Posted on 05/04/2008 4:53:59 PM PDT by Delacon
I am sure the wind charger investment is huge and I do not know if they will produce power enough to make it worth while.
“Well said. Let the market decide what energy sources we use, not politicians.”
Therein lies the problem with biofuels in this and many other countries.
Well, ethanol is a lousy fuel..it is really more a gasoline diluent, since the MPG drops when burning the blend, as you may have noticed when filling up the last couple of years.
Better to have the added power for the battery cars. Everyone seems to think electric cars run for free and forget the pesky detail of generating the electricity. They like to say the electrics are nonpolluting and will not warm the Earth and Kill The Seals, and forget the coal-bruning power plant down the street!
Ethanol is a dead end; it's energy value is too low.(Unless it's 12-year-old Scotch, and is "burned" properly!)
See, you just used rational thought on an anti ethanol thread. Can’t have that.
The rational thought keeps creeping in Sunday nights, since I fill my car on Mondays. Since we were forced into the ethanol scam, I am filling it a little more often, since I lost nearly 10% in gas mileage.
I was not supposed to notice, and I guess I wrecked everything.
LOOK! Archer Daniels Midland has no clothes!
Bump for reference - later read
As the poster of this article on FR I totally agree. I am completely unswayed by the global warming alarmist lobby or greens in general. WHEN we become a nulear economy we will still be in need of a potable fuel. It could come from coal gas. It could come from methanol and not ethanol. Hell, it could come from hydrogen but I dont think so.
Makes sense to me, Ethanol does not have a high conversion ratio, “but” we have the finest engineers in the world, it’s not like we are trying to build a Space Shuttle out of empty Glen Fiddich bottles...
I would love to see our energy resources exploited while we become energy efficient.
No. Coal is a dirty fuel, and I'm not talking about CO2 at all. I'm talking about the particulates, nitrous oxides, ozone, and unburned hydrocarbons that are produced in mass when coal is burned; you know, the stuff we generally like to call smog. It's the 21st century, it's time to move beyond the 19th century technology.
“By all means remove roadblocks, but no, that “only because” statement is false. Coal would still be cheapest. Also, there are acres of roadblocks in front of coal. Little things, you know, like single executive orders that lock up 50 years worth of total US power consumption in a “national monument” the size of a western state, and forbid anyone touching any of it. I’m not kidding. The greens are hopeless.”
Anyone know when the last nuke plant was built verus the last coal plant? Anyone know which one has the higher government hurdles to start up? I’m guessing nuke.
And yeah, that is a problem. We should stop subsidizing our ag sectors. Yeah, that would let food prices rise, not fall. But it would also let farmers in the third world earn something for their backbreaking labor, for a change.
I feel the same way about the idiotic idea of the (oxymoron) FairTax
Please note the tagline.
Ethanol sucks as a fuel for the internal combustion engine.
President Carter thought ethanol was a good idea as a motor fuel.
Anything else about ethanol is not important and please do not put it in your car's gas tank.
Greens are hopeless but I don’t see coal is a good source moving into the future. Coal will be around a long time but the atom is where its at.
The greens have locked up any energy source thats actually feasible. If you discovered a new one tomorrow they’d find a new endangered spotted owl that was impacted. IMO its more about stopping growth in America and pushing big government.
Really? U.S. corn exports are at a record high.
There are 104 reactors running in the US. The Bush administration has been supportive on nuclear power, but no power company has even applied for a new construction permit during his time in office. Some upgrades to existing plants or running them at higher capacities, have been the only extensions of actual nuclear power generation, since 1996.
There are 3 valid construction permits for new reactors outstanding, but work on all 3 was halted by the builders quite some time ago, and no one is currently building a new US nuclear plant. In addition, 6 reactors ceased operation in the 1996 to 2000 period, 3 more in the 1990 to 1995 period - though as many new ones came online, in the early 90s )+3 and -3) but not the later 90s (+1, -6).
There are 114 coal plant projects in planning stage or beyond, of which 28 are actually under construction, 6 legally ready to start but not yet building, and 13 have been permitted. 67 are still on the drawing boards. Several have been cancelled in high profile takeovers.
5 years ago, announced new construction planned 36 GW of new coal fired capacity in the five years ending now. Only 4.5 GW were actually finished. 1990 to 2007, less than 1 GW per year has actually come online. The usual pattern is big plans requiring 3-5 years, most punted down the road by legal or financial hurdles along the way. The backlog is large - 20 years worth at the present trickle rate - and would require a substantially eased regulatory picture sustained over at least 4 years, to realize any significant portion of just the projects already in the pipeline.
At this point, the greatest technical hurdle is the fact that the green shutdown of most of the industry for so long, has depleted it of personnel who know how to do any of it. This also effects the nuclear industry. Basically, there is a 20 year gap in the career of any would-be coal power engineer, and a 30 year gap for a nuclear power engineer - the latter partially mitigated by a continued flow of skilled personnel out of military uses (e.g. the submarine navy), familiar with nuclear plants.
Greens should simply be shot over this. It is a standing scandal.
Energy from coal is a simple linear equation while E=mc2, c being the speed of light squared tends to inflate the amount of energy derived from a very small mass.
Even with gasohol plants tripling corn their consumption the corn crop last year grew faster than demand and there was more corn from the midwest after gasohol than previous years. You don’t make tortillas with yellow dent corn anyway. Was riceland (wet) really used to grow corn? Somebody is running a scam.
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