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Blog Entry 2 of 8 WebViking's Corner
I'm a libertarian/conservative who believes the first precept of good government should be "Do no harm!" That said I recognize that, as distasteful as it is, sometimes government is necessary and can do good. I'll be talking mainly about national politics, with the occasional odd foray into local issue.

Blog Url: http://denver.yourhub.com/~WebViking

Alternative Energy
Contributed by: John Newman   on 6/22/2007

There's a lot of debate these days about alternative energy with some people demanding that government somehow create an alternative energy industry out of thin air and other demanding that government force utilities to supply electricity generated from ever-increasing forms of alternative or renewable energy.

The first problem is that some politician can't just snap his fingers and make something real. Right now, with the tractors that plow the fields, harvest the corn, the trucks that transport it to ethanol plants, and the power that goes into converting corn into ethanol, we burn right about the equivalent of a gallon of gas refined from imported oil to create a single gallon of ethanol. Where is the sense in that?

The only people that are really benefiting from the government mandated ethanol boom are corn farmers. Yeah, burning a gallon of ethanol in a car may create less C02 and other pollutants, but we've already burned an extra gallon of gas to get that gallon of ethanol.

Wind farms are more of the same. Today's wind turbines are big, complicated, hard-to-make machines, that may well cost more in terms of energy to build than they will ever generate over the course of a 50 year life. Plus there is extreme opposition to wind farms spoiling views or sailing areas. Teddy Kennedy is a notorious opponent of a wind farm that would spoil the Kennedy family's traditional yachting waters.

Solar cells, and solar panels are all good, but only for low-level uses of energy generation. Solar panels for heating can make sense on some houses. Photovoltaic cells for generating small amounts of electricity also make sense as well in some applications.

But you're not ever going to be able to strap enough photovoltaic panels onto a car to power it. And you're not ever going to be able to generate enough heat and electricity to power large buildings, factories or farms with solar power.

Geothermal only works in limited areas, is expensive as hell, and extremely difficult to maintain. I have yet to hear about a working tidal harness.

The only renewable method of energy generation that generates huge amounts of electricity cheaply for long periods of time, are hydroelectric dams. And environmentalists want to tear them down, not build more.

I'm not saying we shouldn't encourage the use of renewable sources of energy, we should. I'm also not saying we shouldn't keep pushing the research, we should. Photovoltaic cells, for example, have gone from 3 or 4% efficient, to up to 30% in labs over the past 30 years. Unfortunately, we have to recognize that even if we had 100% efficient photvoltaic cells , we'd have to cover far too much of the landscape with them to power our current way of life.

Renewable energy is not the complete answer, it can help, but it only going to be niche source of energy, not a primary source of energy.

We need to stat building nuclear reactors again, with breeder reactors we can generate enough energy for essentially forever, and it gets better and cleaner if we can ever generate energy using fusion reactors.

With plentiful, cheap electricity from nuclear reactors we can move to a clean hydrogen economy. Cars, trains, trucks, powered by clean non-CO2-producing fuel cells, getting recharged from the grid every night.

And we'd never have to buy a barrel of oil from another country ever again.


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Showing 1-10 of 11 comments
Submitted By: delete this
posted on 6/25/2007 @ 7:37:25 AM
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re:Brazilian ethanol is made from sugar cane, not corn. Farming is subsidized. Our govt. PAYS farmers to not grow crops due to surplus, or they buy the crops and ship it to poverty stricken countries. A few of those links I gave earlier show clearly that we could easily grow enough corn for an ethanol fuel. It would not need to be subsidized by gov't to sustain. My point is, with what we've spent on the false iraq war, that money could have been used instead to install pumps at every gas station across the country. But Dubbya ensures we remain dependent on oiL. There's good money in it. Also check out the movie "Who Killed the Electric Car?"
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Submitted By: Bing Van Gorden
posted on 6/24/2007 @ 11:14:07 AM
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But nuclear power is subsidized by the government. It isn't cheap over all because our tax dollars have to make it viable. The waste can be contined eh? I don't know of many materials that have a half life like radio active waste. There is nothing on earth we can use to contain it until it is "safe."
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Submitted By: John Newman
posted on 6/24/2007 @ 12:52:45 AM
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Yes, Brazil is an ethanol success story. Although I will point out two things, first, Brazilian ethanol is made from sugar cane, not corn. Sugar cane is a lot easier to grow in Brazil than in the US, and may be easier to make ethanol out of, I don't know. Also sugar prices because of demand for sugar cane ethanol in Brazil hit a 7 year high last week. There are always trade offs. Finally, Brazil sells flex cars, that can run on either ethanol, gasoline or a combination of each. We could use that here. But whatever, because of the tax structure on gas and ethanol in Brazil and because of the flex cars, Brazilians can make a choice based on price. They are choosing ethanol because it's cheaper. We need the same options here. But bear in mind that without subsidies, ethanol here would be more expensive than gasoline. I don't like taxes, but I have been in favor of higher taxes on gasoline for a long, long time solely because of our dependence on imported oil.
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Submitted By: delete this
posted on 6/23/2007 @ 10:36:20 PM
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The G.O.P is Owned by Big OiL. Their coffers are filled by oil companies. In return, the republican senator makes sure we dont do what can so easily be done...end foreign oiL reliance.
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Submitted By: delete this
posted on 6/23/2007 @ 10:35:22 PM
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http://www.energybulletin.net/5021.html Published on 28 Mar 2005 Brazils reliance on oil imports has plummeted from 85 percent of its energy consumption in 1978 to 10 percent in 2002, according to that country?s National Petroleum Agency. And this year, it will be nearly zero, Brazilian officials say. Granted, ethanol already is used in U.S. Midwestern states, although in small quantities, as an additive. But Brazil has done something more radical: It pressed car makers to modify engines, so they can run on much higher percentages of ethanol. In addition, Brazil is beginning to use biodiesel ? diesel made out of vegetable oils ? for its trucks and buses. Last week, Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva dedicated a biodiesel plant in Minas Gerais state, which will produce 12 million liters a year of this fuel.
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Submitted By: delete this
posted on 6/23/2007 @ 10:31:23 PM
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Brazil's military dictatorship launched the national ethanol program in 1975, when about 90 percent of its fuel consumption depended on foreign oil. The government offered subsidies to sugar cane growers and forced service stations in every town of at least 1,500 people to install ethanol pumps. By the early 1980s, almost all new cars sold in Brazil ran on 100 percent ethanol.
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Submitted By: delete this
posted on 6/23/2007 @ 10:29:54 PM
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http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/08/19/AR2006081900842.html Pull up to most service stations in this country of 185 million people and you will find fuel pumps offering three choices: ethanol, gasoline or premium gasoline. The labels are slightly misleading: The gasoline varieties are blends that contain at least 20 percent ethanol. The pure ethanol is usually significantly cheaper -- 53 cents per liter (about $2 per gallon), compared with about 99 cents per liter for gasoline ($3.74 per gallon) in Sao Paulo this past week.
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Submitted By: delete this
posted on 6/23/2007 @ 10:28:00 PM
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Google: Brazil alternative fuel. They have already ended their reliance on foreign oil. It can easily be done and our government makes sure we dont. For LESS MONEY THAN WHAT WE'VE SPENT IN IRAQ, we could have transformed to ethanoL fuel. It's been done, it's proven capable
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Submitted By: John Newman
posted on 6/23/2007 @ 1:27:30 AM
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Hemp ethanol would be a fine alternative to corn for a lot of reasons. Primarily because the only useful thing you can really make economically out of hemp is rope. So instead of corn ethanol affecting cattle, pig and chicken farmers with the rising price of feed, you'd only affect rope-makers. There's only one problem, we can't make a pure enough ethanol to burn as fuel in a car out of hemp. Not yet anyway.
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Submitted By: John Newman
posted on 6/23/2007 @ 1:22:07 AM
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Nuclear power is the cheapest way of generating large amounts of electricity except for dams. Nuclear power plants do produce radioactive waste, but what's worse, relatively small amounts of radioactive waste, easily sequestered, or millions of tons of atmospheric pollutants and greenhouse gases released into the air we breathe? And what did Carter have to say about solar power that would have changed our state of knowledge today? Nothing.
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Showing 1-10 of 11 comments
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CONTRIBUTOR INFORMATION

John Newman

Northglenn , CO

John Newman has posted 8 blog entries and 33 comments since joining on 9/27/2005. John Newman 's average blog rating is 3.64.
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