useful for something, but still. So I hope we do more research with simpler organisms and that it pays off.

Of course we may find out that the simpler organisms can't yield a fuel that's engergy-dense enough without using a bunch of fuel to condense it. Maybe oil is such a good fuel because it was condensed for free with the benefit of time, and the only thing we can substitute for time to get a synthetic fuel that's as energy-dense is some sort of technological process that itself consumes a lot of fuel.

Our local paper ran an article yesterday explaining that America intends to open 10 new Nuclear Powerplants between Virginia and Mississippi in the next 10 years. This is important because Environmentalists have prevented any new Nuclear Power Plants in America since the mid 1970s. Apparently, seeing the Environmental Disaster that Oil consumption is wreaking on our planet with Global Warming, they've changed their minds and are now actively supporting Nuclear Power.

I think we're going to see a huge surge in Power Plants beyond these projected 10 as people wake up and realize Nuclear Power is a whole lot cleaner and cheaper than we've been led to believe.

BK: Corn is a poor way to get bio-fuel for all the reasons you listed, IMHO. But the corn lobby is really pushing it. Same goes for the soybean lobby and bio-diesel. Last time I checked the energy bills being pasted were explicitly written to only subsidize those specific fuels if derived directly from those crops. Regardless of whether they satisfy EROEI.

Kind of reminds me of “Collapse” by Jared Diamond. Where the kings and chiefs of past societies made decisions based on enriching themselves rather than the survival of their people.

A lot of research currently being done is on turning farm waste into ethanol but I haven't heard of anything even making it to pilot plant stage. During the bio-tech boom there was similar talk about growing drug with bugs. It never seemed to pan out once it left the lab. How many drug today come from modified organisms?

Ryan: Nuclear has it's own problem with EROEI. Especially if you don't reprocess the fuel.
I don't think it was just the environmentalists, the general public also didn't want Nuclear. Three Mile Island and Chernobyl scared a lot of folks. I have a lot of contact with people in the commercial nuclear power industry and quite frankly their attitude scares me. Just get a couple of drink in them and the stories start to come out. Use of illegal immigrants in the plant with fake i.d.'s and cost cutting above safety are quite scary. Regardless, I agree we are going to go nuclear in a big way.

For ethanol you need sugars, which means corn, beets, cane. IIRC the algae-type bio-fuel production is for methane production. Useful for natural-gas substitute, not so hot for auto fuel. It's not just producing the heat-caloric energy equivalents, they have to be in the right form for the intended use.

Current oil prices are mostly a function of world demand, political uncertainty, and OPEC's ability to hang together. Oil is fungible, so it doesn't much matter what any one country does (ask Chavez!) as much as what the collective producers and consumers do.

And for world consumption-flow fun, go check the import/export/production figures for China, and ask yourself where their overall surplus of 140M bbls/yr of oil and 6 billion cu m/yr of natural gas are going. No one seems to know.

To address the oil problem, there are really only three options (or a combination of them, of course):
- reduce consumption by raising the price via taxes, to the point where people will only by efficient products (especially cars).
- reduce consumption by legally mandating more efficient products (gas mileage requirements for SUVs being the most obvious, if not the most useful, example).
- reduce consumption via a massive recession.

Politics probably rule out the first two. At least until the third one kicks in. How depressing.

Geo-Greening by Example
By Thomas L. Friedman
March 27, 2005
The New York Times
How will future historians explain it? How will they possibly explain why President George W. Bush decided to ignore the energy crisis staring us in the face and chose instead to spend all his electoral capital on a futile effort to undo the New Deal, by partially privatizing Social Security? We are, quite simply, witnessing one of the greatest examples of misplaced priorities in the history of the U.S. presidency.

"Ah, Friedman, but you overstate the case." No, I understate it. Look at the opportunities our country is missing - and the risks we are assuming - by having a president and vice president who refuse to lift a finger to put together a "geo-green" strategy that would marry geopolitics, energy policy and environmentalism.

By doing nothing to lower U.S. oil consumption, we are financing both sides in the war on terrorism and strengthening the worst governments in the world. That is, we are financing the U.S. military with our tax dollars and we are financing the jihadists - and the Saudi, Sudanese and Iranian mosques and charities that support them - through our gasoline purchases. The oil boom is also entrenching the autocrats in Russia and Venezuela, which is becoming Castro's Cuba with oil. By doing nothing to reduce U.S. oil consumption we are also setting up a global competition with China for energy resources, including right on our doorstep in Canada and Venezuela. Don't kid yourself: China's foreign policy today is very simple - holding on to Taiwan and looking for oil.

Finally, by doing nothing to reduce U.S. oil consumption we are only hastening the climate change crisis, and the Bush officials who scoff at the science around this should hang their heads in shame. And it is only going to get worse the longer we do nothing. Wired magazine did an excellent piece in its April issue about hybrid cars, which get 40 to 50 miles to the gallon with very low emissions. One paragraph jumped out at me: "Right now, there are about 800 million cars in active use. By 2050, as cars become ubiquitous in China and India, it'll be 3.25 billion. That increase represents ... an almost unimaginable threat to our environment. Quadruple the cars means quadruple the carbon dioxide emissions - unless cleaner, less gas-hungry vehicles become the norm."

All the elements of what I like to call a geo-green strategy are known:
We need a gasoline tax that would keep pump prices fixed at $4 a gallon, even if crude oil prices go down. At $4 a gallon (premium gasoline averages about $6 a gallon in Europe), we could change the car-buying habits of a large segment of the U.S. public, which would make it profitable for the car companies to convert more of their fleets to hybrid or ethanol engines, which over time could sharply reduce our oil consumption.

We need to start building nuclear power plants again. The new nuclear technology is safer and cleaner than ever. "The risks of climate change by continuing to rely on hydrocarbons are much greater than the risks of nuclear power," said Peter Schwartz, chairman of Global Business Network, a leading energy and strategy consulting firm. "Climate change is real and it poses a civilizational threat that [could] transform the carrying capacity of the entire planet."

And we need some kind of carbon tax that would move more industries from coal to wind, hydro and solar power, or other, cleaner fuels. The revenue from these taxes would go to pay down the deficit and the reduction in oil imports would help to strengthen the dollar and defuse competition for energy with China.

It's smart geopolitics. It's smart fiscal policy. It is smart climate policy. Most of all - it's smart politics! Even evangelicals are speaking out about our need to protect God's green earth. "The Republican Party is much greener than George Bush or Dick Cheney," remarked Mr. Schwartz. "There is now a near convergence of support on the environmental issue. Look at how popular [Arnold] Schwarzenegger, a green Republican, is becoming because of what he has done on the environment in California."

Imagine if George Bush declared that he was getting rid of his limousine for an armor-plated Ford Escape hybrid, adopting a geo-green strategy and building an alliance of neocons, evangelicals and greens to sustain it. His popularity at home - and abroad - would soar. The country is dying to be led on this. Instead, he prefers to squander his personal energy trying to take apart the New Deal and throwing red meat to right-to-life fanatics. What a waste of a presidency. How will future historians explain it?

I'd offer a comment on "fair use" copyrighting here--but everyone in the world seems to have already copied that one.

Regardless of my low opinion of W, I have to wonder why he hasn't at least given some lip service to reducing consumption. It would seem an easy sell for geo-political reasons and it would get the environmentalists off his back. Other factors have to be in play.

Probably partially rooted in the extraordinary hatred for the treehuggers by the republican base and fear of a economic slow down.

Market-hugging, methinks. Then again, we all remember how much fun Carter had beating that drum.

Battle rages around oil platform in Nigeria

Regardless of my low opinion of W, I have to wonder why he hasn't at least given some lip service to reducing consumption.

Because he is indebted to his campaign contributors like every other pol in Washington regardless of party. And the sad thing is that there is a significant number of people who staunchly support the absurd notion of Money = Speech when it is clear that this idea is nothing more then legal bribery tarted up with a pseudo-constitutional rationalization.

"Freedom of the press is limited to those who own one." --A.J. Leibling

I love technology. The price of presses is so much cheaper nowadays!