Posted on 03/09/2014 12:37:41 PM PDT by matt04
What about unicorns? The researchers forgot about harnessing the abundant energy of unicorns.
An excellent opportunity for Obama to pour countless millions of taxpayer dollars down the toilet, as he did with electric cars.
So we are going to give up all forms of powered flight, including space flight? Given current technology, there is no way to put a heavy vehicle into the air without combustion.
And what happened to clean nuclear power? Are we going to transform our nuclear subs into battery powered boats? How about giant sails on our aircraft carriers?(But, of course, the aircraft would now need to be dirigibles.)
The proposal is more of a progressive political fantasy than a statement of serious science.
Developing “detailed plans” for each “state” regarding how alternate energy “might” work is easy.
Developing “detailed plans” that fully describe machines that would convert a low-energy-density variable fuel, like “wind”, into a reliable source of steady energy is not easy.
It seems most alternate energy enthusiasts are ignorant of the Laws of Mechanics that [fatally] limit the “output” of their-wind-turbines...
I agree, we should be building more nukes not shutting any down. Solar is a different story, but utility-scale wind generation can already be done at cost that is on par with coal, nuke, hydro, and other conventional generation sources. The industry newsletter even carried a front-page article to that effect recently.
You wind-bashers out there should be aware, the Production Tax Credit (aka “Wind Subsidy” for those in Rio Lindo) is gone - it expired end of 2013 and has not been renewed. Nor should it be, and I doubt that it will be, despite moaning and groaning from the political classes. It’s not needed, and the industry knows it. But who’s going to turn away free money that goes directly to profit if it’s easy to get?
Cost-competitive solar is probably decades away and only then in areas with high insolation. Lumping wind and solar together is dumb - consider each energy source on it’s own merit. Wind doesn’t need subsidies, and solar shouldn’t be getting any.
Renewable energy, is that anything like a perpetual motion machine?
Developing “detailed plans” for each “state” regarding how alternate energy “might” work is easy.
Developing “detailed plans” that fully describe machines that would convert a low-energy-density variable fuel, like “wind”, into a reliable source of steady energy is not easy.
It seems most alternate energy enthusiasts are ignorant of the Laws of Mechanics that [fatally] limit the “output” of their-wind-turbines...
So instead of quitting their well paid tenured positions at the University and forming a profitable green energy startup based on their theories using their own money with no government subsidies whatsoever, these academics travel the world by filthy CO2 spewing jets, eat in fancy restaurants on government grants, publish papers, and go on lavish all-expenses paid speaking junkets to adoring fans about completely hypothetical business models they pull out of their collective backsides. Quite the lucrative scam.
They keep telling us that one day all the oil will be gone.
Lets follow their logic all the way thru.
The US drinks from this disappearing pool of oil, as does China and India.
We burn it in such a way, thanks to EPA regulations and catalytic converters on cars, etc etc that our air is much cleaner than the air in China and India.
In China, the air pollution is so bad the people have to wear masks.
If the oil will disappear no matter who burns it, then the less we cleanly burn of the total, the more China and India will be dirty burning instead.
So every time you see someone riding a bike in the US or carpooling, following their logic to the end, they are actually contributing to polluting the earth.
Save the Earth! Burn as much oil as possible before the Chinese do!
Eliminate combustion by burning hydrogen that is derived from natural gas.
Makes perfect sense. /s
That struck me too.
Electrolysis is a process involving splitting the water molecule with electricity and capturing the hydrogen. By definition, when you burn the hydrogen you get back a good deal less energy than was in the electricity, much less what was in the original fuel burned to generate electricity.
IOW, natgas > electricity > hydrogen > work is a LOT less efficient than just burning the natgas to produce work.
I’ve run across claims that hydrogen can be produced at 80% efficiency by using steam to convert it. Still don’t see how this can possibly be either more efficient or less polluting than just burning the gas by the time you run through the whole process.
For hydrogen to be a truly “green” fuel, it would have to be produced by electrolysis of water using nuclear, hydro, wind or solar generated electricity. And of course greenies are generally opposed to nuclear and hydro.
I suppose on could use wind and solar to produce hydrogen, in which case the intermittent nature of the power source wouldn’t be so disastrous.
It is VERY hard to find apples to apples comparisons for energy efficiencies of these various processes. For instance, while hydrogen may be able to be produced at 80% efficiency from natgas. But for it be usable offsite, it would have to be compressed to 10,000 psi. I’ve worked enough with compressed air to know that pressurizing gases is not a low-energy process.
Electricity may be 100% efficient at driving auto wheels. But by the time you factor in the energy losses at the power plant, transmission and battery charging and discharging those efficiencies aren’t a great deal higher than just burning the dang fuel to drive the car instead of produce electricity.
Our cars will all have to be made of something lightweight, sustainable, and grown in mass quantities. Hmmm, maybe Colorado is on to something...
Developing plans costs money. That’s what this is all about.
But that’s no problem because, in today’s economy, money is a renewable resource.
I am NOT a scientist. But I seem to remember something about the first law of thermodynamics which means that there is no perpetual motion machine, nor “renewable” energy.
Let's leave aside their ignorance that burning hydrogen IS combustion.
What they are trying to say is that hydrogen/oxygen combustion is non-polluting, which is true. Its "product of combustion" is water vapor.
The greenies will be able to pat themselves on the back for driving a non-polluting car. This will be true, but only by moving the pollution to the power plant. Unless the electricity to make the hydrogen is produced via a non-combustion process.
BTW, does anybody know if this "hydrogen combustion releases only water vapor in the exhaust" meme is actually true in the field? The reason I bring this up is I work a lot with ozone, which it produced by an electrical corona discharge field.
Run 02 through the field and pure O3 (ozone) and leftover O2 comes out.
Run dirty and humid air through it and you get all kinds of crap in addition to the ozone: nitrogen dioxide and other nitrous oxides, nitric acid, etc. This is almost universally ignored by people who pontificate about O3 production.
Does something similar happen when you combust hydrogen with air instead of oxygen?
Every form of energy on the earth today is solar in origin, with the exception of nuclear.
The sun’s energy drives the wind. It causes the hydrologic cycle to produce rain so we get hydro. Fossil fuels are the result of solar energy stored millions of years ago in plants. Corn ethanol and wood are the result of solar energy stored a lot more recently.
Every one of these resources is renewable, including fossil fuels. Most of them just take a lot longer to renew than is practical from a human perspective.
Nuclear is renewable.
Things die, rot and form oil and ngas; thus, renewable.
And energy will only cost 1000 times more than it does today.
You got it right. Don’t forget the adoring female interns these Lefty professors tote along with them to tap the renewable energy source of sex.
We are forced to use ethanol E85 in the government vehicles and they get around 13 MPG, when we use gas (rarely) the mileage is around 18-20 MPG.
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