Decelerating Delta S

Lessening our dependence on fossil fuels with...more fossil fuels?

American industry and politicians continue to pursue a twisted idea that we can reduce our dependence on fossil energy with, well, more fossil energy!

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/06/11/AR2008061103948.html

Everyone wants a quick fix to the "problem" of high fuel prices, and the current administration along with many of the "conservatives" believe that more oil is the way to solve the dependence on oil.

It's like trying to break a heroin addiction with more heroin.

Lower Prices = Increased Consumption = More automobile dependence + Growing Economy + More Consumerism = Greater cliff to fall off when our "new" oil reserves start running dry

Our fuel price "problem" is creating a lot of solutions. I am seeing more and more motorcycles and scooters in parking lots, more carpooling, and many more smaller vehicles on the roads. People are finally getting the hint, thinking about their consumption, and changing the way they do things. That's what we need - not more fossil energy! Everyone talks about getting off of foreign oil, but no one does anything - they just drive off in their SUVs and believe that they can't do anything about it. Everyone wants to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, but again, they just crank up the air conditioning to 68° and believe there's nothing we can do as individuals... High prices are actually causing the opposite, and they are causing people to do things that they would never even think about doing before.

It seems that our leaders and citizens who are pushing for more oil supply seem to have forgotten the following:

That it takes years for new oil production to come online.
That nine billion barrels of oil is enough to fuel our wonderful transportation system for about ..

Weblog Software

I recently installed WordPress on my local machine to test it out, as a possibility to replacing the seemingly dead boastmachine that I am using right now.

As I began writing the template to bring the Wordpress installation into working with my own graphical web design, I noticed all kinds of funky HTML. I've always thought that nesting a lone table cell ( ) inside of another was illegal - as the real way to nest tables would be to go through the complete process of writing the table statement, table rows, then cells. But - in the Wordpress calendar, table cells were nested within one another! I also found the separation between programming and design to be somewhat absent, although I do realize that it is difficult to accomplish this fully and especially when other people who did not write the software must understand the basic idea of the code. Also, who uses

in a side bar? That seems to be a central theme of Wordpress templates. Not me...but easy to fix. Some h2's seemed to be coming from some mysterious source outside of the sidebar file. There were also plenty of odd tags such as - which would be something I would normally relegate to using CSS and defining the font size as a percentage of the parent element's size.

boastMachine, on the other hand, outputs very clean and efficient HTML, and although I have tuned it up quite a bit, it was good from the very beginning. The file organization in boastMachine also seems to be somewhat better (there are less files for the templates, and also the programming - it isn't nearly as complex.

If I did migrate to WordPress, I would have to write a script to move the boastMachine posts over to the WP database. I would also likely have to do some manual work to change the categories. I would also have to change the URIs to all of my posts (which I may do anyways with boastMachine - though implementing a ..

$45 Trillion

$45 Trillion - the number of U.S. Dollars recommended by the International Energy Agency that will be required to decarbonize the world's energy systems over the next fifty years.

It seems like yet another number to scare the world away from actually doing anything worthwhile and to keep corporations and governments bickering over who should be responsible for CO₂ emissions. (The U.S.! No, China! NO, EVERYONE! )

While the IEA has good intentions in trying to put this very large undertaking into perspective, it probably does more to scare people than actually get them to realize that the time to start is now, and with the cost of petroleum at record highs there is the continuous impulsiveness in the U.S. that we can still "drill our problems away" and pursue backwards "solutions" such as coal liquefaction to keep the 20% efficient, dirty internal combustion engines rolling. On the other hand, I have seen much hope and intelligent thinking in the past few weeks - more carpooling, people trading in SUVs for compact and subcompact cars, cutting back on unnecessary trips, and even more hybrid vehicles on the road. These high prices are just the slap in the face that Americans have needed for years - we are finally beginning to think about our consumption and the fact that one-twentieth of the world's population guzzles one-quarter of the world's oil.

According to this article on IHT, they [the IEA] also seem to believe that the only way we can do this is with the same technologies that we rely on today - big nuclear power stations and coal units (with carbon sequestration). I strongly disagree, and feel that the decarbonization and sustainability of our society will be based upon smaller-scale, distributed systems rather than massive "Big Energy"-operated grids continuing the be fueled by non-renewable r ..

Reaching the Threshold

It seems that we have reached the threshold in America where the price of gasoline has risen to the point where the general populace is beginning to become angry.

I know this when a woman on the nightly news is practically bawling about how she has had to start buying "off-brand" groceries because of the cost of fuel! I know the world of consumerism is beginning to collapse when that happens. Not a fast collapse, but small bits are beginning to crumble.

The thing that frightens me, however, is that most average citizens (or "consumers" as we are called, because it is our economic duty to consume) haven't a damn clue about the energy industry itself, the basic principles behind energy and thermodynamics, the "peak oil" phenomenon, ecology and biogeochemistry, and the limits of natural resource extraction. All of these play a major role in how we can operate our consumerism-driven society.

But how can I blame anyone, as we've been continuously told to "Shop Till Ya' Drop!" and consume like there's no tomorrow! It would seem that the Earth is an endless cornucopia of natural resources just waiting for us to extract, convert into most often useless "consumer goods", then deposit into the nearest solid waste landfill after six months of use.

The high oil and commodity prices we are seeing today are frustrating for many people, but at the same time they are exciting. We are finally arriving at the point where economics are beginning to run the energy and consumption issues through our minds.

The same wave of thought swept through the world in the 1970s, but this time, the human race is beginning to butt against physical limits, rather than the purely geopolitical ones which were at work in the '70s.

We should have been implementing energy-efficient practices and sustainable, locally-produced energy and lifestyles since 1973, but we has this rosy idea that econom ..

$100/bbl oil, climate change...and we're still debating renewables? WHAT?

An article in a Tampa, FL area newspaper decries that state's plan to require 20% renewable electricity production in an unspecified number of years. Rates May Soar If Green Electric Bills Are Passed

Here is yet another example of obstruction of renewable energy development by scaring people on account that their electrical expenses might go through the roof. Adjectives like "soar", "through the roof", and "skyrocket" are used to describe 10-20% increases in electric bills. $5 per year flat tariffs are being described as a hardship. The time frame for the mandate has not even been developed yet and people are already blowing up about it.

It is FLORIDA, you don't need to heat your home, and I am sure you can cut back on the air conditioning a few degrees. Open up a window, get some fresh air. Hang your clothes out to dry in the beautiful weather! Put some clothes on in winter, and take some off in summer. Dim down the artificial suns in stores, offices, and along the street. Cut back on the outdoor illumination. Get rid of some of those ridiculous 500 watt wallpack lights that are on every single building (and some homes! ) nowadays. I know that at some convenience stores it is indistinguishable between night and day. Businesses ought to think about adjusting their dress code so that their offices don't have to be refrigerated during the summer.

So much for the angry part...

The claim that slightly increased electricity costs will hurt businesses and cause job losses seems to be a moot point when you see that California is the spot when it comes to good-paying jobs and high-tech industry, all with highest-in-the-nation renewable mandates and 50% gas-fired power, the most costly form of conventional generation. The same goes for New York City and New England, which have much more expensive el ..

"Earth Hour" Event to raise awareness about energy issues

The amount of energy needed to provide the electricity demands of the average American for a lifetime is equivalent to around 67,000 gallons of gasoline. Try filling that up 300 million times at today's gas prices!*

12,500 kWh/y * 76 y * 3412 BTU/kWh * 2.5 (power plant efficiency) / 120,000 BTU/gal

The Earth Hour event involves turning off/dimming lights all around the world in order to bring attention to electricity consumption, which for most people is a quickly passing thought that comes once per month. It is not about money, in this case, it is about preserving the natural resources that we all depend upon to survive and to produce and power all of the things we have come to love: e.g. mobile phones, cars, YouTube, MySpace, etc.

The hour is currently in progress and will happen in each time zone between 8:00 and 9:00 PM (20:00 and 21:00) March 29 2008.

The goal of the event is not to "save the world" or produce a meaningful reduction in emissions. The goal is to raise awareness and get the "grid mentality" out of people's minds that electricity is limitless, cheap, safe and clean, and flows endlessly from some golden bowl in the sky (to use the words of James Aach and Jeff Goodell). Electrical energy is produced for us using finite fossil fuel resources. These fossil fuels also provide often unacceptable environmental destruction and distress on people from their extraction to their combustion in the power plant, both today and into the future.

The beauty of electricity, however, is that we have the option of placing these distresses far out of sight from the consuming populace by stringing wires hundreds of miles to carry the energy. This acts to perpetuate wasteful consumption and ignorance. The electricity industry learned this years ago and has been operating it this way for decad ..

An emotional connection to fossil fuels?

Though I am not completely on board with what GE and other large energy companies are promoting (especially regarding the future use of coal in the energy mix), I have found what appears to be one of the most intelligent things said by a CEO of a large energy-oriented corporation...

The [conservative] ideologues "worship false idols." There are no completely free markets. The government has its hand in every industry: Housing has mortgage tax credits; GE got into commercial aviation because the DOD helped fund it; in healthcare there's Medicare and Medicaid and the NIH, researching and funding new drugs. Only in energy, for some reason, "we've decided that the only regulation will be the price of a barrel of oil. That's crazy!"

- General Electric CEO Jeffrey Immelt. (source )

It is interesting how many of the people bashing new energy policy (that which includes conservation, efficiency, and renewables) tend to complain little about the subsidies received by the fossil energy industry or any other industry, for that matter. Why is it that Congress rejected the bill which would have eliminated $13 billion in tax breaks to the oil and gas industry? If it is so wrong to subsidize renewables (a crazy thing to say...), why is it perfectly fine to continue subsidizing fossil energy, which currently supples 85% of the world's metered energy needs?

To the fossil energy industry, $13 billion is peanuts. That's three months worth of PROFIT for ExxonMobil. But when it comes time to spend $13 billion on renewables, there's an uproar. Why?

We all use much more energy from renewables, but it is not metered. When you open your curtains to let in the sun, that is free for the taking. The same goes for hanging your clothes out to dry or opening a window in the summer. That's one of the beautiful th ..

The Entropy Problem

The "energy crisis" and other energy-related problems, along with the battle over what energy sources we will use really has little to with energy, and a whole lot to do with entropy - the concept that energy becomes more and more dilute and unavailable for use over time, and that energy has "quality" (e.g. electricity and mechanical power are among the highest-quality forms of energy, while dilute light and heat are less usable and of lower quality.)

Entropy is the reason that "just-in-time" solar energy is "expensive" compared with super-concentrated fossil fuels that have been made and stored by natural processes over millions of years. It is the reason that people don't succeed in "sticking it to the man" by inductively coupling power lines to get free electricity or putting up antennas to harness the energy in radio waves.

The Sun sends 1.74 * 10¹⁷ watts to Earth on a continuous basis, which ends up being the equivalent of all of the world's conventional oil reserves, past and present, every 30 hours of so. But how much does solar currently contribute to our industrial energy system? It's all about availability. Now it is beginning to be a lot about greed as well.

We don't need more coal-fired power plants, we just need to use energy better by taking advantage of the billions of watts of waste heat thrown off by power plants. One of the most sad facts about our situation now is that we are fighting over what energy sources we will use to meet our future needs - coal vs. wind, etc. Many people in the world want to increase the combustion of coal, despite the whole greenhouse effect situation, and the fact that the waste heat thrown away at American coal-fired power plants is more energy (in pure energy terms, not considering entropy) than is used in all of Japan.

I estimate that it is about 4 PWh/year thrown away by American coal burners (that's four times ten ..

GM Limping Toward Recovery with IC engine technology

Apparently General Motors is having a rough time in the North American market: GM Limps Toward Recovery

I think that, just maybe, if they wouldn't have helped to kill the electric car, they would not be in this situation. In order to survive long-term, a corporation must change its business model with the times. GM's business model of technological stagnation with the IC engine, and promotion of the idea of the automobile being a fashion-statement consumer commodity have led it to where it is today.

From the film "Who Killed The Electric Car?"

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"GM made a commitment to the Hummer, because they could see that the Hummer would make them money."

The engineers of vehicles have done a good job of making the engine more efficient at converting gasoline-derived heat into mechanical power, but those gains were used to make the cars bigger and more powerful rather than to increase the fuel efficiency.

One of the misunderstandings people have about electric vehicles is that they are not powerful enough to handle situations they may encounter while driving. For example, today it is snowing where I live...

"But electric cars aren't ver ..

Coal's shaky future

Despite being "concerned" about global warming and other environmental problems, many Americans and the rest of the world's citizens seem to be feeling good about the consumer economy because they believe that coal will sustain it as oil and gas reserves begin to fall in production to the point where they no longer meet demand.

It's one of those problems that people say "Dude, chill! We have technology! We'll find a way to burn coal without producing carbon dioxide!"

What many people don't seem to understand is that it is not possible to burn CARBON (the major component of coal) without producing CARBON dioxide. It's not like carbon monoxide, where it is just a matter of running the furnaces hotter and with more air (so that it gets converted to carbon dioxide), it is an UNAVOIDABLE by-product. We can try to capture the billions of tons of CO₂ from coal combustion and stash it someplace, but we are not going to be able to eliminate it.

Technology also can't eliminate that fact that coal has to be mined, and that mining is by nature a destructive and dangerous process.

There's also concern now that the actual reserves of coal in the ground are not as great as we would like to believe.
Asian coal demand is soaring, but supplies cut.
The demand for coal in Asia is beginning to outstrip the supplies. Bad weather and other problems have lead to shortages and power stations in electricity-hungry China, Japan and South Korea are running low on coal. The Australian port of Newcastle, which is the world's largest coal export terminal, has collier ships waiting for weeks in multi-kilometer long lines.

Australia just had ..