Re: Energy
The one oil statistic that really counts is price. As long as the price of crude keeps going up, we can reasonably assume that oil is growing more scarce in the real world. I know there are other variables that affect the oil market on a weekly basis, such as supply disruptions, but as long as the overall trend is up, which it has been for at least two years, it means the supply/demand ratio is tightening. Just last year a lotofthe oil "experts" weresaying oil would soon return tothe $30 range, not. There's more going on in this market than just short term supplyproblems. I noticed the usual suspects from the American Enterprise Institute and Cato Institute were all over the media over the past few days commenting on the President's new alternative energy initiative announced during the State of the Union. Saying that if alternative energy could compete in the marketplace it would not need subsidies. Amazing how these lords of pure market capitalism conveniently overlook the incredible competitive market advantage oil has received due to an activist American government that has spent the past eight decades subsidizing the oil trade in one way or another.Be it building the massive federal highway infrastructure that provides oil an automobilemarket in which to sell oil,or massive tax credits and below market value royalty payments for oil exploration on government land, or the military protection oil has enjoyed for so many years (including coups such as the Shah of Iran and the invasion of Iraq), which has now ballooned to over $100 Billion per year in military spending for oil protection missions of one kind or another(we might as well change the name of the military to the Petroleum Protection Service). If oil had to pay for that service, we would be paying at least $1.00 more per gallon at the pump. I wonder what that would do for oil's competitiveness? Exactly why I can't take clowns like the American Enterprise Institute and Cato Institute seriously, they are not honest defenders of free markets, they are little more than whores for the status quo. A good book to write would be one that chronicles oil's relationship to the American lifestyle. That would be an interesting read, virtually mirroring American history over the past century. - Original Message - From: RC Macaulay To: vortex-l@eskimo.com Sent: Thursday, February 02, 2006 11:01 PM Subject: Energy Hi Vorts, Another site if you missed it before. Some statistics shown are vald http://www.lifeaftertheoilcrash.net/ Richard
Re: Let's kill all the remaining whales, too
On Thu, 02 Feb 2006 16:15:28 -0500, you wrote: Zell, Chris wrote: Note the quote advocating universal nimbyism and doing everything to increase industry costs. Explain how it would reduce industry costs to build unnecessary refineries when the total volume of oil can only decrease rapidly in the coming decades. Chris, you need a reality check. Even some of the top oil industry executives now admit that oil supplies have peaked. --- Not that I disagree with you, but what would stop those top oil industry executives from fabricating that admission in order to exact ever rising prices for what's left? From The Ballad of Pancho and Lefty: Out of kindness, I suppose. --- If you are living on Easter Island and you have one tree left standing, why would you bother to build a new sawmill? How will that reduce the cost of lumber? --- Nice. I've used the Easter Island predicament of its inhabitants not being able to leave the island because of their squandering of its resources for fuel, instead of for building boats, to illustrate that a parallel exists between their predicament and ours, which is that if we can't work out a way to get off of this planet before it's too late, the human race is doomed. --- Your suggestion is similar to the notion that we should combat Third World starvation by building a thousand more large fishing boats -- factory scale ships. The problem is, fish populations have crashed in every ocean and there are no more fish to catch, and if we build more fishing boats we will simply hasten the day when the remaining stocks of edible fish are driven to extinction. --- I think that's a little severe. There are truly _no_ more fish to catch? If that's true, then there will never be another bite and all the tilapia will be farm raised. Not quite extinction, but not quite wild. --- That gives me an idea. While we are building more refineries, let us also hunt down the remaining blue whales and right whales, and use the oil from them too. - Jed --- OK, and then let's all hunt down the fireflies and tie them down to road signs. ;) Oh, but wait... there'll be no need to with all the oil gone. -- John Fields
Do we have peak uranium, too?
We haven't had any new nuclear power plants built in many years. Since any notion of NIMBYism is to be rejected ( despite overwhelming political evidence that it is real), the clear answer is THAT URANIUM HAS PEAKED! The same goes for the rich Cape Cod elitists who don't want wind turbines off their coast. Clearly, saving birds is paramount. Why build nuclear power plants when we know that uranium is running out? Surely, the situation is no different than the fact that the US hasn't built a new refinery since 1976 - Obviously, everyone knew - 30 YEARS AGO - that we were running out of oil and refineries were a waste of time. Obvious too, is the fact that everyone knows that coal/ shale/ thermal pyrolysis treated garbage will never give us significant sources of oil. What are Pennsylvania and Montana thinking, when they to spend billions for this? Those estimates of centuries worth of coal aren't to be taken seriously. Anyone who thinks otherwise needs a reality check..
RE: Message from D. Pimentel
Well, that settles it. The voice of God has spoken and settled the matter for us. His 2003 study claims that Brazil dropped subsidies because ethanol production was ineffective. Yet, ethanol has expanded there, along with ethanol exports doubling recently. Apparently, they found ways to become more efficient. Ain't science wonderful? Also strange? He's associated with Cornell , close to wine country - yet, the notion of increasing ethanol production efficiency by an ice wine technique In a New England climate doesn't occur to him. H. Now, what would be more impressive would be to compare market costs of gasoline BTUs and ethanol BTUs , after subtracting all subsidies for both. -Original Message- From: Jed Rothwell [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Thursday, February 02, 2006 6:04 PM To: vortex-L@eskimo.com Subject: Message from D. Pimentel I wrote to Prof. P.: It must be terribly frustrating for you to hear Bush talk about ethanol in the State of the Union speech. You have my sympathy! He responded: Thanks for your note. It is frustrating and all this is undermining our nation. Darn right. - Jed
Re: An Energy Business Idea
- Original Message - Horace Heffner wrote Wind farms can readily be used to store energy in the form of liquified air. This capacity, combined with heat storage plus waste heat from a nearby peak load generating facility, can dramatically increase the efficiency of that facility, as well as the energy storage capability of the overall plant. There are many synergies that can exploit existing technology through vertical integration. An improved version of this concept is what I have been advocating for months for particular use on the West Coast (USA), although there is no reason that it wouldn't not work elsewhere near reliable ocean winds. My version/vision is of a fleet of catamaran-type ships - offshore in the sea lanes where there is much more reliable wind. These ships would have hull lengths on the order of 200 meters, always pointed into the wind, and have a double Ferris wheel type of structure between the two thin hulls. On the periphery of the gigantic wheels and mounted between them, are regular aircraft style airfoil *wings* which are tiltable (over a range of about 60 degrees - computer controlled) at the best angle-of-attack, to keep the Ferris wheel itself spinning due to the enormous lift. Given that winds the size of a 747 can be used, each ship can have about 10 million pounds of net lift - translated into torque at the axle. But that is not all - the normal propellers of a wind farm turbines can also be mounted on the same wings (tractor -style) so that you get a double conversion and axis of rotation to harness the strong and reliable Pacific winds. The end product of this fleet is not just liquid air, using the 4-5 stage Linde process but liquid air enriched in oxygen to about 40% oxygen content - or double that of normal air. This enriched product can be done for nearly the same energy input as air-only, since the cold sea water gives an efficient free heat sink. Like the Linde process itself - the COP is expected to be about 4 or more. And since the unused nitrogen is removed (magnetically) in the third stage, it is used for the final step of liquefaction. This enriched liquid air, or ELA, is stored in the hulls and removed daily to be tankered to power plants which can burn about half the normal amount of fossil fuel due to the expansion of liquid air, to get the same output - and the greater efficiency of the oxygen enrichment lowers pollutants. Below is an edited version of my original post from back in May (don't want to pass up an opportunity to repeat a few under-appreciated puns G Jones This Stanford study [on offshore wind sites] is very exciting... as in.. exciting enough that it engendered for me an incredible Technicolor, vivid-dream, so real that it was a real drag (drogue) to awaken this morning. Firstly, the study indicates that the many of the best sites, by far (considering all the factors), are in the ocean just offshore, especially off the Pacific west coast of the USA, which it seems has more reliable winds than the North Sea. I had a vision (dream) of a beautiful sailing ship implementation for wind energy... I believe these ships can be aesthetically pleasing enough to be positioned all up and down the Pacific coastline, out about 10 km. but still barely visible because of their size. These sleek vessels could be more efficient and cost effective than fixed offshore windmills, will not need to be firmly anchored, which is basically impossible on the Pacific, due to the depth... and may observers might even imagine them to be beautiful, after getting accustomed to the novelty. They were certainly exquisite in my vision. I would like to reduce this vision to a visual image eventually, but lacking that at the moment, here is the best verbalization I can muster. Imagine a ocean-going catamaran large enough to handle rough seas. Lets say the aerodynamic twin hulls are each 200 meter-long slivers. They can be constructed of steel-clad ferro-cement. Atop the hulls, and parallel to the ocean but 20 meters above the surface is a strong, open circular track, 150 meters in diameter. Riding on this track is your steer-able, super-size-it, 70-story high wind-ladder. From a distance, the rotating wind ladder looks like a Ferris-wheel on a beam reach but with the wheel-edge, not the axis hub, pointing into the wind. It is extremely lightweight construction, so that the most visible thing one sees are the 12 wings which are positioned around the circumference. The wings mount between the two open-disks of the Ferris wheel, providing both lift and compression on one revolution. But the disks themselves are almost unseen from afar, as they are mostly Kevlar cable with some grided tubing going up to both-ends of the 12 wings, which span between the two open disks and two hulls, and are tiltable at the 90-degree joint with the wheel. These ladder-wings individually are not unlike airplane wings, and
Re: Do we have peak uranium, too?
Zell, Chris wrote: We haven't had any new nuclear power plants built in many years. Since any notion of NIMBYism is to be rejected ( despite overwhelming political evidence that it is real) Nuclear power plants have been rejected by power companies, not citizens. Citizens do not like them either but that never stopped the power companies from building them in the past. The power companies like to blame the situation on environmentalists but that is nonsense. , the clear answer is THAT URANIUM HAS PEAKED! Why build nuclear power plants when we know that uranium is running out? Surely, the situation is no different than the fact that the US hasn't built a new refinery since 1976 - Obviously, everyone knew - 30 YEARS AGO - that we were running out of oil and refineries were a waste of time. I realize this is a joke, but the analogy is flawed.. A nuclear power plant is to uranium as automobiles are to oil. We have built plenty of automobiles in the last 20 years, but they were mainly replacements. The total it has not increased much. So the number have been stable just as the number of nuclear power plants is stable. Comparing nuclear power to oil, and oil well with the like a uranium mine, and an oil refinery would be equivalent to the uranium fuel rod production plant. The US has not increased the number of mines because uranium is much more plentiful and cheaper to mine in Canada and Australia, and we have not increased the number of fuel rod production plants because the number of uranium reactors has not increased. The number of reactors have not increased because of the power companies do not want them because they are far too expensive and dangerous. We can get virtually unlimited amounts of uranium from Canada and Australia. If the same were true of oil -- if friendly, reliable, democratic nations such as Canada and Australia could supply all of our needs indefinitely, then they would be no peak oil crisis and no political problems with Al Qaeda. (There might still be a problem with global warming.) What are Pennsylvania and Montana thinking, when they to spend billions for this? Those estimates of centuries worth of coal aren't to be taken seriously. No one has suggested that coal has peaked. That's absurd. An no serious oil expert has claimed there are centuries of oil left in the ground. - Jed
Re: Let's kill all the remaining whales, too
-Original Message- From: John Fields There are truly _no_ more fish to catch? If that's true, then there will never be another bite and all the tilapia will be farm raised. Tilapia is a fresh water fish from Israel: http://www.ext.nodak.edu/extpubs/alt-ag/tilapia.htm -Hole ram ___ Try the New Netscape Mail Today! Virtually Spam-Free | More Storage | Import Your Contact List http://mail.netscape.com
RE: Message from D. Pimentel
Zell, Chris wrote: [Pimentel's] 2003 study claims that Brazil dropped subsidies because ethanol production was ineffective. Yet, ethanol has expanded there, along with ethanol exports doubling recently. Yes. As I pointed out last month this industry is built on the backs of slave labor, child labor, terror and stealing productive cropland from peasants. In South America, where millions of people suffer from malnutrition, this industry converts food into fuel, and young people into a pile of broken bodies and corpses. Also they are ravaging the land and the ecology. Apparently, they found ways to become more efficient. Ain't science wonderful? No they do not. They just found a way to trade human lives for fuel. Also strange? He's associated with Cornell , close to wine country - yet, the notion of increasing ethanol production efficiency by an ice wine technique In a New England climate doesn't occur to him. H. Pimentel's co-authors are in California Iowa and elsewhere. His research was performed in the corn growing states. And as I pointed out, even the numbers quoted by industry flacks are dismal. This comment is petulant and sophomoric. You should read his papers carefully and then if you find a technical error, let us know. - Jed
Re: Energy
-Original Message- From: John Coviello Be it building the massive federal highway infrastructure that provides oil an automobile market . . . One often overlooked reason for building the interstate highway system was national defense so we could rapidly move men and material across country. -Holy Rum ___ Try the New Netscape Mail Today! Virtually Spam-Free | More Storage | Import Your Contact List http://mail.netscape.com
Re: Do we have peak uranium, too?
At 10:24 AM 2/3/2006, you wrote: Zell, Chris wrote: We haven't had any new nuclear power plants built in many years. Since any notion of NIMBYism is to be rejected ( despite overwhelming political evidence that it is real) Nuclear power plants have been rejected by power companies, not citizens. Citizens do not like them either but that never stopped the power companies from building them in the past. The power companies like to blame the situation on environmentalists but that is nonsense. , the clear answer is THAT URANIUM HAS PEAKED! Why build nuclear power plants when we know that uranium is running out? Surely, the situation is no different than the fact that the US hasn't built a new refinery since 1976 - Obviously, everyone knew - 30 YEARS AGO - that we were running out of oil and refineries were a waste of time. I realize this is a joke, but the analogy is flawed.. A nuclear power plant is to uranium as automobiles are to oil. We have built plenty of automobiles in the last 20 years, but they were mainly replacements. The total it has not increased much. So the number have been stable just as the number of nuclear power plants is stable. I wrote: Comparing nuclear power to oil, and oil well with the like a uranium mine . . . My voice input went out to lunch. Sorry. It is so fluid I sometimes forget to check. I meant to write: Comparing oil to nuclear power: An oil well is like a uranium mine. An oil refinery resembles a uranium fuel rod production plant. Automobiles (the final consumers) resemble power reactors. Of course these are comparisons only, not an exact fit. - Jed
The intangible effect of intangibles
Vorts, FYI, There's a thoughtful lengthy Business Week article by Michael Mandel, with Steve Hamm in New York and Christopher J. Farrell in St. Paul, Minn. It concerns how we measure the health of our nation's economy at: http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/06_07/b3971001.htm http://tinyurl.com/dvgwb The title: Why The Economy Is A Lot Stronger Than You Think It states GDP and similar national statistics are being skewed adversely because statisticians do not effectively take in account the impact intangible goods make to our economy's health. IOW, it's easy to count WIDGITS, but not so easy to assess the results that R, training, and other types of services have contributed as well. Jed, I think you might find portions of this article fun to read as well. They briefly touch on the fact that training costs are being drastically reduced in a lot of corporate sectors because students no longer need to be flown as extensively to distant centers located in other states - which incurs considerable air fare and hotel expenses. Trainees can now learn a lot more by staying home and taking advantage of the advancements of much cheaper e-learning technology. There is a somewhat disparaging metaphorical remark linking Cold Fusion to obscurity, See sentence: "A recent report from Goldman, Sachs & Co. (GS ) likened Hausmann's dark matter to cold fusion." close to the end of the article, but it didn't really bother me that much. There's a lot to chew on in this article. Regards, Steven Vincent Johnson www.OrionWorks.com
RE: Do we have peak uranium, too?
-Original Message- From: Jed Rothwell [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Friday, February 03, 2006 10:38 AM To: vortex-L@eskimo.com Subject: Re: Do we have peak uranium, too? At 10:24 AM 2/3/2006, you wrote: Zell, Chris wrote: We haven't had any new nuclear power plants built in many years. Since any notion of NIMBYism is to be rejected ( despite overwhelming political evidence that it is real) Nuclear power plants have been rejected by power companies, not citizens. Are you serious? Is this a joke? Do protests mean nothing? Political pressure? Lawsuits? Earth First vandalism? Citizens do not like them either but that never stopped the power companies from building them in the past. The power companies like to blame the situation on environmentalists but that is nonsense. Is there any historical reality to this? Like the Shoreham disaster - in which billions were spent AND WASTED because politicians decided that Long Island traffic prevented escape (DECIDED AFTER THE FACT!) - and the plant couldn't go on line? The inept, NIMBY -led NY government then tried to buy out the electric company and discovered they couldn't afford the debt, so electric rates shot through the roof in Long Island. Speculators made a killing buying utility stock that plunged. Here's reality: Big companies have learned that NIMBYism can be disastrous - which is why these sort of plants were built IN THE PAST, as you say. No new refineries and no new nukes in decades because of NIMBYism. Ask TV engineers about NIMBYism and trying to build towers - it's a mess and interfereing with the transition to digital. It's now happening with wind turbines, too.
RE: Message from D. Pimentel
-Original Message- From: Jed Rothwell [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Friday, February 03, 2006 10:32 AM To: vortex-L@eskimo.com Subject: RE: Message from D. Pimentel . This comment is petulant and sophomoric. You should read his papers carefully and then if you find a technical error, let us know. His error is his utter lack of imagination, as I point out with the ice wine idea to concentrate alcohol. Countless professors at Cornell can drive past endless miles of unfarmed lands around Ithaca and all of New England - and then publish nonsense about eating up all of Americas farm land and letting the poor starve (which currently seems to be the latest NIMBY argument against biofuel). As for Brazil and the rest - so now ethanol is a human rights issue? You're getting desperate. The difference in ethanol price between Brazil and the US is not so great that it can't reasonably be overcome by further efficiencies that don't involve slave labor ( which usually isn't very productive, anyway).
Re: Wind power stats for 2005
John Coviello wrote: Interesting, but doesn't an average nuke plant put out about 1,000 MW? The ones in my part of the country put out 1,000 MW. I have adjusted the numbers in order to compare apples to apples. I believe the average US nuclear reactor is 980 MW nameplate. (I cannot find the source for this statistic!) The capacity factor in 2002 was 90.4%. (EIA, Annual Energy Review 2002, p. 257) So this comes to 886 MW actual. For wind turbines on land, actual is about 30% of nameplate. Offshore it is about 40%. So 2,500 MW wind nameplate is approximately 750 MW actual, a bit less than 886 MW, but in round numbers it is close to 1 nuclear plant. I believe the average US nuclear power plant size is increasing, because older, smaller units are being retired. However, future nuclear power plants are likely to be smaller than today's average. I cannot find any recent US data. Worldwide, the IAEA reports there are 443 nuclear plants with a total of 364,794 MWe capacity, 823 MWe average. See: http://www.nei.org/documents/World_Nuclear_Generation_and_Capacity.pdf http://www.nei.org/doc.asp?catnum=3catid=13 The trend for all thermal electric power generator types is toward smaller units and co-generation. See: http://www.helioscentre.org/downloads/articles/2000_EN_COSPP_DisGen.pdf - Jed
Re: Let's kill all the remaining whales, too
On Fri, 03 Feb 2006 10:25:48 -0500, you wrote: -Original Message- From: John Fields There are truly _no_ more fish to catch? If that's true, then there will never be another bite and all the tilapia will be farm raised. Tilapia is a fresh water fish from Israel: http://www.ext.nodak.edu/extpubs/alt-ag/tilapia.htm --- Then there's still hope??? -- John Fields Professional Circuit Designer
RE: Message from D. Pimentel
Zell, Chris wrote: As for Brazil and the rest - so now ethanol is a human rights issue? You're getting desperate. Not me; the peasants and children of Brazil are desperate. This has been a human rights issue from the beginning. See: http://journeytoforever.org/biofuel_food.html (I pointed this out previously in Vortex. Please review the archives.) slave labor ( which usually isn't very productive, anyway). That is true, but it does not matter how productive it is. The people doing this don't give a fig many people they kill in unsafe fieldwork and factories, or starve to death after their cropland is stolen. They want cheap fuel for their Mercedes-Benz cars, and if they could make it from the blood of peasant children, they would. If you doubt that, consider the fact that Americans are perfectly happy to pay billions of dollars for oil to countries like Saudi Arabia, that send hundreds of millions to Al Qaeda and other terrorists. Our gasoline money is being used to slaughter our young men and women in the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, both of which we are losing. Given what we are doing, why do you suppose rich people in Brazil would have any qualms about slaughtering peasants for fuel? - Jed
RE: Do we have peak uranium, too?
I appreciate your thinking about the multiple motivations here, of which NIMByism plays a major part. My experience with all executives is that they usually suffer from a great deal of isolated thinking, encouraged by the limited vision of people around them. Besides the destructive effects of NIMBYism, such leaders also have to deal with the severe volatility of energy markets. Prediction in this field has been depressingly inaccurate, as to supplies and prices. Energy companies got caught holding expensive oil when prices fell some years ago. While some may believe in Peak Oil, others may hold confidence in alternative oil supplies derived from coal, shale, tar sands or garbage. Far from pessimism about this, I see 60+ oil as a godsend for alternative development. -Original Message- From: Stephen A. Lawrence [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Friday, February 03, 2006 11:54 AM To: vortex-l@eskimo.com Subject: Re: Do we have peak uranium, too? Zell, Chris wrote: We haven't had any new nuclear power plants built in many years. Since any notion of NIMBYism is to be rejected You are misconstruing a lot of things here. Peak oil was predicted quite a long time back, as a result of modeling available oil in the ground, and is not a conclusion based on watching oil company behavior regarding new refineries. In fact, it's the other way around -- we watch oil company behavior, and say, Oh, we can explain what they're doing by assuming they've seen the peak-oil estimates too. Maybe that's right and maybe it's wrong; it's an attempt at figuring out what's going on inside oil company executives's heads and is therefore on far shakier ground than the peak-oil conclusion itself. There are obviously a number of reasons why people in many parts of the world are opposed to nuclear plants, not least of which is the waste problem, which appears to me to have been exacerbated by proliferation fears, which make spent-fuel reprocessing and research into breeder reactors much trickier political issues than they would be otherwise. Another issue, which feeds into NIMBY-ism, is that trust in government and industry is pretty low in a lot of quarters, and a lot of people at the grass-roots level just don't believe they're safe when industry plays with hazardous materials near their homes. Interesting side note: Do you remember glow-in-the-dark digital watches? They were really useful -- more convenient than the push-the-button-to-turn-on-the-light things we've got now, IMHO. But they vanished from the market right after Three Mile Island. Once people get scared of something it's hard to get them to accept it again, in any form.
Re: Let's kill all the remaining whales, too
Stephen A. Lawrence wrote: I think that's a little severe. There are truly _no_ more fish to catch? Of course there are still some fish left to catch. However, world catches have declined precipitously and are still declining, world fish populations are declining . . . Right. Plus there is another issue that does not occur with economics and the Laffer curve. When edible species are driven close to extinction, other species invade their niche. For example, in Japan in the Inland Sea, jellyfish have multiplied in huge numbers and they now eat much of the food that fish used to eat before the stocks were destroyed by overfishing. People do not generally eat jellyfish in Japan (although actually they taste pretty good), so nothing stops a jellyfish from taking over the whole ecosystem and killing off the last of the fish that people used to eat. They are not an invasive species; they have been there all along, but we have facilitated vast increases in their numbers. Also, once a species enters precipitous decline, it is sometimes unrecoverable. In economics, you can always stop taxing people and the economy will spring back to life, but I think there is little chance the blue and right whales will recover, even though human depredations stopped in the mid-19th century. In North America there were several large species of land animals 20,000 years ago that were driven into extinction by hunting within a thousand years after human beings showed up. In Easter Island and many other Pacific islands virtually all species of birds and mammals were destroyed, along with nearly all of the tree species, leaving only chickens and people. We now have the ability to do the same thing to entire oceans. - Jed
RE: Message from D. Pimentel
-Original Message- From: Jed Rothwell [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Friday, February 03, 2006 11:48 AM To: vortex-L@eskimo.com Subject: RE: Message from D. Pimentel Zell, Chris wrote: As for Brazil and the rest - so now ethanol is a human rights issue? You're getting desperate. Not me; the peasants and children of Brazil are desperate. This has been a human rights issue from the beginning. See: http://journeytoforever.org/biofuel_food.html Indeed - and the cited reference above seems to soundly disprove the notion that ethanol is responsible. (!!!??) I think US farmers can handle this without a return to slavery.
Re: Do we have peak uranium, too?
Jed Rothwell wrote: Nuclear power plants have been rejected by power companies, not citizens. The expectation of a continually rising demand for electricity made investment in nuclear power plants back in the '60s and '70s a good idea. When the demand for electricity unexpectedly levelled off in the 80's investment in new nuclear power plants ended. At least that is what happened in the province of Ontario...but the demand for electricity is rising again and now Ontario is facing a risk of brown outs. Harry
Re: Let's kill all the remaining whales, too
-Original Message- From: John Fields Then there's still hope??? Certainly for us pollyannas! But neither a pollyanna nor a pessimistic cassandra be. We are an adaptable species. We made it through Y2K. g The fact that we are addressing the energy issue is encouraging to me. Personally, I saw the light during the 70s embargo. I've not owned a vehicle which got less than 30 mpg since then. Pity it's taken three decades for the world to catch up. If the Saudis were smart, *they* would be investing in alternate energy research. At least they should be planning for the day when they have declining revenues. There's a great line in Syriana -- 100 years ago you were riding camels and sleeping in tents. 100 years from now you'll be doing the same. Terry ___ Try the New Netscape Mail Today! Virtually Spam-Free | More Storage | Import Your Contact List http://mail.netscape.com
Re: Do we have peak uranium, too?
-Original Message- From: Harry Veeder Jed Rothwell wrote: Nuclear power plants have been rejected by power companies, not citizens. The expectation of a continually rising demand for electricity made investment in nuclear power plants back in the '60s and '70s a good idea. When the demand for electricity unexpectedly levelled off in the 80's investment in new nuclear power plants ended. At least that is what happened in the province of Ontario...but the demand for electricity is rising again and now Ontario is facing a risk of brown outs. Same here, Harry. Ga Power was criticized for building plant Vogtle: http://www.southerncompany.com/southernnuclear/vogtle.asp?mnuOpco=socomn uType=submnuItem=sn http://tinyurl.com/4rql9 because even the projected demand did not justify it. However, it was built to sell power to Florida with the knowledge that eventually Georgia would need the power. And there was no NIMBY attitudes in Waynesboro -- still aren't. The locals WELCOMED the plant as a source of jobs and tax base. AAMOF, Southern Company has one of two license applications for new nukes presently filed with the NRC. Terry ___ Try the New Netscape Mail Today! Virtually Spam-Free | More Storage | Import Your Contact List http://mail.netscape.com
RE: Message from D. Pimentel
Zell, Chris wrote: I think US farmers can handle this without a return to slavery. Absolutely! They do this by replacing human labor with machinery, energy intense production methods, fertilizer and pesticides. That is why U.S. agriculture is the most efficient in the world, measured in output per man-hour. That is also why it takes them 1.7 units of input energy to produce 1.0 units of ethanol fuel energy. (Or, if you believe the industry flacks, 0.6 to 1.0, which is almost as bad from a practical point of view.) - Jed
Re: Message for Thomas Clark
Thomas, One of the things that surprises me about you is how exceedingly diplomatic you are. You tell me that you will take my previous "advice, very seriously." Such flattery. > You are one of the few who seems to want to limit > my story to some chemical imbalance. Perhaps to your face. Let me be clear about something, Thomas. I have no interest in "limiting [your] story." I certainly have no interest in suggesting to you that I believe you or your imagination is flawed either. You're not. You're highly creative. The question I would rather pose to you is who is really behind the steering wheel of your "creativity" spells? Based on what you have revealed so far, I dont think you're sure about that. You have occasionally talked quite openly within the public forum of the vortex-l readership about the nature of some of your deepest experiences, far more than what most individuals would dare care to reveal about the mechanisms of their innermost selves. It is for this reason that I've chosen to respond publicly within Vortex-l - because you chosen to do so as well. Admittedly, it is exceedingly arrogant of me to suggest that you, or anyone for that matter, may be suffering from a chemical imbalance. It also doesn't surprise me that you don't believe it might be possible, and who am I to pass judgment on your physiological makeup. I'm certainly not a trained psychiatrist and I am in no position to make such a "professional" diagnosis of others. In the end it's your drama, and your drama alone. You do seem quite captivated by it. But does it really work for you? When you had to put your teaching career on hold, when you had to put your advanced graduate education goals on hold as well, you might want to seriously ask yourself this simple question: Are the dramas you're going through really benefiting you, or are you simply becoming more and more whacked about by the whims of your dramas? I am reminded of a statement Yoko Ono once said: "A dream you dream alone is a dream, a dream you dream together is reality" Yoko Ono See (The Bed-Ins): http://www.guardian.co.uk/arts/features/story/0,,1468328,00.html http://tinyurl.com/ck3w4 IMHO, you might want to ask yourself how many others are "dreaming" some of dreams that you are having, or even care to. I, for one, would not find it all that productive if I were experiencing the dream of mind control beams and advanced computer systems messing around with my thought patterns. It all comes down to what is the most likely explanation for the source of the "mind control" and "beam weapons" you feel are influencing your thought patterns. I have tried to suggest to you that their source is likely to be, to a large extent, the result of a chemical balance, and as such, there are prescribed medications one can take to make those invasive feelings far less bothersome in your life. You disagree. This does not surprise me. At least for now, I think you prefer the drama they continue to play out in front of you. That might change, however. Freud, once made a statement in regards to the art of interpreting dreams and personal symbols: Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar. And sometimes, a pipe is just a pipe. ...and e-mail is just e-mail. Being the non-professional that I am, I never the less stand by my previous suggestions. My suggestions are, after all, just suggestions. Regards Steven Vincent Johnson www.OrionWorks.com
Re: Message for Thomas Clark Regarding Hitler
From: Thomas Clark ... > But what does it matter in any case, whether I go > to another planet with a reincarnation of Hitler > or someone else. Other than I thought that a > reincarnation of Hitler wanted to get the good > karma by working with me so I offered it, since > Hitler is often associated with doing bad things, > why not allow him to be associated with doing > good things. > > Hitler is a far nicer person than you would have me > believe. He is a gentleman and a scholar even in this > day which few are. I have spent a great deal of time > trying to show that Hitler was a scapegoat used by the > US and UK governments, the Mafia and secret societies > to cover up their governmental crimes, which is the > truth. ... Yes, I understand Hitler could be quite charming in person. Never the less, it would be my suggestion that you let Hitler's spirit guides (whoever they might be) take care of his own spiritual welfare. Is this really any of your responsibility to assume? You might want to do likewise. Regards, Steven Vincent Johnson www.OrionWorks.com
Re: Let's kill all the remaining whales, too
On Fri, 03 Feb 2006 14:42:25 -0500, you wrote: -Original Message- From: John Fields Then there's still hope??? Certainly for us pollyannas! But neither a pollyanna nor a pessimistic cassandra be. We are an adaptable species. We made it through Y2K. g The fact that we are addressing the energy issue is encouraging to me. Personally, I saw the light during the 70s embargo. I've not owned a vehicle which got less than 30 mpg since then. Pity it's taken three decades for the world to catch up. If the Saudis were smart, *they* would be investing in alternate energy research. At least they should be planning for the day when they have declining revenues. There's a great line in Syriana -- 100 years ago you were riding camels and sleeping in tents. 100 years from now you'll be doing the same. --- And if the rest of civilization crumbles about you and you know how to survive by riding camels and sleeping in tents, that's a bad thing? -- John Fields Professional Circuit Designer
0T: Income Tax
Stephen A. Lawrence wrote: Remember the Laffer curve debates, years back? At 0% income tax the government's net tax revenue is zero. At 100% income tax nobody works for taxable dollars and again the government's tax take is zero. So, the _maximum_ tax take is achieved at some tax rate L, with 0 L 100. The curve which relates government tax revenue to tax rate is called the Laffer curve, and its peak is the optimal tax rate for maximum government income. A 100% income tax would make for a simple flat tax system, and as long as a significant fraction of EARNED income is returned by law people would continue to work for taxable dollars. Harry
RE: Message from D. Pimentel
-Original Message- From: Jed Rothwell [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Friday, February 03, 2006 3:21 PM To: vortex-L@eskimo.com Subject: RE: Message from D. Pimentel Zell, Chris wrote: I think US farmers can handle this without a return to slavery. Absolutely! They do this by replacing human labor with machinery, energy intense production methods, fertilizer and pesticides. All that matters is the price per BTU, without subsidy for either gasoline or ethanol. That is the valid determinant, not the pessimism of prejudiced academics. As to efficiency, studies done of Amish farming showed good profitability during the '70s, when farm failures were commonly reported - despite little use of pesticides or energy intensive methods. Nor does the growth of cellulose necessarily need lots of fertilizer or pesticides compared to other products. - and tractors can run on ethanol, too.
RE: Message from D. Pimentel
Zell, Chris wrote: All that matters is the price per BTU, without subsidy for either gasoline or ethanol. Ah. Well, if we apply that standard the ethanol industry will disappear overnight. It is heavily subsidized directly and indirectly. That is say, farmers are subsidized for growing corn, and then the ethanol industry is subsidized for making the fuel. Back when gasoline cost $0.60 per gallon, ethanol was subsidized directly at $0.87 per gallon. Adjusting for the difference in energy content, and adding in the cost of the horrendous and totally uncontrolled pollution caused by ethanol production, and the cost worked out to be roughly $2.55/gallon. God only knows what it would be now. Basically, ethanol can be viewed as a scheme to rob the taxpayers and wire transfer the money to Saudi Arabia. That is the valid determinant, not the pessimism of prejudiced academics. The academics in this case are the only objective people whose analysis make any sense. If ethanol production made economic sense the government would not have to be subsidizing it for billions of years for decades. (Of course they subsidize all forms of fuel, and they give the most to coal and oil, so without some subsidy it would not survive, but not 75% of the cost!) As to efficiency, studies done of Amish farming showed good profitability during the '70s, when farm failures were commonly reported - despite little use of pesticides or energy intensive methods. That would be economic efficiency. That is a different story. I said that US farmers have the best efficiency measured in man-hours versus output, because they use mechanization and so on. That does not mean they make a profit. On the contrary, if they were not heavily subsidized by the Feds most of them would go out of business. Nor does the growth of cellulose necessarily need lots of fertilizer or pesticides compared to other products. - and tractors can run on ethanol, too. Sure, but no one in the ethanol business runs any of their machines on the stuff. They are not fools. They sell it to the government for four times what is worth, instead. As Pimentel pointed out, if ethanol production made any sense, obviously ethanol factories and tractors would run on the stuff. The fact that they do not tells you all you need to know. Perhaps in the future a breakthrough in something like bioengineering will allow much more efficient production of ethanol. If that is what we are aiming for, we should stop subsidizing present-day production of ethanol with existing methods, and redirect the money to basic research instead. Paying billions to farmers and the owners of obsolete factories today contributes nothing to progress. Those farmers and factory workers are not going to make any breakthroughs in bioengineering. If they could have increased the efficiency with conventional methods they would have done so years ago. - Jed
Re: Let's kill all the remaining whales, too
-Original Message- From: John Fields And if the rest of civilization crumbles about you and you know how to survive by riding camels and sleeping in tents, that's a bad thing? grin Only if you prefer an airconditoned Mercedes! ___ Try the New Netscape Mail Today! Virtually Spam-Free | More Storage | Import Your Contact List http://mail.netscape.com
Is NOLA the First City Casualty?
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/4673586.stm New Orleans 'risks extinction' By Helen Lambourne Researcher, BBC Horizon Residents brave the floodwaters in the Lower Ninth Ward, New Orleans. In the chaos that followed the worst natural disaster in American history, a forensic investigation has been taking place to find out what went wrong and why. The BBC's Horizon programme has spoken to the scientists who are now confronting the real possibility that New Orleans may be the first of many cities worldwide to face extinction. more ___ Try the New Netscape Mail Today! Virtually Spam-Free | More Storage | Import Your Contact List http://mail.netscape.com
The Taste of the Moon
Taste it?not half bad, according to Apollo 16 astronaut John Young. http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2006/30jan_smellofmoondust.htm http://tinyurl.com/cfyrg ___ Try the New Netscape Mail Today! Virtually Spam-Free | More Storage | Import Your Contact List http://mail.netscape.com
Re: Is NOLA the First City Casualty?
Nobody has the kind of money it would take to restore NOLA. Only a 1/3 of the area of the city can be adequately protected from floods . The city continues to sink so the 1/3 is up for grabs over the next 50 years. The evacuees that have moved and found jobs can't afford to go back to nothing and nothing can't be turned into something without them. With est. 500k population now down to some 100kplus, the infrastructure imploded. Of equal importance is what the mass exodus taught long range demographic planners. Compare the dispersion of the evacuees. Some 150k plus came to Houston and a 1./3 in turn were further dispersed across the USA. No one has a good count on how many have or plan to return to NOLA. A rude wake up call was visited on Houston during the Rita hurricane that fortunately veered east before reaching Houston. This veering did not take place in time to avoid a mad hyper-exodus via any highway route out of the area. Again no good estimate of the number of people that particpated in that rush can be made although some give figures of 1 1/2 million people on the road within 24 hours. The scarey scenario would be if Rita had hit Houston dead center. We would have had an area population of nearly 2 1/3 million people in real trouble for food, housing and utilities. There was a near total breakdown in civil structure during the exodus. Had a direct hit happened, no one knows how it would have been dealt with. Major city implosions can happen for other reasons, primarily economic. Los Angeles will be another Detroit within 10 years if the major shift in economics continues. Los Angeles is not alone in these times of economic upheaval. Add a energy shortage component to the theme and you could write your own scenario. It can only take a few chicken littles with the sky falling to see a shift in public opinion that could turn very ugly. Richard - Original Message - From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: vortex-l@eskimo.com Sent: Friday, February 03, 2006 8:08 PM Subject: Is NOLA the First City Casualty? http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/4673586.stm New Orleans 'risks extinction' By Helen Lambourne Researcher, BBC Horizon Residents brave the floodwaters in the Lower Ninth Ward, New Orleans. In the chaos that followed the worst natural disaster in American history, a forensic investigation has been taking place to find out what went wrong and why. The BBC's Horizon programme has spoken to the scientists who are now confronting the real possibility that New Orleans may be the first of many cities worldwide to face extinction. more ___ Try the New Netscape Mail Today! Virtually Spam-Free | More Storage | Import Your Contact List http://mail.netscape.com
Solar and Lunar Gravimagnetic Fields
In an attempt to account for the powerful ambient gravimagnetic field required to sustain precession of the equinoxes, the gravimagnetic influences of the sun and moon are now estimated in: http://www.mtaonline.net/~hheffner/SolarLunarGK.pdf. Summary of Results Gravimagnetic field field from lunar rotation: K_moon = 1.778x10^-30 (i Hz) Gravimagnetic field from lunar orbiting: K_orbit = 3.78x10^-19 (i Hz) Gravimagnetic field from solar rotation: K_sun = 9.526x10^-23 (i Hz) Ambient gravimagnetic field: K_ambient = 1.551 x 10^-11 (i Hz) The cumulative gravimagnetic field of the sun and moon do not come within 11 orders of magnitude of the ambient gravimagnetic field in the vicinity of Earth required to account for the precession of the Earth. Momentarily ignoring the many possibilities for error, this leads automatically to the wild speculation that we have a powerful unseen spinning neighbor that has been around for a long time, longer than the solar system. The plane of the solar system (the ecliptic) is not aligned with the plane of the Milky Way, so it is unlikely the galactic core is involved. The axis of precession is aligned with the poles of the ecliptic, thus the ambient gravimagnetic field must be also, on average. We may have a dark partner in our part of the galaxy.
FW: [BOBPARKS-WHATSNEW] What's New Friday February 3, 2006
[Original Message] From: What's New [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: 2/3/2006 9:08:46 PM Subject: [BOBPARKS-WHATSNEW] What's New Friday February 3, 2006 WHAT'S NEW Robert L. Park Friday, 03 Feb 06 Washington, DC 1. STATE OF THE UNION: THE AMERICAN COMPETITIVENESS INITIATIVE. Last year, we had to do a word search on the transcript to find science. Not this year; the President announced the American Competitiveness Initiative, which calls for doubling investment in basic research in the physical sciences over a ten-year period and increased emphasis on math and science education. The President's FY07 budget calls for $137B in RD, up 50% from 2001. It's good to go into the budget process with a big request, but November is a long way off and spending on Iraq is undiminished. 2. SHH! TOP CLIMATE SCIENTIST SAYS NASA TRIED TO SILENCE HIM. Physicist James Hansen, director of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies told the New York Times that since he gave a talk at the American Geophysical Union meeting on 6 Dec 05, NASA has screened his coming talks and requests from journalists for interviews. In his AGU talk, Hansen had argued that an increase in automotive fuel efficiency standards would significantly cut emissions. The administration policy is to rely on voluntary measures. Sherwood Boehlert (R-NY), Science Committee Chairman, admonished NASA Administrator Griffin and pledged to investigate. It's not the first time Boehlert has leaped to the defense of climate scientists. Last July, Boehlert objected to harassment of climate scientists by Joe Barton (R-TX), Energy Committee Chairman http://bobpark.physics.umd.edu/WN05/wn070805.html . WN would suggest that Mr. Boehlert might also want to look into NASA's termination of the Deep Space Climate Observatory. 3. JUNK REPORTING: FOX NEWS COLUMNIST IS AVAILABLE FOR HIRE. Steven Milloy, who writes the Junk Science column for Fox News, praised Rep. Barton for his investigation of Michael Mann, a Penn State scientist whose research showed global temperatures sharply rising in the last century, after hundreds of years with little change. According to an article by Paul Thacker in today's New Republic, Boehlert accused Barton of attempting to intimidate a prominent scientist and have Congress put its thumb on the scales of a scientific debate. Barton and Milloy have much in common. Both are recipients of huge oil company donations. Milloy has also ridiculed the dangers of second-hand smoke, while on the payroll of Philip Morris and other tobacco companies. 4. BLASPHEMY: THE INTELLIGENT DESIGN DISPUTE IS SO YESTERDAY. Muslims are waving guns in the air and boycotting Danish pastry, while in Italy, an Italian judge has ordered a priest to appear in court this month to prove Jesus Christ existed. The Muslims are outraged by publication in Danish papers of political cartoons depicting Muhammad. In Viterbo, north of Rome, Luigi Cascioli accused Father Enrico Righi of abuse of popular credulity, an offense under the Italian penal code. The claim that Jesus is a fabrication is not new. What Father Righi might offer as proof of Christ's existence is not clear. THE UNIVERSITY OF MARYLAND. Opinions are the author's and not necessarily shared by the University of Maryland, but they should be. --- Archives of What's New can be found at http://www.bobpark.org What's New is moving to a different listserver and our subscription process has changed. To change your subscription status please visit this link: http://listserv.umd.edu/cgi-bin/wa?SUBED1=bobparks-whatsnewA=1
Re: Solar and Lunar Gravimagnetic Fields
- Original Message - From: Horace Heffner We may have a dark partner in our part of the galaxy. I would be willing to bet that the partner will probably be our progenitor system - the one that spawned the solar system. We have several such massive object candidates in our arm of the galaxy though not necessarily dark. The closest possible candidate celestial body to us which have been our immediate progenitor system is now believed to be a quark star http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap020414.html Previously, this compact object (RJX J185635-375) held claim to being the closest neutron star - 150 light-years away. Now new observations and analysis indicate not only a larger distance, roughly 450 light-years, but a very small radius for RXJ J185635-375 and larger mass. One solution is that RJX J185635-375 is not a neutron star but a quark star. Quark stars are truly strange - some may have made a transition to type of matter known as strange quarks. Quark stars, were they to exist, can be intermediate between neutron stars and black holes in size and density. Quark stars can also be more compact and cool faster than neutron stars. In fact, some might even be ultracompact - so dense that light itself can orbit rather than radiate or be prohibited from radiating. Another and perhaps better candidate is Eta Carinae which cannot be categorized as 'like' anything else in our galaxy. It is too large to become a super-nova, nor even the hypothesized hyper-nova, but it is an object that pulsates with some regularity, actually emitting only slightly less energy with each sequential explosion than the average supernova- but often focused directly towards our solar system because it is a polar emission (i.e. twin-lobed... with one pole occasionally aimed directly at our southern hemisphere) Surprisingly, Eta Carinae (EC) is also a binary... even more surprisingly that binary partner may be another hypothesized quark star like RXJ J185635-375 which is more massive than a neutron star but less than a black hole - and that partner object then would be the key to the longer-term stability of the EC system, which may have operated in pulsation mode for billions of years - due to the presence of the primordial quark star partner, which can be assumed to have formed ab initio. It is true that Eta Carinae (EC) is far too distant (7,500 light-years) to influence our sun in ways that we understand *now,* but that was not true in the early years of our solar system. The solar system is a second or third generation system and our progenitor system would have been a first or second generation system and not necessarily a supernova gone cold - it could still be active like EC. The suggestion has been made that our solar system could have actually been expelled from EC 5 billion years ago. There could be a gravitational relic of that event still with us in precession. Our solar system IS still axially aligned, that is: nearly perpendicular to the exact axis of rotation of EC and its companion. 7,500 light-years is indeed a long way off... at least it is NOW, but let's put that distance into reversed-time perspective. The Milky Way is thought to be a spiral galaxy about 10 billion years old, composed of about a hundred billion stars arrayed in the form of a disk, probably a spiral disk with two arms. It is therefore theoretically possible that many neutron stars (or above in mass) within a 60 degree wedge of the galaxy but closer to the core, could been the earlier generation system to have spawned our solar system. The Milky Way has a central bulge (some 30,000 light-years across) of closely packed stars lying in the direction of Sagittarius. We are 28,000 light-years distant from the bulge but lying in the galactic plane closer to the edge than to the center (43,000 light-years from the center). When we look in the plane of the disk we see the combined light of its stars from within a disk that is ~100,000 light-years across, and Eta Carinae (EC) is now 7,500 light years away (close by comparison) in the constellation Carina (The Keel) but 4.5 billion years ago we could have easily been within the necessary range of EC for it to have been our progenitor celestial body. Therefore, the bottom line is that only conclusion one can make is that EC is a possibility for progenitor object, but so are several thousand other dense objects within our wedge of the galaxy. Again, our solar system is axially aligned, that is: nearly perpendicular to the exact axis of rotation of EC and its companion Jones
