News article last week I now can't find, quoted Exxon chairman on exploratory results of Canadian shale oil field. Short version: largest in world and Peak Oil is officially a crock!
Personally, I would prefer that we use all that lovely oil as feedstock for plastic, medicine, and fertiliser production.
Nuclear power stations give off NO CO2 during operation, and should be the darling of the "green meanies". That they are not indicates a severe dissociative element in the mental processes of your average "environmentalist".
Personally I see this as one area where the US is planning long term. Use the ME, SA etc. oil until it runs out and then control the rest for your own use.
Of course by then the whingy whiney greenies will have keep deservedly kicked to death and you can build as many Nuke power stations as you need whilst using your oil in the most efficient manner, plastics etc. but as fuel if necessary.
I think the Bakken Foundation is a great place to put up a bunch of windmills and have a wind farm! If Obama doesn't drill there, I think that is a clear cut indication that he doesn't care about becoming independent of foreign oil. I don't see how anyone could have an alternate view of this!
At a US consumption rate of 20 million barrels per day, we would consume 4.3 billion barrels in 215 days. That is a fabulous yield for one field, but it would give us independence from world oil, in round numbers, for 60% of one year.
Don't misunderstand the point of this; I'm all for drilling wherever there is oil, but I suggest keeping it in perspective.
One important function these reserves form is as a limiter to OPEC price manipulation. They cannot drive oil prices higher than the cost of a Bakken formation barrel.
Remember: yes, it's about the oil, but above all, it's really about The Lightning.
It's the water usage that will keep this field from being fulling utilized. Something on the order of 125,000 acre feet per annum. (sorry, can't find link). Full exploitation of the field would take large quantities of water from the Great Lakes.
Alright, before I comment further on this, I'd like to clarify who the modern day Luddites are. Are these the people who want to use new tech to move us away from oil and into greener and more efficient ways of producing energy?
Or the ones who think electric vehicles are an answer, but don't consider the fact that we're already running short of generating capacity, and the Luddites don't want any new capacity - oil, coal, natural gas or nuke - built anywhere.
Are these the people who want to use new tech to move us away from oil and into greener and more efficient ways of producing energy?
From your perspective? Yes. That's them.
Because there is no "new tech". Just a belief that there will be. Someday. And it will be *wonderful* then. All we need to do in the meantime is let the government do lots of stuff, and regulate what's currently in place out of existance.
If the tech existed, we'd be using it. If it was more efficient*, we'd be using it.
Because no matter how good it is now, in theory, it will be better later, and it's not worth the impact now.
before I comment further on this
Play it safe. If you don't understand the above, you're horribly out of your league. Not that it's stopped you in the past.
Granted that the Luddites are mostly suffering from a critical failure to rub two neurons together. That said, their idiocy may have a few good effects.
First, you dismiss battery power too quickly, I think. The advantage of batteries is that electricity is fungible—you can get it from all sorts of places, and having that flexibility means you are not dependent on any one source.
That frees us from not only oil (which is so nasty in its political and geopolitical effects that it is known in South America as "the devil's excrement"—Google the term "resource curse" to get an idea) but from any centralized energy distribution network under the control of governments or massive corporations. People can choose their source of electricity, or even generate their own if they want to. That frees them from a crucial source of dependence that permeates our whole lives.
Second, the Luddites' refusal to allow us to beef up the electrical grid may encourage people to invest in their own sources of power, like solar panels or geothermal pumps and such. That makes the whole system more robust, and again frees them from the control of the utility companies and consequently the government.
On net, I'd rather have the nuclear plants, but let's not dismiss the advantages, especially for lovers of freedom.
First, you dismiss battery power too quickly, I think. The advantage of batteries is that electricity is fungible—you can get it from all sorts of places, and having that flexibility means you are not dependent on any one source.
No, I don't dismiss batteries. They are not a power source - they're a means of power storage, and while, yes, that power can come from many different sources, the one most people think of and depend on is the electrical grid, which in the U.S. is 80% powered by fossil fuels (natural gas, coal, oil) and is already running out of capacity.
Plus, battery technology is still not where it needs to be (though researchers are doing incredible things with nanotechnology in the laboratories these days that might someday make it to the store shelves.)
One thing no one seems to consider is that the materials for some of these batteries is A) exotic, B) toxic, C) flamable, and D) mostly mined. Nickel metal hydride batteries, for example, require nickel, and one of the largest sources for this mineral happens to be in Madagascar, where the environmentalists are having little kittens over the fact that it's being taken out of the ground there. Lithium-ion? What happens if those batteries get a pinhole? FLAME ON!
It's been said by many that if inventors wanted to introduce the gasoline-burning internal combustion engine-driven automobile today, the government would prohibit it on safety grounds. Move a highly flamable, toxic substance around to distribution points all over the country? Put tens of gallons of it in flimsy thinwalled storage tanks in millions of nearly unregulated vehicles traveling at high velocities on city streets and highways? Are you INSANE?
Battery technology needs a lot more advancement. We've come a long way, but we're not where we need to be yet.
Are these the people who want to use new tech to move us away from oil and into greener and more efficient ways of producing energy?
You cannot even contemplate physics with your incredible disregard for math and logic. I mean, not even as entertainment for the rest of us - just don't do it.
Kevin, the reasons you didn't hear about this until now are:
1. It really isn't all that significant, as DJ has explained to you.
2. You don't read The Oil Drum's coverage of the Bakken. You are also confusing "technically recoverable" with "economically recoverable". The distinction is crucial, as shall be explained below.
"Peak Oil" my aching ass. More expensive oil, yes.
Yes, it is PEAK OIL. You've already seen what happens when it gets too expensive to provide oil: you get a recession. If it takes too many resources (steel, labor, water, energy to drill) to provide the oil, the amount of oil you can use per unit of economic output goes down. You get peak oil when you can no longer commit enough resources to increase the flow. ("Continuous" resources like the Bakken shale require far more wells, with far more material and energy invested per unit of oil, than conventional reservoirs like Cantarell or Ghawar.) Your only options after this are to increase your efficiency or decrease your standard of living. If the direct effect of paying more for fuel doesn't get you, the indirect effect of everyone else's disposable income heading for oil producers instead of whatever you're providing gets you (and the rest of the economy except essentials like food).
This is why I said that your (then-new) Toyota pickup was such a mistake: it burns too much oil for what it does. Now you have a long-lived asset which isn't efficient enough for the situation going forward; even if you sell it, it either gets used by someone else (still burning too much fuel) or scrapped early (wasting the resources used to build it). Something like the old VW Rabbit pickup, with a modern TDI engine, would have been far better. A plug-in hybrid, which would let you make "motor fuel" from the sun currently wasted on your roof, would be better still. Unfortunately, we didn't encourage a shift to such things when we had the money. Now we have an economic recession, and the debt we ran up in the boom wasn't put into anything that can help us in our current situation.
Know how bad our situation is? If the USA had the per-capita oil consumption of Brazil, this nation would currently be able to export oil. We are at the mercy of exporters only because we are so wasteful with the stuff.
As the easier stuff taps out and the price goes up, other energy technologies will become more attractive, but the "more difficult to extract" oil will become economically feasible.
You're missing the phenomenon in front of your eyes: if the economy uses oil inefficiently, it will enter contraction before the price gets high enough to make the substitutes economical. We absolutely need higher efficiency or we are fucked. This is one reason we need a several-dollar-per-gallon motor fuel tax: to get the public to take efficiency seriously, and keep that money away from the oil producers like Chavez and the oil sheikhs.
Now, on the Bakken itself: DJ has hit the nail on the head, and it is likely that we can expect less than 250,000 bbl/day from the Bakken. That will get us a few billion barrels over 40 years. Add ANWR to that and you're probably talking 1 million bbl/day peak between the two. What are you going to do for the rest of the 12 million bbl/day of US oil imports? Corn ethanol, fertilized with ammonia imported from natural gas produced in Aruba or Qatar? Don't make me laugh.
I have no idea why you don't like the idea of electric vehicles, except a tribal antipathy to the sort of people who've traditionally pushed them. You're going to have to get over your dislike of that particular bit, because physics is on their side and you can no more prevail against it than King Canute can command the tide to stay out.
One thing no one seems to consider is that the materials for some of these batteries is A) exotic, B) toxic, C) flamable, and D) mostly mined.
Iron phosphate is pretty darn cheap, and lithium is present in relatively friendly places like Bolivia and Chile.
Lithium-ion? What happens if those batteries get a pinhole? FLAME ON!
You're not up to date. That's what happens with the cobalt-oxide (laptop-style) cells; the carbon electrode burns with the cobalt oxide and you get flame. The LiFePO4 and lithium titanium spinel electrodes can't do this. Then there are lithium-air, zinc-air, and even lead-acid in the form of Firefly Energy's 3D² technology.
No, I don't dismiss batteries. They are not a power source - they're a means of power storage, and while, yes, that power can come from many different sources, the one most people think of and depend on is the electrical grid, which in the U.S. is 80% powered by fossil fuels (natural gas, coal, oil)...
Closer to 70% fossil; conventional renewables are about 9%, and nuclear is about 20%. Here are the annual figures back to 1949.
... and is already running out of capacity.
Running out of peak capacity, but the beauty of electric vehicles is that most of them can take their energy during off-peak periods or when intermittent resources are available. Then all you need is the energy supply (no small issue in itself, but far easier to deal with than dependence upon hydrocarbons).
I have no idea why you don't like the idea of electric vehicles . . .
Because I'm an electrical engineer, and I see where the technology is at the moment, and where it will probably be in the next ten years or so. ALL the technology.
I figured you'd come by sooner or later, and I bow to your greater knowledge concerning current energy production, but I think you underestimate our ability to produce (economically) enough oil to carry us through the transition to coming technologies, and I think you over estimate the "benefits" of excessive taxation of energy while also ignoring the negative economic effects of said taxation.
I actually like electric vehicles, if we had distributed mini-nuke plants scattered all over the country, and battery technology about an order of magnitude better (in both energy density and speed of recharge) than we currently do.
But the Luddites won't allow the power plants to be built, and that battery technology is only now proving possible in very limited laboratory experiments. How long it will take to hit production plants (and whether the Luddites will allow THAT) remains to be seen.
And hell, the economy might collapse for other reasons long before we run out of oil.
A plug-in hybrid, which would let you make "motor fuel" from the sun currently wasted on your roof, would be better still.
Except if you're going with "total energy" they're hardly a slam-dunk.
Plus currently, there's no hybrid with the capacity I need at times - and yes, I might could work around it. If I wanted to spent a lot of extra money up front, in the "hopes" that ruinous taxation is imposed. It's not the way to bet, IMO.
This is one reason we need a several-dollar-per-gallon motor fuel tax: to get the public to take efficiency seriously, and keep that money away from the oil producers like Chavez and the oil sheikhs.
Right. So we need to raise the price (which also makes those earlier energy deposits profitable), dump billions of dollars into the government, and this will work well.
If you're going to insist on such things, then just continue down the CAFE path, and institute more insane and damaging requirements.
Running out of peak capacity, but the beauty of electric vehicles is that most of them can take their energy during off-peak periods or when intermittent resources are available.
If everybody drives EVs,and plugs them in with current batteries, there is no off-peak. It's only off-peak because of how few EVs are out there.
Batteries, barring some huge evolutionary jump, ain't gonna be workable for the vast majority of uses. I won't say that won't happen, but neither am I going to plan my policy to depend on it.
Also I have yet to hear of any source of "green" energy that actually makes money all on its own. Until that happens, it won't be economically practical, it just ain't gonna. So until "green" sources produce a value of electricity notably higher than the costs running them incur, "electric __________" of any sort is going to be taking those "non-green" systems and converting their output to stored electricity with the accompanying loss of efficiency. There's no such animal as conversion without loss.
And this will improve our energy efficiency and reduce pollution how, exactly?
I think you underestimate our ability to produce (economically) enough oil to carry us through the transition to coming technologies
What you're missing is where the economic benefits of that oil will go, absent a serious policy change on our end. If we are going to make the transition, we need to have a big enough surplus to shift over a trillion-dollar segment of the US economy; pretty much the entire oil infrastructure will be scrapped and replaced. If the high prices resulting from shortages go to the benefit of oil exporters (especially Islamists), that is vanishingly unlikely to happen.
I think you over estimate the "benefits" of excessive taxation of energy while also ignoring the negative economic effects of said taxation.
And I think you're ignoring the negative economic effects of roller-coaster oil prices (trucks got popular again after the collapse, though the market share of hybrids continues to climb) and the fact that money which goes to the government is at least kept in the national economy. Barry Goldwater is the kind of person who could make a principled case for economic conservatives to slap a rapidly rising tax on petroleum and rebate all of it as a deductible on payroll taxes, but Saudi Arabia would have managed to purge him from the party if he wasn't already dead. (The KSA appears to own critical people in both parties, blocking major policy changes.)
I actually like electric vehicles, if we had distributed mini-nuke plants scattered all over the country...
Seriously, we can worry about that later. Even if we were burning oil, burning it in GE LMS-100 gas turbines at 46% efficiency is 3 times as good as burning it in the typical ICE at 14.9% overall efficiency. We can substitute wind, solar or shale gas for electricity much more easily than we can for liquid vehicle fuel. And when the country gets rational about nukes, the vehicles don't need to change a thing.
... and battery technology about an order of magnitude better (in both energy density and speed of recharge) than we currently do.
Do you really think we need an order of magnitude improvement? Have you looked at A123Systems' cells? Their specific power is sufficient to run light airplanes, and the White Zombie electric dragster ran an 11-second quarter mile using them for power. Yes, they're expensive now, but so were LEDs not so long ago.
Maybe we don't need secondary cells except to recover braking energy. Primary cells, like zinc-air fuel cells, have a much greater energy density. At least one ZAFC technology can be refilled by flushing slurry and adding powdered metal; the "waste product" is commonly used as sunscreen. I can't find my figures at the moment, but I recall calculating that the required fuel tank volume would be roughly the same for zinc as for gasoline.
Plus currently, there's no hybrid with the capacity I need at times - and yes, I might could work around it.
GM and Lexus have both put hybrid SUVs on the market. Neither of these will do for you? Remember that the standard freight locomotive these days has an electric drivetrain; motors are far more durable and powerful than piston engines, and have been since the 19th century. The hangup has always been the battery.
Right. So we need to raise the price (which also makes those earlier energy deposits profitable), dump billions of dollars into the government, and this will work well.
No, it does not make the Bakken worthwhile; if you failed to tax Bakken oil you'd just launder a huge stream of money through e.g. steel producers and other suppliers of oil-producing gear, many of them foreign. The point is to get consumers to get their business done with the least damage to the economy; taxing all oil enough to get people to drive 50-MPG cars (whether hybrid or diesel) is good, creating windfall profits for certain favored classes of producers and their suppliers is bad. (The windfall profits from free emissions permits is one of several reasons why the Waxman-Markey bill is a calamity.)
If I didn't give a damn about the country, I could drive around in a Hummer. My ex-landlord does exactly that (and he's a complete asshole). Instead, I drive a car EPA rated at 38 MPG highway, and I hyper-mile it so I often hit that figure for my average. Today I didn't even take it out of the garage; I did all my business on my bicycle. I'm walking the walk here.
If everybody drives EVs,and plugs them in with current batteries, there is no off-peak. It's only off-peak because of how few EVs are out there.
Relax. Something like 50% of the US vehicle fleet can go PHEV before we need any additional generating capacity (one study found a figure over 70% but I believe an error was found in the calculation). It will take us a long time to get to that level of penetration.
And while we're doing it, the economics of the grid changes. The flattening of the daily load curve means fewer simple-cycle gas turbines for peaking and more combined-cycle plants (or nuclear) for base load. The overall efficiency goes up. And if you want to slap 10 kW of PV on your house, a big fleet of PHEVs will allow you to make full use of its output whenever it's producing. The same PHEV can be the backup power supply for your house if the grid goes out. It's not just an environmental and national-security measure, it's an addition to civil defense too.
Batteries, barring some huge evolutionary jump, ain't gonna be workable for the vast majority of uses.
I think you're over-estimating the difficulties (think Shai Agassi's Project Better Place), and also under-estimating the number of ways we can take batteries out of the equation completely. For instance, put semi-trucks on rails and then electrify the rails, either with overhead catenary wires or switched third-rail segments at ground level (only live when beneath a vehicle). Voila, a truck that only needs a battery to get from the rail siding to the loading dock and back; all the rail mileage is powered directly.
These things require policy changes and infrastructure investments, but given how expensive roads are to maintain and how much longer rail beds last than freeway pavement (especially under the pounding of semis), this sort of thing makes huge sense in several different ways at once.
GOF: I think you missed the little detail that even old fossil-fuel plants are much more efficient than the typical ICE vehicle (33% vs. ~15%). Modern simple-cycle gas turbines (the LMS100 from GE hits 46%) and combined-cycle plants (60%) are far better yet; you'd burn 1/3 to 1/4 of the fuel, and the fuel doesn't have to meet transport specifications. Even burning powdered coal at 33%, you would double the efficiency of the typical vehicle; if you converted coal to gasoline, you'd instead get about half the efficiency (50% loss in the liquefaction process). Electric is definitely the way to go.
Even burning powdered coal at 33%, you would double the efficiency of the typical vehicle
Ah, no.
You convert the coal to electricity at a 33% efficiency, no? Then you lose efficiency transforming and transporting that power to the point of use, again when you transform down to the point of use voltage (probably through more than one step - 13.8kV up to 230kV cross-country, 230kV back down to 46kV or 13.8kV for local substations, then down to 4160V for neighborhoods, then to 120/240 for household use) convert from AC to DC to charge the batteries, again from the action of actually CHARGING the batteries, and again when you convert the stored charge into mechanical motion. What's the total system efficiency? Better than ~15%, I'd assume, but how much better? It matters.
GM and Lexus have both put hybrid SUVs on the market. Neither of these will do for you?
Nope. Not for what I get, for what they want for 'em, and what I need to do. Lexus? Even if it did what I wanted, there's no way in hell I could (practically) afford just the nameplate.
Remember that the standard freight locomotive these days has an electric drivetrain
You know, you might find this funny, but I almost never, ever, drive on rails for long distances with no stopping. And the hauling? I mean, occasionally a trailer, maybe three, but that's only when the Jones are harvesting.... I think we all know how trains work. And they're great. For trains. There's a reason why we all don't run on rails and deal with switching and all of those issues.
Plus, the damn locomotive won't fit in my garage!
The hangup has always been the battery.
Which is a pretty damn big hangup.
The point is to get consumers to get their business done with the least damage to the economy
You could have fooled me.
taxing all oil enough to get people to drive 50-MPG cars (whether hybrid or diesel) is good
50? Why not 100? Why not 400?
50's not even beginning to be practical, so why stop there?
If I didn't give a damn about the country, I could drive around in a Hummer. My ex-landlord does exactly that (and he's a complete asshole). Instead, I drive a car EPA rated at 38 MPG highway, and I hyper-mile
Dissonance alert. I've never, not once, met anybody who used the term "hyper-mile" who wasn't a complete and total ass. You might be an exception. But you might want to be careful tossing those asshole comments around. Usually those sort of claims are - and appear to be here - to be a holier-than-thou appeal to morality. And it won't work here. (Wait, 38? I thought you were going to start shooting people for not driving 50 mpg?)
I'm walking the walk here.
More power to you. (Well wait, why do *I* have to drive a Montgomery-Scott Laws of Phyics violating 50 mph, but you can get away with a wasteful 38?) But when you tell ME I've got to walk the same walk with you, and to shut up about what I want to do, because you're smarter than I, well, let's say you're going to keep running into problems. (more on that, next comment.)
If everybody drives EVs,and plugs them in with current batteries, there is no off-peak. It's only off-peak because of how few EVs are out there.
Relax. Something like 50% of the US vehicle fleet can go PHEV before we need any additional generating capacity (one study found a figure over 70% but I believe an error was found in the calculation). It will take us a long time to get to that level of penetration.
That's highly unlikely considering the level and planning that currently takes into account those peaks. I know people say that, I'm calling shenanigans on 'em, and/or expecting they, like you, have ulterior motives in place to control people and demand funding after we start heading a certain direction.
And while we're doing it, the economics of the grid changes.
Economics are one thing. Capacity is another. The grid is built to peak - and not sustain it. Many cities have issues now on hot days when air conditioners start browning out the grid, and I've been at more than one computer center where they were on generator and/or backfeeding the grid to deal with a over-planned-peak situation.
You can make that claim, but when we can see a minor brownout that ends up taking down the entire NorthEast and a good fraction of Canada, I'm not taking your word for it. Not when every utility is claiming the grid's stressed. Currently, we've been constrained on some new capacity planning due to grid loads. This again, doesn't seem to jibe with your assurances.
And if you want to slap 10 kW of PV on your house
Oh, sure, what the hell, why not. Lemme get my piggy bank.
a big fleet of PHEVs will allow you to make full use of its output whenever it's producing.
Damn that real-life, getting in the way.
The same PHEV can be the backup power supply for your house if the grid goes out. It's not just an environmental and national-security measure, it's an addition to civil defense too.
Again, nice concept, when you consider the total cost, not viable.
Batteries, barring some huge evolutionary jump, ain't gonna be workable for the vast majority of uses.
I think you're over-estimating the difficulties
No, just looking at history, and the fact that of all the progress we've made, battery technology, for all the jumps it has made, is still little better than the turn of last century. Especially charging. Disposal is a huge issue, and while engines can rust, by and large they can sit for a year without a problem. Not so batteries, which require constant maintenance and attention, compared to gasoline or diesel engines.
But onto your biggest issue: (to be cont.)
*sigh*
Sorry, Kevin. I previewed! I did! I did! .. I just made ONE little edit... (and it was because I had too many line breaks! and it made me re-edit.)
Mind closing the on "Which is a pretty damn big hangup."?
Engineer-Poet, getting back to the biggest problem I've got with your plan:
Why should we do it your way? If the plan requires us to just decree new ways of doing things, why is your way the best? Why not just outlaw all light bulbs? No electric dryers allowed. Wash dishes with greywater from the showers... Hey, there are a LOT of solutions that will get us to the same spot - even saving a lot of money on the way - why should yours be pre-eminent?
Know how bad our situation is? If the USA had the per-capita oil consumption of Brazil, this nation would currently be able to export oil. We are at the mercy of exporters only because we are so wasteful with the stuff.
"Wasteful." So do I get to decide if you're wasting it or do you get to decide if I am? (I know, rhetorical question, you already decided that.) I used 3 gallons this weekend mowing the grass. Now, I'm actually opposed to doing that, but my neighbors and the city I live in have some requirements. Personally, I'd prefer to put it all under cultivation, and possibly that's allowable, but then I've got to get a tractor (mules and horses are disallowed under zoning) to help turn it, and well, all in all, it's just cheaper to keep most of it in wasted grass and have a small raised garden.
For instance, put semi-trucks on rails and then electrify the rails, either with overhead catenary wires or switched third-rail segments at ground level (only live when beneath a vehicle). Voila, a truck that only needs a battery to get from the rail siding to the loading dock and back; all the rail mileage is powered directly.
For grins and giggles, go talk to some warehouse foremen about your idea. When they start to get mad and grab prybars, yell you're working for John Stewart and it's a joke, a joke.
Sure, let's just require a complete and total deconstruction of every single town, city, warehouse, and most businesses.. What could possibly go wrong?!? It's so logical.
It's also totally impractical, the cost would be astronomical, wait, strike that - governmental. It's easy to wave your hand and say "Voila, it's done!" But it's not so simple in the real world. If you look at the modern trucking industry, for the most part, there's no way you'll increase their efficiency. They've done the math, the thinking, and they're good at it. Stuff is on the rails until it's no longer profitable, and then it goes onto the semis.
Expanding the rail system is also not practical in the real world, given the cost of railbeds. Yes, they last longer. Yes, we could simply build the roadbeds to last almost as long, for something not he order of half as much as the railway. Plus, the railway's only 1-way.
These things require policy changes and infrastructure investments, but given how expensive roads are to maintain and how much longer rail beds last than freeway pavement (especially under the pounding of semis), this sort of thing makes huge sense in several different ways at once.
"Makes sense."
Ok, back to my main point.
To you. Makes sense to you. Everybody else should be subordinate to you, and your plans and desires? Notice that very few people actually agree with you? (You can observe the market.)
All of the math and specifics aside... your plan is that we should make, mandate, force people to act ina certain manner, constrain their purchases and actions and lives to live in a manner you see fit.
Sorry, I'm not going to buy it, you're not going to successfully sell it to America, and that's why you'll fail.
Been to Brazil? Yeah, it's got some nice things about it. And some areas that are still very third world. As in right in the main parts of major cities, not super-rural and rare areas like the Appalachians. (Which is the level of energy use you'd apparently like to reduce us all to.)
But the total cost of what you're proposing is just utterly mooted by the level of contempt that you seem to have for us. I made my last car purchase in 2005. A hybrid would have been a poor use of my money then, and is now. For me. Based on what I do, what I want to do, and how I want to do it.
I'm not telling you to change how you do things, but you're telling me that my way must change, coincidentally to the way that you live.
UJ, I'm not going to respond to that right away. For one thing, you have latched onto two words and have used them to leap to a whole set of conclusions about my character, politics, and probably have comments in the queue about my diet, personal habits and ancestry (I kid, I kid!).
But more to the point, you're confusing policy preferences with necessity. If your juice comes from a hydroelectric dam and you have a drought, your choices are to get more efficient or do without services entirely; you have no other options. If your region turns into a dustbowl, growing more wheat isn't an option either. Similarly, if the world is making less oil, one of the consequences is less asphalt for roads. Take a second look at what I wrote above, and if you can find factual errors which invalidate the basis of my policy suggestions I will retract or modify them (can you say the same?). But if all you're doing is attacking the messenger because you don't like the message, there's no point in going further with this.
I'll sit on this until late tonight and see if you've got further thoughts.
For one thing, you have latched onto two words and have used them to leap to a whole set of conclusions about my character, politics, and probably have comments in the queue about my diet, personal habits and ancestry
Am I *that* predictable?
In all honesty, it's not just that compound word - but it's also the hand-waving and ahistorical dismissal of personal preferences, the view that your way is the only logical way, and whatever collateral damage your plan creates is better for the people, and its for their own good anyway.
It also presumes that your plan is better than the somewhat-free market, and there's little proof that's correct, and a lot of evidence that it's not.
if you can find factual errors which invalidate the basis of my policy suggestions
I pointed quite a few out. Yes, if we rebuild everything in the US, we could get a few more ergs of efficiency. But it wouldn't be worth the cost of rebuilding.
That's what you're really missing there, the cost differentials. Hybrids barely make economic sense at $4/gal. Your plan to rape the economy and raise the price via taxation to more than that would drive hybrid and smaller car sales - at what cost?
Hopefully you're not against moving production overseas, because who would be able to afford doing anything in the US with ruinous taxation, when they could do the same thing and save 75% of the energy price off the top, before even labor and other considerations?
But all of that pales next to your conceit - not just that I and everyone else should be forced to your preferred way of life - but that your utopia is better than anybody else's.
The first point will be hard to prove, but the second you'll find much harder.
The efficiency thing has already been rebutted by the same line of argumnt that I would have used. More, he's an electrical engineer, he's got the math, so I'll leave him to it. All I'd like to point out is that regardless of how efficient ______ method is, 1) the more steps between raw fuel and final work, the more inefficiency multiplies, and 2) shifting power methodology does not magically do away with old sources and create new ones. In other words, unless the old and new methods of power generation use identical fuels, your production model isn't going to match an existing economy that grew in response to availability.
In short, whatcha gonna do with the unused gasoline? Where ya gonna find more fuel for the turbines?
On 'electrifying' the rail and trucking industry.... you may not realize, a lot of freight moves by train/truck combination right now. Ever see a container ship? Those containers go straight to rail, and from rail straight to trucks. Lemme give you a short run-down on the freight industry. Most freight does not move by that train/truck combination. Why? Because most freight is too perishable, too seasonal, or both, for trains to be profitable. The vast majority of all goods in the US are "Just In Time" or JIT freight, because warehousing (with bills for things like refrigeration, lights, forklifts and security cameras) is too big a bite out of a product's price. Nearly all food is JIT freight, and 1 in 4 trucks is loaded with food. All seasonal items (Turkeys before Thanksgiving, fireworks, summer clothing in late spring, etc.) is JIT freight. The vast majority of what is sold between Thanksgiving and New Year's is JIT freight.
None of it goes by rail because JIT freight by truck is at the destination, in and out of the warehouse and sold already by the time the train even gets there. This allows for cutting prices without cutting profits.
To call this arrangement a bad thing is to suggest that consumers (ie you and me) should be forced to accept less value for their money (that is, the value of their time and their work) than is easily available.
I'm having trouble making this jive with "efficiency".
When hurricane Ike hit last summer, Entergy (the local power company) lost 395,000 people off its grid. Trucks showed up from all over the country and put the system back together, IIRC fewer than 50,000 were still without power a week later.
I'm not fishing for sympathy. Ike was a typical nasty of a typical hurricane season, nothing to get excited about for those who live here and know the climate well.
But consider 395,000 people without power...
Okay, a lot of them had evacuated already, but say 5% or just under 20,000 stayed. Many did, I know that.
20,000 people without power.
Who cannot clear the downed trees from yards and roads, because there are no gas chainsaws.
Who cannot go to the disaster relief stations for food, potable water, ice, etc, because there are no gas powered cars.
Who cannot refrigerate what food they have because there are no gas powered generators.
Even for one day, you've just expanded the casualty count of such a disaster by an order of magnitude at least.
Now I realize we're not talking about doing away with organic-liquid fueled engines entirely. Nor do I contest that in many ways the IC engine is an engineering dinosaur that should be quietly put out of its misery. (I will in fact argue that liquid crude oil products should not be used for fuel under any circumstances, albeit for different reasons than the ones the lefties like. I think we should quit burning oil because the plastics industry can't afford the loss.)
Nonetheless, before you start putting eggs into a single basket, remember that Mother Nature is not going to play by your rules.
Okay, that clears me to pick this stuff apart. UJ can speculate about my control-freak tendencies all he wants, but I'm motivated by very different considerations (which I'll detail later). But first I've got Kevin's short comment to reply to:
You convert the coal to electricity at a 33% efficiency, no? Then you lose efficiency transforming and transporting that power to the point of use.... What's the total system efficiency?
The last figure I saw for total T&D system losses are about 7% of net generation. Once you get from the wall to a vehicle the analysis gets strained because ICE and electric drivetrains aren't directly comparable; however, vehicles like the Tesla Roadster consume about 200 Wh/mile at the wall, and rumor has it the Toyota RAV4 electric used about 330. If you figure that 25 MPG is a pretty good number for the equivalent ICE (especially something with Tesla performance!) and 115,000 BTU/gallon, 200 Wh/mile is equivalent to about 6.7 times the efficiency of gasoline (wall-to-wheels) and 330 Wh/mile is about 4.1 times the efficiency. Both are substantially more efficient than gasoline's pump-to-wheels figure even after taking the 2/3 hit in generation and 7% in transmission.
For lagniappe, there are no refining losses for coal and NG and you can supply electricity with solar, wind or nuclear and move very little besides electrons.
To pull all the hyperbole possible out of my last comment, let me run the numbers again assuming 10% of cars are electric, that all the other gas powered goodies are there.
39,500 people in the power loss area have elctric cars. 2,000 of them are stuck there, did not evacuate. By the end of the week, 1 in 8 or 250 of those elctric car owners have gone a week in a disaster zone without being bale to recharge their cars.
Ike was only a typical hurricane, not a really bad one.
Any way you look at it, it looks to me like that plan will generate civilian casualty figures.
UJ can speculate about my control-freak tendencies all he wants
It's not really speculation when you're detailing it for all to see.
I'd just like you to explain why your logical utopia is better than any of the other alternatives. What trumps, say, those who insist that we need multiple children per family, and would set up the regulation and taxation to benefit those with more children? Why is your plan better than the Amish's? Those who'd... insist that we should develop nightvision sensors and implant them into the eyes (We've got artificial eyes, surely with a trillion here or there we can build some bio-NV).... Or those who'd tear down any house bigger than so many square feet, or demand that all new houses be built of old tires, or straw, or.....
I'm pointing out that you're breathlessly demanding that we Must. Right. Now. Do. These. Things. But most people wouldn't agree with you. You might well even be right (minus some of your more egregious math and economy errors).
But why do you get to decide that? What makes your utopia so much better than mine? Or the hippies down the street, who want to outlaw your car? Or say, Stingray, who's good with outlawing bicycles?
Aside from your math, and your stated (and hypocritical) demands for control and mandates you've presumed your way is the best, but you've not even started to debate that amongst others with ideas and plans that would result in similar outcomes.
GrumpyOldFart is my kinda guy. He picks on the details that he thinks are weak spots until either he's satisfied that they aren't weak, or the thing breaks. And since he slipped in with something a lot shorter than UJ's essay, I'm going to address him out of turn.
In short, whatcha gonna do with the unused gasoline? Where ya gonna find more fuel for the turbines?
Basically, we wouldn't have any unused gasoline; we would just stop buying the oil. But the intermediate fractions from the refining process make perfectly good gas-turbine fuel, without going to the expense (or taking the energetic losses) of achieving the right balance of low aromatic content, octane rating and vapor pressure to be sold as motor gasoline. If you can replace 1 gallon of gasoline at the pump with 1/3 of a gallon of fuel oil at the generating station [1], you're way ahead. If you can get 40% of your electricity from sources like wind and nuclear, you're even further ahead.
On 'electrifying' the rail and trucking industry.... you may not realize, a lot of freight moves by train/truck combination right now.
I don't think either you or UJ clicked through the Bladerunner link. The scheme essentially turns rail segments into extensions of the road system, with the trucks able to use either. Electrified rail would eliminate fuel consumption while running there, and relatively small batteries would suffice to drive from a rail endpoint to a destination and back without using any fuel. For those off-rail legs too long, the trucks could have small sustainer generators.
Last, one of the benefits of semi-on-rail is that the guidance is taken care of, which allows the potential to run the truck on autopilot. How much better is your JIT delivery when the truck can cruise 60 MPH all night while the driver sleeps? How much cheaper is it when you're consuming 20¢/mile of electricity instead of 40¢/mile of diesel fuel? How much faster can you pay off your investment when you can make half again as many runs per year? You tell me.
[1] Figuring the wall-to-wheels efficiency of the electric is 6.7 times as high as the 25 MPG car, times 46% efficiency of a modern gas turbine, gets 3.08 times as much per unit of fuel. Reduced refining losses would make this greater as a fraction of crude oil input; the efficiency of gasoline production from crude is about 83%.
Who cannot clear the downed trees from yards and roads, because there are no gas chainsaws.
Who cannot go to the disaster relief stations for food, potable water, ice, etc, because there are no gas powered cars.
Who cannot refrigerate what food they have because there are no gas powered generators.
Who says you wouldn't have that stuff for emergencies? Who says the cars aren't plug-in hybrids, able to use liquid fuel when you don't have the time to charge it... or the ability.
Let's look at it from a civil-defense POV, assuming a few other adaptive changes:
1. You've got 20,000 people with cars which can generate 110 or 220 V power on demand, to run appliances at home or chain saws to clear the roads.
2. If they have enough PV panels to satisfy their basic needs, they can sit tight and even re-charge the vehicle for short drives without needing to use any fuel. If they have stabilized gas in sealed containers, they can just leave it.
3. Few people would be using electric stoves, water heaters or air conditioners, but being able to run the fridge and drive short trips is all most people need. The vehicle supplies the storage system.
4. It works just as well during winter outages from ice storms, plus a cogenerating furnace can supply the vehicle with juice while heating with the "waste" heat (emergency or no). It essentially turns ice storms into minor inconveniences while substituting heating fuel for motor fuel.
some people have actually done what you seem to think is impossible.
I think you were speaking to GOF - but in case I was in that direction, I never said it was impossible. I've done more than a bit of work trying to be able to get myself off of the grid.
It's possible. It's just not cost-effective or affordable right now.
From your original link:
Pam Wall was able to relax while the rest of her neighbors were cloaked in darkness after Hurricane Wilma struck. The Fort Lauderdale resident still had all her modern conveniences -- working lights, TV, hairdryer, coffee pot and refrigerator -- all thanks to solar power.
Two solar-powered panels attached to the homemade sailboat docked in her back yard enabled Wall and her husband to enjoy all the noise-free, stress-free power they wanted while they waited almost three weeks for electricity to be restored to their house. "We just lived on the boat and all the power we needed was from our solar panels,"...
Remember, you're talking about cutting BACK on people's luxuries, and these people had a BOAT in the backyard with enough room and amenities that they could abandon their house and live comfortably in it!
You're being hypocritical pointing to that approvingly, while bemoaning "waste" and excess.
Additionally, yes, photo panels are nice.
BUT... They usually don't *work after a hurricane*. I know many people who had them. They didn't after Hurricane Charlie. When Ivan ripped through. it tore off the tarps covering the holes where the panels had been. That's not to mention all the other damage that occurs in the aftermath of a major hurricane to the grid and even the housing electric wiring.
While I'm posting, let me send you two thoughtful posts that I think you should consider. (Hat Tip to LabRat, who reminded me of the first):
Thanks for the clarification, Kevin. I would agree with you to a certain extent. I have spent many an evening arguing with people who are against nuclear power. Their viewpoint of it reminds me of the explanation of the definition of a witch from Monty Python and the Holy Grail. They can't see that it really is one of the cleanest, if not the cleanest, energy that there is. This is the energy that will carry us into future exploration in space.
That doesn't mean, though, that I support increased drilling for oil. As Thomas Friedman has said, that's like supporting increased production of typewriters. Eventually, the oil supply will run out. 50 years maybe? Then what? It just doesn't seem very forward thinking and it financially supports murderers.
We have to explore all options and that is going to mean stepping on some toes. In fact, it will probably mean crushing them and it won't just be people on the right who will have trouble walking.
Grumpy:"I'm having trouble making this jive with "efficiency"."
I can't help but think of the Soviet model of efficiency: one clerk in one shoe store in one city with a line of (ahem) customers extending three miles beyond the front door.
EP:"The scheme essentially turns rail segments into extensions of the road system, with the trucks able to use either."
Can you say "traffic jam"?
Pardon me, but I can't help but think of the German invasion of the West in August, 1914. This had been planned to the minute for years. Barbara Tuchman's description is, in brief:
"Once the mobilization button was pushed, the whole vast machinery for calling up, equipping, and transporting two million men began turning automatically. Reservists went to their designated depots, were issued uniforms, equipment, and arms, formed into companies and companies into battalions, were joined by cavalry, cyclists, artillery, medical units, cook wagons, blacksmith wagons, even postal wagons, moved according to prepared railway timetables to concentration points near the frontier where they would be formed into divisions, divisions into corps, and corps into armies ready to advance and fight. One army corp alone, out of the total of 40 in the German forces -- required 170 railway cars for officers, 965 for infantry, 2,960 for cavalry, 1,915 for artillery and supply wagons, 6,010 in all, grouped in 140 trains and an equal number again for their supplies. From the moment the order was given, everything was to move at fixed times according to a schedule precise down to the number of train axles that would pass over a given bridge within a given time."
This plan began execution on the Kaiser's order. Then he received a telegram which hinted that he might face only a one-front war against the Russians, in which case the mobilization against France per Schlieffen's plan was a bit premature. Tuchman continues:
"The Kaiser was himself again, the All-Highest, the War Lord, blazing with a new idea, planning, proposing, disposing. He read Moltke the telegram and said in triumph: "Now we can go to war against Russia only! We simply march the whole of our Army to the East!"
The Kaiser's proposal is known in the trade as "executive management". Been there, suffered that.
Von Moltke was horrified:
"He saw a vision of the deployment crumbling apart in confusion, supplies here, soldiers there, ammunition lost in the middle, companies without officers, divisions without staffs, and those 11,000 trains, each exquisitely scheduled to click over specified tracks at specified intervals of ten minutes, tangled in a grotesque ruin of the most perfectly planned military movement in history."
Now, to the point, given that picture of proposed ruin.
What makes our economy hum along is that one can move damned nearly anything damned nearly anywhere at damned nearly any time, all without having to schedule anything except when the trucks depart. Otherwise, it self-schedules, self-tunes, self-corrects, and self-heals, subject only to road maintenence and the prudent needs of pit stops for drivers.
To be fair, one could replace much of a network of roads with a network of rails, but consider that rails require gentle grades, rails don't like intersections except at terminals, rails are one-way, and one can't simply turn around or change one's mind as necessary.
I don't see it happening soon, at least not in my lifetime.
EP: "The scheme essentially turns rail segments into extensions of the road system, with the trucks able to use either."
Can you say "traffic jam"?
The so-called "Intelligent Vehicle Highway System" has as one of its elements a system for running vehicles essentially nose-to-tail at freeway speeds. This allows many more vehicles to use the road, eliminating jams. If you eliminate the need to steer the vehicles (by e.g. putting them on a guideway, such as rails), this becomes much easier.
I live where you can see trains of Triple Crown semi-trailers going by, a hundred or so at a time, on the CN tracks. Now imagine such a train where each unit is independently propelled and is formed ad-hoc from whatever is going in that direction at the time; individual units leave here and there and add themselves onto the end as the train goes by their "entrance ramp". You will move more freight in fewer lanes, faster and for less money.
If you formed a train out of 65-foot semis with 5-foot gaps, a mile-long train would hold 75 trucks. If they ran at 60 MPH with a 3-minute gap between trains (to allow for slowing at interchanges), the capacity of a single pair of rails would be 1125 trucks per hour. The capacity of a freeway lane is only about 1500 cars per hour; you'd move more freight as ad-hoc trains on rail than you could driving manually on roads.
What makes our economy hum along is that one can move damned nearly anything damned nearly anywhere at damned nearly any time, all without having to schedule anything except when the trucks depart.
And that's what you'd have. We'd probably save money by taking freeways in need of repair, tearing up a lane of pavement and putting rail on it; it would be cheaper to install and last longer than new pavement, and the pavement next to it would be spared the pounding of semi-trucks. Electrifying that rail would eliminate the fuel consumption, pollution and noise. What's not to like?
To be fair, one could replace much of a network of roads with a network of rails, but consider that rails require gentle grades, rails don't like intersections except at terminals, rails are one-way, and one can't simply turn around or change one's mind as necessary.
Somebody else who didn't read the link. Propulsion by rubber tire has a high enough coefficient of friction to handle freeway grades. All the other faults are shared by our current system, limited-access highways. Seriously, what's so hard to grasp about this? You have some deep emotional attachment to piston engines burning imported fuel?
Its practicality. (And its cost. And its reliability. And its usability. And its lack of backwards-compatibility. And its control.)
Somebody else who didn't read the link.
Don't be so sneeringly dismissive and then object to being called sneeringly dismissive.
The link is a sales pitch. It's not a description of anything that's been delivered - and it was written in 2004.
More notably to me was this standout: This has been done before but has been heavy, complicated and expensive because of attempts to drive the rail wheels.
This will come as a great surprise to all those railroad service vehicles I've seen for 20? years that have that exact setup. Or the guys in Logistics going inland after the Normandy invasion (Where all the train engines had lots of .50 holes), but quickly adapted jeeps to run on the rails.
When someone announces that they've surmounted a hereto-impossible goal... which isn't all that new and has been surmounted, well, the rest of the sales pitch is now coated with a lot of salt.
I suspect DJ will have a similar view - I know he's seen a lot of pie-in-the-sky sales pitches that turned out to be the same old mud-and-shitpile.
Before I go on, I'm going to make my viewpoint explicit.
1. Decreasing our usage of petroleum is not an option. Increasing the flow of oil costs more than the world can afford to invest, so we have already passed Peak Oil. The world's options are to increase efficiency, use substitutes, or cut back our use of petroleum-dependent services. None are easy or necessarily attractive, but facing difficult tradeoffs is part of being an adult. I am interested in the best tradeoff for the USA. 2. The "free market" is unable to address this issue, for several reasons. 2a. The theoretical free market is dependent upon all participants having adequate information. Such a market does not exist for oil. Information about Middle East oil reserves is corrupt, to list just one problem. 2b. The market isn't looking ahead. Investments in durable goods are being driven by conditions which change within months. Somebody has to think about the future, and the NYMEX isn't it. 2c. Economic collapse and even starvation are among the free-market solutions to shortages. However, they are not politically acceptable. Policy responses are required. 3. This situation is unprecedented: hostile interests have a stranglehold on something the USA cannot currently do without. This is the position that Japan found itself in before WWII, and it constitutes an existential threat to the USA today as it did to Japan then. When we previously found ourselves in such a situation, we went on a war footing and asked for sacrifices from the public. We need the same now. The last time, it was "When you ride alone, you ride with Hitler". Today you can substitute "Osama". 4. This is not a problem without a solution. However, people are reacting to this as they do to major losses. Most of the commenters in this thread are still in the denial stage. This delays productive responses and makes the ultimate pain worse.
Back to UJ. First, here. For all the "facts" he said he marshalled, I sure don't see them.
GM and Lexus have both put hybrid SUVs on the market. Neither of these will do for you?
Nope. Not for what I get, for what they want for 'em, and what I need to do.
I note that you have not specified what you need to do. I have a very strong suspicion that the required capability falls somewhere between the Prius (50 MPG hybrid, 90+ MPG with PHEV retrofit) and the Smith Newton (all electric). If you aren't just trolling, make your case.
Maybe you DO have one of the few applications which cannot be done without liquid fuel and cannot be replaced. That's okay! There will still be some liquid fuel around; it's just that most things need to migrate away from it, the easiest ones first.
taxing all oil enough to get people to drive 50-MPG cars (whether hybrid or diesel) is good
50? Why not 100? Why not 400?
50's not even beginning to be practical, so why stop there?
Not practical for what? There are plenty of ways to make vehicles get upwards of 50 MPG; it's quite common in Europe, my own car can manage it with some work, and a different engine by the same manufacturer would make it rather easy to do even with my 3400-lb 5-passenger beast. (If the USA's fleet met 50 MPG average, our gasoline demand would be less than 4.5 million bbl/day. This figure is important, because US oil production is about 5.8 million bbl/day; we would be almost invulnerable to embargoes and have few issues with trade deficits.)
Well wait, why do *I* have to drive a Montgomery-Scott Laws of Phyics violating 50 mph
A Scroogle search finds no such thing as a Montgomery-Scott Law. Troll?
I know people say that, I'm calling shenanigans on 'em, and/or expecting they, like you, have ulterior motives in place to control people and demand funding after we start heading a certain direction.
Ad-hominem, and evidence-free. Where are these facts you were talking about?
You can make that claim, but when we can see a minor brownout that ends up taking down the entire NorthEast and a good fraction of Canada, I'm not taking your word for it.
It wasn't a brownout, it was a failure of interconnected systems (compounded by inadequate information... the same thing which makes the current market anything but free). And I was directly affected by it, so don't lecture me about it. I happened to have battery backup for essential functions and came through just fine.
nice concept, when you consider the total cost, not viable.
Where is the factual support for this assertion?
just looking at history, and the fact that of all the progress we've made, battery technology, for all the jumps it has made, is still little better than the turn of last century.
Lithium-ion and sodium nickel chloride are far better than anything known at the turn of the 20th century. Further, sodium nickel chloride appears to have a lifespan equal to or longer than the typical car. Zinc-air, vitreous-carbon backed lead-acid... who conceived anything like that in 1900?
Why should we do it your way? If the plan requires us to just decree new ways of doing things, why is your way the best?
You misunderstand. I am not offering the way, I am refuting the all-too-common claim that there is no way. I have given what I believe are feasible methods, I have stated above what I think our national motives should look like (which you have made no effort to rebut), and I think we have been fools to squander the opportunities we've had thus far; my fear is that we have now run out of them.
Why not just outlaw all light bulbs?
That's just trolling. I've been explicitly detailing how to achieve the same level of utility (output) while getting rid of the problematic inputs; claiming that I want to get rid of light bulbs is simply dishonest.
I used 3 gallons this weekend mowing the grass.
Only because you didn't have a GE Elec-Trak. I'd love to have one myself, and it's not like they would be difficult to start making again. Why is it that such a great product has been out of production for almost 40 years?
For grins and giggles, go talk to some warehouse foremen about your idea.
Why would they care? About the only thing that might change is that the truck plugs in a cable to grab a quick charge while the lumpers are doing their bit. If the truck comes from and heads to a rail siding instead of a freeway ramp, what difference is it to them? Are they addicted to diesel soot?
Sure, let's just require a complete and total deconstruction of every single town, city, warehouse, and most businesses.
Please provide the logic behind this conclusion. I categorically deny that any such thing is either necessary or desirable. Reconstructing some roadways, yeah... but we do that every year anyway.
To you. Makes sense to you. Everybody else should be subordinate to you, and your plans and desires? Notice that very few people actually agree with you?
Where was the sense of moving all our freight to trucks, before we had made an enormous investment in interstate freeways? I'll give you a hint: it was a policy initiative which made sense at the time. Now we have issues including the fuel supply for these trucks, congestion on the roads and pollution from the engines; it makes sense to adopt new policy initiatives to address all of them.
I'm not telling you to change how you do things, but you're telling me that my way must change, coincidentally to the way that you live.
Funny, that.
You haven't been paying attention at all. I'm telling you that your way WILL change, because the geological, economic and political situation won't allow it to go on. This has nothing to do with me; I'm just a bit ahead of you, which you appear to resent. What I'm trying to do is sketch out a way forward which is better than the life of cargo cultists, going through the motions and wondering why they don't work. I don't think you'd enjoy that, and the sooner you (and the nation) recognize that, the sooner we can do something productive. The particulars of WHAT we do are not as important as what we DON'T do, which is design our lives around perpetual availability of cheap petroleum.
Is this where you start on my diet, habits and ancestry? I'll give you a head start; dinner tonight was garden-fresh zucchini fried with onions, fresh basil and rosemary and topped with parmesan cheese. ;)
Its practicality. (And its cost. And its reliability. And its usability. And its lack of backwards-compatibility. And its control.)
I don't get you at all.
1. I see semi-trailers going by on rails all the time. What's impractical about running entire trucks on them, and electrifying the system? This is mostly 19th-century technology.
2. We're spending roughly a billion dollars a day on imported petroleum, plus a huge amount on our military to secure that supply. What's this I hear about "cost" of doing away with most of the need?
3. Electric motors are far more reliable than piston engines. This objection is risible.
4. A "lane" of rail is at least as usable as a lane of freeway, and can carry heavier loads. Also risible.
5. Dual-mode trucks are backwards-compatible with roads; that's the whole point. This objection is flat wrong. Either you have understood nothing I'm trying to get across, or you are lying outright.
6. What's this issue with control? It's as if you think traffic lights are a Communist plot.
More notably to me was this standout:
This has been done before but has been heavy, complicated and expensive because of attempts to drive the rail wheels.
Had you been paying attention, you would have realized that this was in the context of a dual-mode truck. And it is absolutely correct, your irrelevant talk about railroads notwithstanding.
Since I appear to have confirmed that you are not dealing in good faith here, I'll tell you to cordially bugger yourself and have a good night.
It's really too late, but I hadda check email one last time before going to bed... But I promise, I'll check the HTML, Kev.
"Engineer"-Poet - and I put that in quotes, because what engineer doesn't know who Montgomery Scott is?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montgomery_Scott
I note that you have not specified what you need to do. I have a very strong suspicion that the required capability falls somewhere between the Prius (50 MPG hybrid, 90+ MPG with PHEV retrofit) and the Smith Newton (all electric). If you aren't just trolling, make your case.
I'll take trolling over technocrat anyday as an insult, even if it's unwarranted. Hunt, fish, tow a horse trailer, boats ranging from 19' to 31', 4 wheel drive, capable of seating 5, space for 2 large dogs, 1 small dog, 2 cats, and luggage for a family.
Nope, Prius ain't going to cut it, and it cost more than my SUV.
What is it with you linking to European vehicles and products? You are aware that I'm not in Europe, and I'd hardly be buying a $50k? (can't find pricing information) vehicle I can't get parts and service on? And has a top speed of 50 MPH?
Just because something exists doesn't mean it fits the requirements. Additionally, you're ignoring the total costs involved, both with the Smith Truck, and with the aforementioned Lexus. My SUV, which will do all that I need it do was $3k less than a Prius. Is far more comfortable, and dammit, I prefer it. I get to do that.
There are plenty of ways to make vehicles get upwards of 50 MPG
Most US motorcycles don't get 50 MPG. Yes, Europe has a lot of small cars - (some actually made out of cardboard!) But they don't sell well here except in niche markets. Because they don't meet the requirements the market places on them, either performance, safety, capacity, or comfort. I routinely drive 9 hours at a time. There are no viable railways between these places, before you ask, and the non-viable ways take almost 3 days.
And I was directly affected by it, so don't lecture me about it.
I shall and will, because that's irrelevent to the discussion. The point is that the system doesn't have the capacity you're saying it does, and that brownout that lead to the several days blackout is part of the demonstration that you're wrong. How well you weathered it, and what caused it are interesting. The grid as it's currently constituted - and you're not explaining how you'd fix it, cannot, even if batteries were up to snuff, deal with the replacement of the equivalent of 5-6 million barrels/day of oil. That's one thing the brownout/blackout demonstrated, as well as the fact that an overload in one area has the capability and likelihood of having a huge effect.
nice concept, when you consider the total cost, not viable.
Where is the factual support for this assertion?
$1 for the chalk. $49,999 for my experience. (That's a old engineering joke punchline, in so you can Scroogle it.) Plus there's the minor fact that if they were price competitive, you'd be seeing a whole lot more of them. PV's have been "5 years away from wide acceptance" for at least the 30 years I've been paying attention. And they have improved - just not enough to make them really usable unless you're willing to pay extra now.
Why not just outlaw all light bulbs?
That's just trolling. I've been explicitly detailing how to achieve the same level of utility (output) while getting rid of the problematic inputs; claiming that I want to get rid of light bulbs is simply dishonest.
For someone who insists I'm not paying attention, you should be far more careful. I never claimed you did, I asked you why you didn't. It helps to 1) read for content, and 2) understand the concepts of humor, exaggeration, metaphor and example.
You never explained why light bulbs should not be outlawed. My point to you is you're picking various methods and technologies that you're going to mandate and require - it's perfectly within the realm of debate to offer you an example in the same vein and ask you to explain why or why not it would also be affected.
Since you are picking and choosing what must be done by fiat, why is that a better overall decision than say, outlawing light bulbs, which would free up massive amounts of power? We have a current metering system, but you are unhappy with it and wish to replace it. It's up to you to prove how your system would work.
For grins and giggles, go talk to some warehouse foremen about your idea.
Why would they care?
This is why doing things for a living, and meeting the people, I mean, peons who do the gruntwork is important. To a technocrat, they're idiots. Johnny and Jane 6-pack. Negligible. Inside the margin of error.
But they'll damn sure derail your fine plans. I know, too bad we can't just beat them until they did it right like the old days, Ah, Smithers, memories. (That's a reference to "The Simpson's", specifically "Mr. Burns". That should cut down on your Scroogling.)
Most of those places have built systems to be very efficient, and you're talking about wholesale destruction of that system, in the hopes of eventually - getting back to a similar level of efficiency.
You haven't been paying attention at all.
Oh, no, I have. That's what you're objecting to.
I'm telling you that your way WILL change, because the geological, economic and political situation won't allow it to go on.
That's possible. The world turns and all that. But you're saying what I've been hearing since the 70s, and so far, they've all been wrong. It's possible this time it's not. It's also possible we'll enter a ice age and every presumption will be changed. It's possible a big rock will impact next week. But there's a limit to how much I will change my habits, and there's a severe limit to what I will insist on constraining the freedom and ability of other people - who know what they want and need far better than I do.
This has nothing to do with me; I'm just a bit ahead of you, which you appear to resent.
Don't flatter yourself more than's required to get you through the day.
I only resent your sneering dismissal of people doing the hard work that allows you to be this snooty internationally and your presumption that you're smarter than everybody else, without realizing everybody else thinks they're smarter than you.
I resent the fact that you're incapable of having a debate with humor, common reference, and understand that you're hardly the only utopian out there, and cannot present a viable set of reasons why your utopia is better than any of the others, much less that you're actually making a philosophical argument that I have to resent and resist because it's the promise of the technocrat - often made - so far, never right.
I also have a strong suspicion that you're used to living in an urban area and have no idea what life outside of the luxury of the urban core consists of, that you've never worked a loading dock, or a warehouse, or realised how much thought and work has gone into the current system, and would scrap it as useless and wasteful immediately.
the sooner you (and the nation) recognize that
... A truth that you see and almost no one else does..
The particulars of WHAT we do are not as important as what we DON'T do, which is design our lives around perpetual availability of cheap petroleum.
Possibly. But it's not anything I'm concerned about in my lifetime. The reserves are there. If nothing else, we can liquify coal for well under $3/gal at current prices, and we've got somewhere in the vicinity of 500 years under WV and PA. I'll start panicking in 400 or so years.
What's impractical about running entire trucks on them, and electrifying the system?
Building rail is much harder than building road. There's reason we've mostly stopped building rail lines.
3. Electric motors are far more reliable than piston engines. This objection is risible.
I wasn't talking about the motors. You're talking about a complex network of systems that will be switching and controlling flows.
This is not a simple project and it's very much prone to errors.
Your ignorance of this area doesn't absolve you of the need to educate yourself before you airily wave your hand and say "Make it so."
One reason I refuse to fly in an Airbus is that technocrat mentality that permeate(d) the engineers. The head engineer was reputed to say "If we could get rid of those two morons up front, we'd build an airplane that would never crash."
Risible. Right. Seen the footage of the Paris Air Show and the Airbus demonstration at tree-cutting? Risible. Right.
4. A "lane" of rail is at least as usable as a lane of freeway, and can carry heavier loads. Also risible.
You cannot expand that lane of rail at anything like the minor incremental cost that you can for a freeway. It's also more prone to damage, and any problem ... well, derails you. Pun intended and meant.
5. Dual-mode trucks are backwards-compatible with roads; that's the whole point. This objection is flat wrong.
No, it's not, but you know, it's too late to keep trying to explain reality to you. "Backwards compatible" means the current trucks on the road. You claim to be an engineer, think on it a bit.
Either you have understood nothing I'm trying to get across, or you are lying outright.
That's the 4th accusation you've made of me being dishonest, and it's getting tiring, since I am attempting to deal with you in good faith, and the appearance is that you're not willing to reciprocate.
6. What's this issue with control? It's as if you think traffic lights are a Communist plot.
This speaks for itself. But since you don't seem to follow most paths without a map and some directions and a GPS... Control, who has it, and how it's administered is always a focus and concern of mine. For some reason, it always seems to be important.
Had you been paying attention, you would have realized that this was in the context of a dual-mode truck.
So, I wasn't paying attention, yet could accurately describe that it wasn't a new innovation.
http://www.northeastfoto.com/gallery/files/4/3/2006_06_20-R06.jpg
And it is absolutely correct, your irrelevant talk about railroads notwithstanding.
It's totally incorrect that's not an innovation, it's not new, and it's been known for at least 60 years that I know of. I suspect it's been known as long as automobiles have been around.
Since I appear to have confirmed that you are not dealing in good faith here, I'll tell you to cordially bugger yourself and have a good night.
You might want to take some O2 up there with you. The soapbox seems to be pretty high.
If you want to start tossing accusations of "good faith" around, I think you'll not like the results. Especially someone who so assured of their superiority that they can't realize that they're flat wrong.
Or that you ignored things that differed with your sales pitch.
Sure, let's just require a complete and total deconstruction of every single town, city, warehouse, and most businesses.
Please provide the logic behind this conclusion. I categorically deny that any such thing is either necessary or desirable. Reconstructing some roadways, yeah... but we do that every year anyway.
Okay, electric trucks that run on rails, can hook up to trains by themselves and unhook by themselves whenever the train's direction fails to match their own...
Sounds good. All you need is to 1) rebuild the entire US elecrical grid, 2) rebuild the wheels and suspension of every truck and every rail car in the US, 3) fit all the aforesaid refitted trucks and rail cars with guidance systems like cruise missiles, and 4) rebuild every rail line and every primary and secondary road in the US.
"Propulsion by rubber tire has a high enough coefficient of friction to handle freeway grades. All the other faults are shared by our current system, limited-access highways. Seriously, what's so hard to grasp about this?"
The vision that link describes addresses how a single truck works. It does not address meaningfully how an overall system works, and that thought is what gave rise to my comment.
Visions of trucks on rails, nose-to-tail, and going like (ahem) hail is inspiring. The lack of elasticity in such a juggernaut is not. The infrastructure to get a truck up to speed, open a gap, feed it in, and so on, is easy and self-controlling when using paved roads, but using rails, nose-to-tail? It is to laugh.
And I do laugh. As an engineer, I do what engineers do, which is laugh at impracticalities. Of course such a system could work. I haven't said otherwise. I simply point out that it is nowhere near as practical, convenient, and easy to use as what we have now. If it is your proposal that it is, then it's up to you to show why it is. Good luck with that.
"You have some deep emotional attachment to piston engines burning imported fuel?"
No, I simply appreciate their utility and versatility. So do billions of other people. My expectation is two-fold: 1) they'll give them up when they can't fuel them any more, and not a minute sooner, because of their utility and versatility and their convenience to them; and, 2) I'll be dead before that happens, which simply means it ain't gonna happen real soon.
I have a friend (actually my brother's brother-in-law) who ramrods a railroad track inspection crew. Day after day, he drives the rails all over the country in a 45,000 lb truck that is both road- and rail-capable. It is equipped with computers, sensors, and cameras that inspect the track and log problems with it so it can be repaired.
I consulted him about your ideas. His response squares with what I wrote, and it consisted largely of uncontrollable laughter.
He pointed out that trains roll on steel wheels on steel rails. They can't handle grades steeper than two percent. It's not a question of friction, it's a question of inertia. It is difficult to accelerate a train up to speed because it requires expending a great deal of energy, but it's easy to keep it there if the grade is level because the power level needed is only to overcome friction losses. A grade steeper than two percent is known in the trade as a "brake". So, unless you would replace long, heavy trains run by locomotives (which are quite efficient at hauling heavy and/or bulk freight long distances) with trucks that have their own motors, or give those trucks their own, independent rail system, then you are stuck with rails those long trains can run on.
Possible? Sure. Practical? No, I don't think so. If they were, we'd be doing them, perhaps? No, if it happens, it won't be replacing what we have now because of relative merit, it'll be because what we have now is out of fuel.
Now, you can rant all you want about how people have no vision for the future and won't see the hole in front of them until they fall in it, and when you speak of people as statistics, you'd be right. But when you talk about actually doing such things as you write about here, that's what you face.
" they'll give them up when they can't fuel them any more, and not a minute sooner, because of their utility and versatility and their convenience to them;"
I don't think that's the only reason people might switch from internal combustion engines. Most people will switch if someone actually manages to design a system which is better than the current one. The old canard, "Build a better mousetrap and the world will beat a path to your door" has been proven over and over again.
How many people still use reel to reel tapes, cassette tapes, VHS tapes, etc? They've been almost completely replaced by CDs and DVDs. And most people switched willingly because CDs and DVDs are better than the old technologies. (To be honest, in our house, the CDs tend to sit on the shelves while we use iTunes at the computers and carry iPods around.)
I don't need to be convinced of the superiority of electric motors over internal combustion for propulsion. I'm already convinced. It's the technology to power the electric motors that isn't better yet. When the engineers figure out how to make it better, you would have a hard time preventing people from switching.
It's this desire to force people to act against their own interests that I find troublesome. It's too much like holding a gun to someone's head to force them to give up their wallet.
U-J, Why spend time watching what looks like a dumb movie when I can spend it here watching you bash some naive ivory tower technocrat with a messiah complex?
"How many people still use reel to reel tapes, cassette tapes, VHS tapes, etc?"
Sigh ... (raises hand) ...
I have an 8mm Hi-Fi camcorder that dates from about 1990 or so. It might as well be brand new, no more use than I've given it. It might as well be buried, because it's broken. It will record and play back just fine, but it will not drive a cable that connects it to a TV. I have tried finding the failed component, but the cable drive circuitry is all unlabeled surface-mount parts, and I have neither a schematic nor instruments, other than a Fluke 75.
Now I'm searching for a good way to transfer the contents of 23 tapes to DVD without breaking the bank. I'm open to suggestions, if anyone has any.
Pardon the digression here, but that hit a raw nerve.
Oh, and you're dead right, Grumpy. How come you say it in fewer words than I do and still get it right?
"He pointed out that trains roll on steel wheels on steel rails. They can't handle grades steeper than two percent. It's not a question of friction, it's a question of inertia. It is difficult to accelerate a train up to speed because it requires expending a great deal of energy, but it's easy to keep it there if the grade is level because the power level needed is only to overcome friction losses.
The picture that flashed into my head when "electric semis" were first mentioned was something truckers call the Cabbage Patch grade, just SE of Pendleton, OR on I-84. I don't remember for certain how long it is (6 miles I think), but the grade varies between 7% - 12% along its entire length. They have truck speed limits posted by gross vehicle weight at the top. Maximum speed for 70,000 - 80,000 lbs. is 18 MPH going down the grade, and they have several emergency runouts on the way down. 18 MPH on the Interstate, mind you. I guess the folks in Pendleton got tired of trucks barrelin through at 130 with their wheels on fire. No, that's not an exaggeration.
To be fair, Cabbage Patch has a reputation as the worst grade anywhere in the US Interstate System. But it's there, and US Highways and State Highway systems are worse.
Grumpy, I-70 west of Denver is much like that, up and down and 6-7% grades. It's a deathtrap at times.
I recall making several fly-in ski trips to the area, traveling by bus from Stapleton Airport to Winter Park and back. The bus driver shunned I-70 in favor of US-6, which followed the twisting course of what passes for a river in that area. I asked him why, and he answered that the road followed an almost constant and fairly gentle grade. He didn't mind the turns, but he loved being able to hold a constant speed without shifting. Having driven both routes, I think he had it right.
Since I brought up the subject before EP, I feel compelled to note:
The trucks-on-rails thing is so not what I was talking about.
And, give it five years or so and battery power will be much more practical for automotive use than it is now. A combination of increasing battery capacity and supply.
Will it be practical enough for mass adoption? Probably not, but even a few percent will make a big difference at the margin.
And, solar power has crossed some significant cost thresholds recently. Now the biggest problem is with lack of manufacturing capacity, and they're rapidly building new capacity.
It will still be a few years before we even hit 1% of total grid output, but that won't stop motivated individuals who can get ahead of the curve.
******
A digression.
To compare the cost of solar power exclusively to the present cost of electricity is to neglect a few factors.
First, you are buying partial insurance against a rise in future electricity prices, such as through inflation.
Second, you are buying partial insurance against blackouts during air-conditioner season. (For some people, that's more important than for others.)
Third, you are making a capital investment in the value of your home (whatever that's worth, these days).
Fourth, you are lessening your dependence on big quasi-government agencies beyond your control or influence, to some degree.
It is also true that a solar installation brings with it new costs, depending on its type and where you put it.
At any rate, while I haven't actually priced out the value of the additional benefits to solar, it is probably greater than zero, and should be explicitly considered in such discussions.
Please understand, it sounds like a great idea to me. And sure, the technology exists to do it, just as the technology has existed to put a permanent colony at L-5 for a generation or so. But you'll notice there is no L-5 colony yet, either. Any system generates bugs for several years after it is in place. As an example, Windows XP was generating bugs nearly until Vista came out. Unlike your OS, when a nationwide system that both communications and transportation are utterly dependent on generates bugs, it ruins lives and even generates civilian casualties.
Trucks, trains, electric motors, batteries, road surfaces, all get improvements made every single day. How does that happen with no support, no funding? It is supported by individuals, voluntarily spending their own time and/or money in hopes of increasing their profits by those improvements.
When the improvements to all those things reach the "Service Pack 2" stage, you'll begin seeing the changes you've proposed, you won't be able to stop them. Until then, you won't, without forcing the pace and breaking or killing people in the process.
I'm thinking out loud here (as it were), so I'll ramble a bit.
Locally, the UPS delivery trucks here in Oklahoma City are using compressed natural gas as fuel. I asked a driver how he liked them and he said they drive just fine except for a slight tendency to stall while waiting at stop lights. He wasn't concerned, as it is new technology and will undoubtedly get better.
Using hydrogen as fuel is quite similar. In fact, it is now in use in Iceland, with hydrogen being generated by hydrolyzing water, with the source of energy being electricity produced from geothermal heat.
Hydrogen as fuel has some appeal:
1) Hydrolyzing water produces hydrogen, which is stored, and oxygen, which is released into the atmosphere. When hydrogen is burned, it recombines with the previously released oxygen and produces water, which is released as vapor. So far, that is carbon-neutral, and it is clean.
2) Hydrolyzing water is easy, requiring only electricity and simple technology. Thus, the source of energy is anything that can produce electrical energy.
3) Hydrogen generating plants could be located anywhere as needed, and (in effect) fuel delivery is by electric transmission lines instead of by pipelines, ships, more pipelines, and trucks. This makes the whole system much less susceptible to foreign threats, hurricanes, and so on.
4) Engines of any type could be used, including rockets, turbines, and (sigh ...) internal combustion reciprocating. Such engines are remarkably clean running and long lasting (as decades of such engines running propane have proven), and thus the utility, versatility, and conveniences they provide are not lost.
5) Migrating to a hydrogen fueled transportation system is relatively straightforward and could easily be gradual, as the use of any particular vehicle is limited only by the availability of a place to fill the tank. So, it would start small and localized (as in a UPS fleet, perhaps), and then expand gradually. As economies of scale appeared, such migration would be easier.
6) Finally, people using it would not do anything remarkably different from what they do now, thus they would have little grounds for objection based on utility, convenience, and so on. (Can enough be stored in an aircraft to make it fly right? Beats me, but that's a good question.)
The cost, you say? Well, we complain about the cost of gasoline at two bucks per gallon, and I remember eleven cents per gallon.
This whole train of thought does not address issues such as where the additional electric energy generation capacity comes from, how the transmission system would be beefed up to carry it, and so on. The focus is on how to use such energy to drive a transportation system.
Biggest problem with Hydrogen is the storage, and compressing enough of it into a tank to be useful (Which requires more power). The total power differential is so large it really only makes sense if you either have nuclear or "Free" power, be it solar, or hydro that's otherwise untapped.
Other than that, Hydrogen has a better chance at actually being usable for the US over most electric vehicles. For EV's to take off, Fuel cells would have to really be an option. But with either of those, it's possible to tank up rapidly and cover a lot of ground, unlike charging batteries, or putting millions of square miles of a theoretical induction webbing under roads.
Can enough be stored in an aircraft to make it fly right?
Not really.
There's 1 electric airplane I know of - it's nominally a 2 seater but can only carry one with the weight of batteries. There's also a fuel-cell airplane, again, only a small 2 seater. The problem is that scaling works against you very quickly there - the 2 seaters are small and light enough that you can somewhat make them manageable, but there's no way to put enough hydrogen or batteries to power something airliner sized. Best bet there would be Dirgible'd, with solar power, some fuel cells, and maybe even just gassing it with hydrogen. (The educational effort to explain that the hydrogen wasn't the cause of the Hindenberg fire would be large, however.)
Electric Sonex:
http://www.sonexaircraft.com/press/releases/pr_072407.html
(I saw this last year and make a lot of jokes about "flying in circles" with the extension cord out the window...)
Here in Oz, the .gov.au decided that it was important to encourage up-take of PV solar power (we have been using non-PV solar heating for hot-water for 40 years that I can remember).
They instituted a subsidy system, and set the value of the subsidy at about 80% of the cost of a 5 kva domestic-type system.
Nett result? The price of such systems went up by 80%. Kind of obvious in hind-sight - buyers were prepared to pay $X for such a system with no subsidy, and they will continue to be prepared to pay $X.
The subsidy becomes extra cream for the supplier/installer.
There is no doubt that the world is going to pump up and burn every drop of oil. Even if the west switches to alternatives the second and third world will still have to burn the oil. And that's not taking into account the other products like plastics that we get from oil - even if all our energy was derived from alternatives, we'd still use up the oil.
So if we're going to burn it all anyway, there are only three questions.
1. How much will we pollute the earth before we run out of oil
2. Who is going to have the economic strength to take advantage of a non-oil world
3. Who is going to have the industrial and technological capability to switch to a non-oil economy
How much will we pollute the earth before we run out of oil?
Due to cleaner, more efficient technology the west pollutes less per drop of oil than the second and third world. Our auto's and plants are cleaner than those found is less modernized nations.
Imagine if we stopped all oil usage today, the third world would still burn up every drop of oil. Except they would burn all that oil using smoky, nasty polluting technology.
From the environmental perspective it would be better if the west burns that oil - it would produce less total pollution.
Who is going to have the economic strength to take advantage of a non-oil world?
At the rate China, India, Indonesia and other second world countries are mushrooming economically, the west is in real danger of being overtaken economically. These countries economies are even more oil dependent than the west. It would be in the west's best interest to use up all the oil as fast as possible before we become the second world countries.
Who is going to have the industrial and technological capability to switch to a non-oil economy?
Currently only the west has the industrial and technological capability to switch to a non-oil economy. But, as time passes, the second world will be more capable of making the switch, and do it easier and cheaper than us. Therefore, again, the faster we burn up the oil the better positioned we will be when it runs out.
Ancillary bonus to running out of oil
Once we pump out the last drop of oil that will finally take some of the more troublesome countries of the world out of play. Such countries who make fortunes from their oil production, all the while hating the west with every breath. The faster those countries run out of unlimited income, the less likely we will have hostile, nuclear armed countries sprouting up everywhere.
So I say burn it all, burn it fast, don't look back.
I was trying to figure out how best to articulate some aspects of some of them, but I was complicating it with the economics (why raise our costs when the competition won't.)
I stand by what I have said before: I don't think we should be burning oil at all, I think we can't afford the loss of resources to the plastics industry. However, that's not just about who "the polluters" are or are not.
Making plastics from oil 1) takes the opportunity to burn that oil for fuel out of the hands of everyone, whether they pollute a little or a lot with it. But, it also puts it into a form that can be shredded and recycled, over and over and over.
So the question becomes one of liberty, the usual political question of how to force people to do what you want. Answer? You don't. You just keep supporting the plastics industry and it happens all by itself. Why? Because basic pysics suggests remolding something that is already here and already plastic will be cheaper in the long run than dragging oil out of the ground and refining it. In other words, people are already trying to make that happen without you pushing them. Basic physics suggests that finding a fuel resource for transportation that can be re-used will be cheaper in the long run than dragging oil out of the ground, refining it, using it once and then losing access to it forever. In other words, people are already trying to make that happen without you pushing them.
I think most people's gripe about the state of petroleum usage isn't a gripe about where the trends involved are headed, but rather a gripe about how fast they are going and what side trips are made along the way. I suspect those gripes generally miss the point, that it's already happening, and trying to force the pace consistently damages the economy in ways you really do not want.
Finally I get the time to come back to this. Yes, I'm somewhat recovered from the breathtaking level of dishonesty I'm seeing from Unix-Jedi, though I did take some time off to rip on some Politically Correct posters on another blog for practice. I think it took the Afrocentrist to make me appreciate just how badly tribal loyalty can disconnect people from reasoning and even fact, but that's just warming up for the real event here.
UJ is nothing if not disconnected from facts, as shown by this:
"Engineer"-Poet - and I put that in quotes, because what engineer doesn't know who Montgomery Scott is?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montgomery_Scott
Get this: Unix-Jedi is using a television character as an authority in a technical discussion! A television character from a series whose writers invented the term "balonium" to describe the treknobabble written for him, no less.
(Halocrap says "too many links", so this will be continued next comment.)
And when UJ's wrong, he's spectacularly wrong. Case in point:
If you look at the modern trucking industry, for the most part, there's no way you'll increase their efficiency. They've done the math, the thinking, and they're good at it.
Wal-Mart started the process of DOUBLING the fuel efficiency of its fleet of semis... two years ago.
However, semis on roads are never going to match rail for efficiency. You can't platoon them close enough to equal the aerodynamic efficiency of a train, and rubber tires on pavement can't get close to the rolling resistance of steel on steel. (You can use rubber tires on rail for thrust, varying the weight to match acceleration and braking demand.)
Stuff is on the rails until it's no longer profitable, and then it goes onto the semis.
Except that the point of profitability keeps moving toward rails. This applies even to perishable goods; Railex is now running 3x weekly refrigerated trains from the West Coast. This raises some questions:What, save lack of demand, prevents such a service from running daily?What's going to keep it from taking more business from trucks as diesel heads back towards $5/gallon?When an electrified rail system eliminates the direct fuel requirements both for the locomotives and the reefer cars and cuts energy cost by half of even today's figure, how can diesel trucks compete?
They can't. They won't. We're going to see abandoned rights-of-way returned to service and electric trucks used for the "last mile" in any event. Public policy can drive things further by creating new standards and new infrastructure.
Ok, back to my main point.
To you. Makes sense to you. Everybody else should be subordinate to you, and your plans and desires? Notice that very few people actually agree with you? (You can observe the market.)
I have no idea why you think this is about me. The market has been moving in the direction of greater efficiency for years (your claims to the contrary notwithstanding). All I'm doing (ha!) is suggesting ways to get more bang for our buck and put a stake in the heart of Wahhabism... and what I get from you is knee-jerk denial and personal abuse.
It's almost as if you want Islam to win out of spite.
Yes, that's true. So what? I once talked to a guy who drove a Gold Wing 3-wheeler with a little tent trailer; my '94 Taurus got better mileage than he did. My old 4-door VW got about the same mileage as a friend of mine got with his Honda 350. It's the aerodynamics, stupid!
The point is that the system doesn't have the capacity you're saying it does, and that brownout that lead to the several days blackout is part of the demonstration that you're wrong.
Like a certain word overused by Vizzini, it doesn't mean what you think it means.
EPRI knows more about this than both of us put together. Here's EPRI's position:
Mark Duvall of EPRI said the grid would be able to handle “as many [plug-ins] as you want.” Ten million Chevrolet Volts (or equivalent) on the road would account for approximately 0.8% of projected 2010 electricity consumption in the US. There is, he said, “no real practical limit” as to how many vehicles the grid can handle because the grid is constantly adapting to new loads.
If plug-ins had 25% market share, it would require as few as 10 new powerplants nationwide. If all new vehicles were plug-ins starting tomorrow, it would take about 5 years to get to that 25%. Do you really think we couldn't build 2 plants/year in that time?
How well you weathered it, and what caused it are interesting. The grid as it's currently constituted - and you're not explaining how you'd fix it, cannot, even if batteries were up to snuff, deal with the replacement of the equivalent of 5-6 million barrels/day of oil.
You don't need to replace the energy in the oil, you only need to replace the energy it delivers. Since this isn't very intuitive, let's go over it in detail.
1 barrel crude = 6.1 GJ
Conversion efficiency to gasoline: 82.9%, net 5.06 GJ
Net vehicle efficiency (drag losses over fuel input), 14.9%: net 0.75 GJ
What you actually need to deliver up to air drag and rolling resistance is about 12.4% of the energy in the crude; a conventional vehicle loses everything else in refining, engine losses or brakes (braking energy can be reclaimed). Replacing 6 million barrels/day of oil (36.6 PJ) requires just 4.54 PJ of energy at the wheels; if you've got 75% wall-to-shaft and 93% transmission efficiency, this is 6.51 PJ/day or 75 GW. Net US electrical generation averages ~460 GW, nameplate capacity is over 1 TW. If consumed off-peak, this is well within our capability to deliver over the grid.
And back to this again:
Why would they care?
This is why doing things for a living, and meeting the people, I mean, peons who do the gruntwork is important.
You beg the question. Why would they care?
Most of those places have built systems to be very efficient, and you're talking about wholesale destruction of that system....
You keep asserting this with zero evidence, not even an explanation of why you believe this would be so. The efficiency in many respects would go up, starting with the quantity and cost of energy to drive the system. If you wonder why I see you as breathtakingly dishonest, look no further.
I'm telling you that your way WILL change, because the geological, economic and political situation won't allow it to go on.
That's possible. The world turns and all that. But you're saying what I've been hearing since the 70s, and so far, they've all been wrong.
I resent the fact that you're incapable of having a debate with humor, common reference, and understand that you're hardly the only utopian out there, and cannot present a viable set of reasons why your utopia is better than any of the others
You don't acknowledge my humor, you refer to nonsense (and yes, I got your Steinmetz reference without searching), and you keep referring to me as a utopian when I am talking about evolutionary strategies which can be reached by incremental steps from the status quo—steps which you see as frivolous only because world oil demand is depressed and crude is ONLY at about 3x the price it was in 2000, instead of 6x.
6.7%/year decline rates mean $150/bbl oil is coming back, and coming to stay. Let me tell you a few things that this means:
- Your powerboats will be unaffordable for all but the rich.
- Most marinas where you dock them will be out of business; the remainder may be private and not serve you.
- Most businesses dependent on customers driving 4x4's will be bankrupt.
- Most people driving thirsty vehicles will be forced to drive them much less.
- The US economy will be held in recession, as capital is siphoned off to oil exporters. This is the essential cause of all the preceding phenomena.
I am not a utopian (the utopians in this case are the cornucopians, like you). I am looking for ways to survive the environment of $200/bbl oil and 5%/year production declines (5%/year may be optimistic). It appears possible to do this with things remaining much like today's status quo, but we have to take the problem seriously and start acting while we have the capacity. The ideal time would have been 20 years ago, but we frittered that away; we cannot afford further delay.
Get this: Unix-Jedi is using a television character as an authority in a technical discussion! A television character from a series whose writers invented the term "balonium" to describe the treknobabble written for him, no less.
Yep. And I think this illustrates how for all your book education, you're a utterly specious fool, a technocrat who would build a system that would crash and burn almost immediately.
Let's go back to what I said: Well wait, why do *I* have to drive a Montgomery-Scott Laws of Physics violating 50 mph, but you can get away with a wasteful 38?
The reference to Montgomery Scott was to his most-notable line in the series, where he told the commanders that he "canna do eet, it violates th' laws of physics!"
It's a cultural reference that anybody in engineering should follow. I wasn't citing him as a ENGINEERING AUTHORITY - and if you want to talk dishonesty, well, you're setting the bar pretty low for you own - but as a common reference.
It's not possible to get sustained > 50 mpg with the level of technology we have, or are likely to have in the next few years for anywhere close to the majority of the cars on the market. That's the reference I refer to. Claiming otherwise is "violating the laws of physics" and that's why I referred to your wish to require all cars to get more than 50 mpg as "Montgomery Scott." I was using that character to make fun of your controlling desire, and your lack of understanding of the culture.
I think the fact you don't understand culture is really hammered home by your screeching there.
If you look at the modern trucking industry, for the most part, there's no way you'll increase their efficiency. They've done the math, the thinking, and they're good at it.
Wal-Mart started the process of DOUBLING the fuel efficiency of its fleet of semis.
My point, really. Yes. Walmart did. Yes. My point exactly. So you're going to better their efforts, how, exactly?
However, semis on roads are never going to match rail for efficiency. You can't platoon them close enough to equal the aerodynamic efficiency of a train, and rubber tires on pavement can't get close to the rolling resistance of steel on steel. (You can use rubber tires on rail for thrust, varying the weight to match acceleration and braking demand.)
Everything you said there is true, and totally wrong in practice.
This is why you're a technocrat, this is why you're a utopian, this is why you will fail.
Yes, if you have a road and a rail, point to point, the rail will win. Usually. There are times it won't. But we'll postulate that for this argument, at this moment, those aren't in play.
What do you do when the destination isn't served by rail? What do you do if you have to transfer 2 or more time to get to the proper rail?
All of a sudden all that theoretical "efficiency" you had evaporated. Rail is more expensive than road, and if you cannot grasp what an impact your beautiful ideas would have on every industry then you are not cognitively capable of actually making plans and advocating for change.
I have no idea why you think this is about me.
Maybe because of your lack of humor, your inability to know what other people want, and your overwhelming need to crush individuals under your utopian ideals.
Most US motorcycles don't get 50 MPG.
Yes, that's true. So what?
You know, this is just so sadly indicative that I just can't make fun of you any further. It's just too painful to watch you continue to flout your utter ignorance and contempt for other people. So I'll dispatch my funny answer, since you won't understand the humor, and ask you how many deaths you're willing to see on the roads.
If plug-ins had 25% market share, it would require as few as 10 new powerplants nationwide. If all new vehicles were plug-ins starting tomorrow, it would take about 5 years to get to that 25%. Do you really think we couldn't build 2 plants/year in that time?
No Way In Hell.
We couldn't build 10 in 10 years starting now.
Again, back to reality. New powerplants take 10 years to get through the NGOs that get in the way. And if you're talking Nuclear? .. Yeah, you can forget that. Not in 10 years. Not in 20. We might - maybe - have one nuke coming online in the next 20 years.
If consumed off-peak,
We dealt with that, and you just ignored it. If everybody plugs in, there is no off-peak. Those 10 plants you're saying we'd need? Yeah... When were you expecting them to come online, who gets to profit from them and... Yeah, see, it starts to get complicated, doesn't it?
You beg the question. Why would they care?
No, I don't. I cannot explain this to you. You've got your nose so far up in the air that you cannot understand this. It's a fundamental change in paradigm that you cannot grasp. They care because you're dictating to them the choices that you will allow them to make. They care because it's their life and their work and their efforts that you're airily waving away.
In the real world, E-P, people fight both rationally and irrationally over those things. Even when they're being irrational, they're rationalizing. And often when they're dismissed as irrational, they've got a perfectly rational reason that the planner didn't take into account.
The fact you cannot grasp this, that you utterly dismiss it is what defines you as a utopian and a technocrat despite your denials. It is why you fail now, and will continue to fail. It is why you will fail to see the forest for the few trees you're studying.
The ideal time would have been 20 years ago
The ideal time was always 20 years ago. It always will be. 20 years ago, the same thing was said. 10 years ago. 5.
we cannot afford further delay.
And here's where my prognostic ability goes head to head with yours.
We'll be fine in 20 years. If we can get the government out of the way, we'll be far better off, if we don't, we'll be far worse off, but we'll still be overall OK. Because those peons you want to crush are good people, and because people like you aren't in charge and don't have the ability to Lysenko up our power and transportation.
But the single biggest reason you'll fail? You cannot answer me simply: Why is your utopia superior to all the others?
I see I missed something earlier that I should have dealt with:
and you keep referring to me as a utopian when I am talking about evolutionary strategies
You're talking revolutionary. Not "evolutionary". (Though if you'll keep using that word incorrectly, we might get LabRat in here yet.) You're talking about doubling or tripling the price of energy via legislative fiat to force people to do what you see as imperative. Right now. Immediately. Yesterday! We cannot wait!
The system you envision we had and it was surpassed in efficiency for the current system. Yes, efficiency. That can be measured more than 1 way. From the standpoint of most businesses, to get materials and ship goods, rail was slower and more costly. As people run a business, they need efficient transport, and the old way didn't cut it. There are ebbs and flows, the pendulum swings, and the rail companies don't stand still, but the road system is highly flexible as it is now, and the rail system is not, even with expansion it's still far inferior in many ways to the road system, especially in terms of personal preferences.
What you're proposing is a massive revolution that would run every manufacturing business out of the country - who would pay 5x the going rate for energy when they didn't need to?
You propose this with - let's be clear here - I'm sure good intentions. I'm not going to insult you with insinuations of dishonesty like you did with me. But you demonstrate an astonishing lack of understanding of what the effects of your plan would be, what reactions would be, and a remarkable lack of empathy and consideration for everybody else. That's why I keep calling you a utopian.
As for humor, I've seen no real attempts by you, save the last. But I'm glad you referenced the Princess Bride, for that was something I've been thinking of using.
"Life is pain, Princess. Anyone who says different is selling something" - Dread Pirate Roberts.
You keep referring to sales pitches. Proposals. And those are great, don't get me wrong.
But you see, I've evaluated hundreds of those and seen them - some I bought into and even more that I didn't - not pan out. Promises on paper are exactly that. The first question is to ask "Why is this new? What's new about it?" Thus my attempts to point out to you that the *technology* to run cars and trucks on rails is well known and has been used since at least World War Two. Yet it's not used as you envision it.
Sale pitches by their nature are rosy (for the product) and negative unless you buy their product now. Most of the ones you've pointed to have been for products that haven't taken off after years.
For your rail fantasy - and I'm sorry, I've worked in warehouses, it's a fantasy - it might be a failure of imagination, but when I consider the computer controlled nightmare that you airily say would be simple and easy and how we'll do it, it quite literally is terrifying. As well as impractical from a infrastructure perspective. Just from a simple standpoint of running multiple - at least one more - track everywhere we currently have rail - that's a massive shift in resources, and the people who's homes and businesses you're going to bulldoze will have something to say to you about it. It won't be nice, either.
6.7%/year decline rates mean $150/bbl oil is coming back, and coming to stay.
I don't buy your conclusions even if you're right - and I don't buy that you're right. You're missing some major market dynamics, but nevermind all of that.
If you're right - if - so what? If you're telling me the economy is dead and $150 barrels of oil are inevitable... OK? So I should rend my clothes and gnash my teeth and burn my boat? Why? Why shouldn't I enjoy it as long as I can? If it's inevitable then it's too late for me to change my possessions now.
But you miss some things in your math. My truck has taken 3 people, more ammo than I want to think about, at least 15 guns, coolers of food, water, and other luggage to a weapons training class. It gets ~ 21 mpg. The "alternative" Prius, for example, would have required 2 for the same trip. So my truck was more efficient than if the 3 of us had Priuses.
As I said above, efficiency can be measured in multiple ways. It doesn't matter how efficient I can rollerskate and deliver for you if you need me to pick up a 2000 pound pallet. Suddenly "efficient" is measured in a different manner, and this is why when you're making efficiency claims, you need to state what you're measuring and comparing. There's a reason that Walmart has a distribution system that's almost entirely truck-driven. For a small fraction of the cost they can have far more flexibility and the ability to sort products, trailers, destinations. With railcars, you need huge switching yard. With trucks, you need a few acres of pavement.
Your claims for photovoltaic is similar. Hey, it's great. Looked into a lot myself. I personally want a RV trailer with Solar for a hurricane/Katrina like situation. (Much as your sailboat example above.)
But on a roof? In Florida? After a hurricane? It *might* work. But I'd rather have a gas-powered generator. Much rather. (Especially because right now, PV isn't "home repairable" at *all*.)
You don't see to understand the reality in building new industry and new power plants - and you're speaking to someone who's all in favor of building nuclear power ASAP and posthaste. But it's not going to happen without massive changes to the regulatory atmosphere and the legal frameworks. Period. No matter how much sense they make or how badly they're needed.
What you have advocated above is not evolutionary, it's massive upheaval of industry, personal preferences and individualism, and I think you're going to continue to fail at your apparent mission. You're actually detracting from the plans you apparently seek to implement based on your approach.
What's impractical about running entire trucks on them, and electrifying the system?
Building rail is much harder than building road. There's reason we've mostly stopped building rail lines.
Patently false.
1. It is far easier to build rail lines than Interstate highways; the USA was building massive amounts of both freight rail and streetcar lines 50-100 years before the Interstate system was begun. It's easy enough to lay railbed that it can be done mostly with hand tools.
2. The switch from rails to pavement was a policy decision. Interstates are paid for by taxes. Most US rail is privately owned and maintained... and it pays property taxes. Rail operators removed and scrapped perfectly functional track on lines to cut their taxable value.
While the rails may be gone, most of the rights-of-way are still there. We have the capability to add the equivalents of new highways in lots of places without using a single square foot of new ground.
The reference to Montgomery Scott was to his most-notable line in the series, where he told the commanders that he "canna do eet, it violates th' laws of physics!"
It's a cultural reference that anybody in engineering should follow.
You just exposed yourself as the king of pimple-faced couch potatoes. I watched ST:TOS but I was never deep enough into it to know that Scotty's given name was Montgomery. I read hard SF and studied real science; I didn't have the time or the balonium tolerance to be a Trekkie (or a fan of the old BSG, Space:1999, X Files, or any of that drivel). If you wasted time on the trivia, you should have spent it better. (See, I can snark too.)
50 MPG cars aren't particularly difficult; the 2009 Jetta diesel manages 50 MPG without sacrificing performance, and it's nearly as big as my older Passat. A PHEV version which got half its power from the grid would double that to 100 MPG and probably more, as the hybrid would allow the engine to be downsized and losses reduced. If you don't mind going down to 2 seats you can get 130 MPG out of the Aptera, 170 MPG or so from the LoReMo, and GM expects the Volt to get 230 MPG in city driving.
There are advances waiting out there, like dual-fuel partially premixed combustion. You can have a 50 MPG vehicle that still does what you want to do, but you're going to have to be willing to buy the technology.
If you look at the modern trucking industry, for the most part, there's no way you'll increase their efficiency. They've done the math, the thinking, and they're good at it.... [later]
My point, really. Yes. Walmart did. Yes. My point exactly. So you're going to better their efforts, how, exactly?
First you claim that increasing efficiency is impossible "for the most part", then you admit that Wal-Mart is roughly doubling their efficiency. Well, which is it, Mr. "I cannae violate the laws o' physics"?
Since you're having problems grasping this, I'll explain it to you in simple terms. The old style of truck was standardized when tires were bad, fuel was cheap and computational fluid dynamics wasn't even a gleam in Alan Turing's eye. It wouldn't have paid to do wind-tunnel testing of fully-faired rigs, and the Super Single tire was beyond the materials of the day. Over the last 40 years, advances in computers and materials have relaxed a lot of those constraints. When someone at Wal-Mart noted that it would be great for their bottom line if they could cut their fuel consumption, an "impossible" 50% reduction turned out to be achievable from advances mostly off the shelf.
However, these trucks still have the constraints of being supported by pneumatic tires on pavement and powered by liquid fuel. We know how to completely eliminate those constraints; we've been doing it for well over a century, we just haven't done it with dual-mode trucks. If you put most of the truck's weight on a steel wheel instead of a rubber tire, you eliminate the bulk of the rolling resistance. Using steel on steel gives you an electrical return path, so the constraint for substitution of liquid fuel with electricity is removed. Even if you continue to use diesel for off-rail operation, the total requirement shrinks to a very small fraction of today's figure.
And now, instead of merely yelling "it won't work, it won't work", you've finally gotten down to your actual concept of the system so I can see it through your eyes:
Yes, if you have a road and a rail, point to point, the rail will win. Usually. There are times it won't. But we'll postulate that for this argument, at this moment, those aren't in play.
What do you do when the destination isn't served by rail? What do you do if you have to transfer 2 or more time to get to the proper rail?
1. Almost no destination is going to be directly served by rail, as in having a siding up to the grounds. Almost no destinations are directly served by interstates, either. The step between is the same for both: surface roads. If you have a dual-mode vehicle, it leaves the rail at some point and drives on pavement to the destination.
I suspect that you don't see the rail network growing beyond today's heavy-rail rights of way. I do. Medians and inner lanes of 6-lane freeways may be worth converting to railbeds serving dual-mode vehicles (not conventional trains) for several reasons, including
a. Separating light vehicles from heavy trucks, increasing safety.
b. Eliminating pavement damage from truck traffic.
c. Removing most of the noise and emissions from diesel engines.
d. And of course, eliminating the petroleum consumption and its attendant economic, political and national-security risks. (RVs may also use the rails and the overhead electric power; the reduction in fuel cost is bound to increase tourism.)
Towns off existing Interstates and rail ROW will be served by trucks as now. These trucks may be electric, if the distance from the railhead is not too great. As fuel gets more expensive, it may pay to expand the reach of the rail network to allow cheaper electric trucks to get to more doors; it depends whether batteries or ROW becomes the more attractive investment.
2. I'm not sure what you mean by "transferring". A dual-mode vehicle can operate on pavement with the flip of a switch; this also lets it drive around blockages by hopping on and off at any convenient grade crossing. "Transferring" at e.g. a freeway interchange would be very familiar: pull up the rail wheels, change to the rightmost lane, take the ramp to the desired route outward, change back to the inmost lane and drop the rail wheels. Of course, that's just the first stage. As the system is upgraded, dedicated ramps and bypasses could be built for the dual-mode traffic to eliminate the need to mix with light vehicles and accomodate automatic routing.
All of a sudden all that theoretical "efficiency" you had evaporated. Rail is more expensive than road
On the contrary. Converting a lane of pavement to railbed appears to be relatively cheap and easy. Standard railbed is just ties laid in ballast, with none of the poured concrete, rebar and expansion joints needed for pavement. If the roadway is worn out already, converting it to rail is almost certainly going to be cheaper than repaving.
if you cannot grasp what an impact your beautiful ideas would have on every industry then you are not cognitively capable of actually making plans and advocating for change.
There you go with the mindless nay-saying again. The effect on "every industry" would be about as much as if their truck traffic took a different exit to get into town; if a lane of freeway was dedicated to dual-mode trucks, it's likely that not even that would change.
I don't think you appreciate the positive effects, because you're so fixated on any change as negative. Look at energy cost alone. If electricity delivered to the overhead wire costs 10¢/kWh, that's equivalent to diesel fuel at about $1.45/gallon in a 35%-efficient engine. It costs more than $$2.50/gallon at the corner right now; last summer, a gallon of diesel was going for about a quarter shy of five bucks! What effect do you think the high and volatile cost of diesel fuel has on industry? Trucks don't pay anything like their share of damage they cause to pavement; what effect do you think the cost-shifting has on the rest of the economy? Etc, etc.
I'm going to post this before I write a book. More later, starting with "No Way In Hell".
First you claim that increasing efficiency is impossible "for the most part", then you admit that Wal-Mart is roughly doubling their efficiency.
No, I claimed that you increasing their efficiency was impossible.
You. Not the people doing it. Right there is the biggest difference in viewpoint between us and why there's such a gulf.
I've had people like you tell me how simple something (that wasn't simple in any way, shape or form) was.. and then watched them try and assign blame for the failure of the enterprise. (Little e). Amazingly their arrogant presumption never was considered to be a factor.
we've been doing it for well over a century, we just haven't done it with dual-mode trucks.
And if you're going to attack me for "inconstancy" (which it wasn't, but even if it had been) you've got to own up when it turns out you miss something major in your presumption - you earlier thought it was some new concept.
But see, it's not. And me, from my perspective asks "Gee, why aren't they doing dual-mode trucks since it's old technology?" And my presumption is that there's a lot more to it.
Much as again, you missed my comment about how complex the system is, and assumed it was only running the trucks on rails and merging and taking them off (the rail system to allow that would be complex as well), you just can't understand what the complexities inherent in that controlling system. You even called me a liar, without bothering to understand what I was saying.
Ever flown through Denver? Ever heard of their luggage system? They built one that was totally automated. Because it "wasn't that hard" to build. Except after millions of dollars they never actually managed to get it to work.
the USA was building massive amounts of both freight rail and streetcar lines 50-100 years before the Interstate system was begun.
*sigh*
And this is where it's just gotten ludicrous. Yes. 100 years before the interstate system was begun, 50 years before a practical car was even seriously considered, it made sense to build rails.
I presume you're also not wanting us to go back to whale oil for lighting and wood for heating. Since, you know, that was state of the art in 1850....
But the gulf between us is too vast - you're too sold on the promises of startups, on the perils of the future...
And I'm not sold on most sales pitches, and I've got a pretty rosy picture of the future. I've been hearing how bad things are going to be my whole life, and yet, things keep getting better.
Just so we keep government from doing stupid things (also known as usual governmental acts and short-circuiting the market.
I guess that's a better difference between us. I can't find anywhere in history a better guideline for progress and hope than the free market, and I see all the times when technocrats have subverted the market and the disasters they created.
You insist that the free market can't be allowed to exist. We're not going to agree on the base assumptions, much less policy given the differences.
Oh, I did miss this, and I just can't let it go unrefuted:
you can get 130 MPG out of the Aptera, 170 MPG or so from the LoReMo, and GM expects the Volt to get 230 MPG in city driving.
That's bullshit. This is proof you can't look beyond the sales claims to the reality of these things.
"230 mpg". Gee. When I drive my Xterra to the shop, put it on a flatbed, and drive 100 miles, how many "MPG" did I just get?
That's not "free" energy, and the fact that "plug in" proponents are making such rigged claims is a large part of the reason why I ignore MOST of those sorts of claims.
That "Claim" has been getting debunked roundly with the real figures - and yet you cite the original approvingly.
... But given the proposed price point of the Volt, it would need to get that sort of milage to make up for the original cost difference.
Sorry for the 2nd reply, as I was saying, you're too susceptible to sales claims.
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News article last week I now can't find, quoted Exxon chairman on exploratory results of Canadian shale oil field. Short version: largest in world and Peak Oil is officially a crock!
Personally, I would prefer that we use all that lovely oil as feedstock for plastic, medicine, and fertiliser production.
Nuclear power stations give off NO CO2 during operation, and should be the darling of the "green meanies". That they are not indicates a severe dissociative element in the mental processes of your average "environmentalist".
... but you said that already.
Personally I see this as one area where the US is planning long term. Use the ME, SA etc. oil until it runs out and then control the rest for your own use.
Of course by then the whingy whiney greenies will have keep deservedly kicked to death and you can build as many Nuke power stations as you need whilst using your oil in the most efficient manner, plastics etc. but as fuel if necessary.
Good long term strategy.
I think the Bakken Foundation is a great place to put up a bunch of windmills and have a wind farm! If Obama doesn't drill there, I think that is a clear cut indication that he doesn't care about becoming independent of foreign oil. I don't see how anyone could have an alternate view of this!
"If we can keep the modern Luddites from putting us all back in the middle ages."
Hah! Too late, Kevin. They already are dragging us back to the stone age.
At a US consumption rate of 20 million barrels per day, we would consume 4.3 billion barrels in 215 days. That is a fabulous yield for one field, but it would give us independence from world oil, in round numbers, for 60% of one year.
Don't misunderstand the point of this; I'm all for drilling wherever there is oil, but I suggest keeping it in perspective.
One important function these reserves form is as a limiter to OPEC price manipulation. They cannot drive oil prices higher than the cost of a Bakken formation barrel.
Remember: yes, it's about the oil, but above all, it's really about The Lightning.
It's the water usage that will keep this field from being fulling utilized. Something on the order of 125,000 acre feet per annum. (sorry, can't find link). Full exploitation of the field would take large quantities of water from the Great Lakes.
Alright, before I comment further on this, I'd like to clarify who the modern day Luddites are. Are these the people who want to use new tech to move us away from oil and into greener and more efficient ways of producing energy?
No, they're the ones who won't even allow that - like the people who don't want to put solar farms out in the DESERT because they might affect the ENVIRONMENT, or don't want to put wind farms off shore because it will affect their view.
Or who keep fighting new (non-polluting!) nuclear plants . . . well, I'm not sure exactly why.
Or the ones who think electric vehicles are an answer, but don't consider the fact that we're already running short of generating capacity, and the Luddites don't want any new capacity - oil, coal, natural gas or nuke - built anywhere.
Are these the people who want to use new tech to move us away from oil and into greener and more efficient ways of producing energy?
From your perspective? Yes. That's them.
Because there is no "new tech". Just a belief that there will be. Someday. And it will be *wonderful* then. All we need to do in the meantime is let the government do lots of stuff, and regulate what's currently in place out of existance.
If the tech existed, we'd be using it. If it was more efficient*, we'd be using it.
Because no matter how good it is now, in theory, it will be better later, and it's not worth the impact now.
before I comment further on this
Play it safe. If you don't understand the above, you're horribly out of your league. Not that it's stopped you in the past.
* - including all inputs and costs.
Kevin,
Granted that the Luddites are mostly suffering from a critical failure to rub two neurons together. That said, their idiocy may have a few good effects.
First, you dismiss battery power too quickly, I think. The advantage of batteries is that electricity is fungible—you can get it from all sorts of places, and having that flexibility means you are not dependent on any one source.
That frees us from not only oil (which is so nasty in its political and geopolitical effects that it is known in South America as "the devil's excrement"—Google the term "resource curse" to get an idea) but from any centralized energy distribution network under the control of governments or massive corporations. People can choose their source of electricity, or even generate their own if they want to. That frees them from a crucial source of dependence that permeates our whole lives.
Second, the Luddites' refusal to allow us to beef up the electrical grid may encourage people to invest in their own sources of power, like solar panels or geothermal pumps and such. That makes the whole system more robust, and again frees them from the control of the utility companies and consequently the government.
On net, I'd rather have the nuclear plants, but let's not dismiss the advantages, especially for lovers of freedom.
First, you dismiss battery power too quickly, I think. The advantage of batteries is that electricity is fungible—you can get it from all sorts of places, and having that flexibility means you are not dependent on any one source.
No, I don't dismiss batteries. They are not a power source - they're a means of power storage, and while, yes, that power can come from many different sources, the one most people think of and depend on is the electrical grid, which in the U.S. is 80% powered by fossil fuels (natural gas, coal, oil) and is already running out of capacity.
Plus, battery technology is still not where it needs to be (though researchers are doing incredible things with nanotechnology in the laboratories these days that might someday make it to the store shelves.)
One thing no one seems to consider is that the materials for some of these batteries is A) exotic, B) toxic, C) flamable, and D) mostly mined. Nickel metal hydride batteries, for example, require nickel, and one of the largest sources for this mineral happens to be in Madagascar, where the environmentalists are having little kittens over the fact that it's being taken out of the ground there. Lithium-ion? What happens if those batteries get a pinhole? FLAME ON!
It's been said by many that if inventors wanted to introduce the gasoline-burning internal combustion engine-driven automobile today, the government would prohibit it on safety grounds. Move a highly flamable, toxic substance around to distribution points all over the country? Put tens of gallons of it in flimsy thinwalled storage tanks in millions of nearly unregulated vehicles traveling at high velocities on city streets and highways? Are you INSANE?
Battery technology needs a lot more advancement. We've come a long way, but we're not where we need to be yet.
Are these the people who want to use new tech to move us away from oil and into greener and more efficient ways of producing energy?
You cannot even contemplate physics with your incredible disregard for math and logic. I mean, not even as entertainment for the rest of us - just don't do it.
"... incredible disregard for math and logic ..."
A philosophy professor once told me that to disregard math and logic is to believe in magic.
Kevin, the reasons you didn't hear about this until now are:
Yes, it is PEAK OIL. You've already seen what happens when it gets too expensive to provide oil: you get a recession. If it takes too many resources (steel, labor, water, energy to drill) to provide the oil, the amount of oil you can use per unit of economic output goes down. You get peak oil when you can no longer commit enough resources to increase the flow. ("Continuous" resources like the Bakken shale require far more wells, with far more material and energy invested per unit of oil, than conventional reservoirs like Cantarell or Ghawar.) Your only options after this are to increase your efficiency or decrease your standard of living. If the direct effect of paying more for fuel doesn't get you, the indirect effect of everyone else's disposable income heading for oil producers instead of whatever you're providing gets you (and the rest of the economy except essentials like food).1. It really isn't all that significant, as DJ has explained to you.
2. You don't read The Oil Drum's coverage of the Bakken. You are also confusing "technically recoverable" with "economically recoverable". The distinction is crucial, as shall be explained below.
This is why I said that your (then-new) Toyota pickup was such a mistake: it burns too much oil for what it does. Now you have a long-lived asset which isn't efficient enough for the situation going forward; even if you sell it, it either gets used by someone else (still burning too much fuel) or scrapped early (wasting the resources used to build it). Something like the old VW Rabbit pickup, with a modern TDI engine, would have been far better. A plug-in hybrid, which would let you make "motor fuel" from the sun currently wasted on your roof, would be better still. Unfortunately, we didn't encourage a shift to such things when we had the money. Now we have an economic recession, and the debt we ran up in the boom wasn't put into anything that can help us in our current situation.
Know how bad our situation is? If the USA had the per-capita oil consumption of Brazil, this nation would currently be able to export oil. We are at the mercy of exporters only because we are so wasteful with the stuff.
You're missing the phenomenon in front of your eyes: if the economy uses oil inefficiently, it will enter contraction before the price gets high enough to make the substitutes economical. We absolutely need higher efficiency or we are fucked. This is one reason we need a several-dollar-per-gallon motor fuel tax: to get the public to take efficiency seriously, and keep that money away from the oil producers like Chavez and the oil sheikhs.
Now, on the Bakken itself: DJ has hit the nail on the head, and it is likely that we can expect less than 250,000 bbl/day from the Bakken. That will get us a few billion barrels over 40 years. Add ANWR to that and you're probably talking 1 million bbl/day peak between the two. What are you going to do for the rest of the 12 million bbl/day of US oil imports? Corn ethanol, fertilized with ammonia imported from natural gas produced in Aruba or Qatar? Don't make me laugh.
I have no idea why you don't like the idea of electric vehicles, except a tribal antipathy to the sort of people who've traditionally pushed them. You're going to have to get over your dislike of that particular bit, because physics is on their side and you can no more prevail against it than King Canute can command the tide to stay out.
You're not up to date. That's what happens with the cobalt-oxide (laptop-style) cells; the carbon electrode burns with the cobalt oxide and you get flame. The LiFePO4 and lithium titanium spinel electrodes can't do this. Then there are lithium-air, zinc-air, and even lead-acid in the form of Firefly Energy's 3D² technology.
Closer to 70% fossil; conventional renewables are about 9%, and nuclear is about 20%. Here are the annual figures back to 1949.
Running out of peak capacity, but the beauty of electric vehicles is that most of them can take their energy during off-peak periods or when intermittent resources are available. Then all you need is the energy supply (no small issue in itself, but far easier to deal with than dependence upon hydrocarbons).
I have no idea why you don't like the idea of electric vehicles . . .
Because I'm an electrical engineer, and I see where the technology is at the moment, and where it will probably be in the next ten years or so. ALL the technology.
I figured you'd come by sooner or later, and I bow to your greater knowledge concerning current energy production, but I think you underestimate our ability to produce (economically) enough oil to carry us through the transition to coming technologies, and I think you over estimate the "benefits" of excessive taxation of energy while also ignoring the negative economic effects of said taxation.
I actually like electric vehicles, if we had distributed mini-nuke plants scattered all over the country, and battery technology about an order of magnitude better (in both energy density and speed of recharge) than we currently do.
But the Luddites won't allow the power plants to be built, and that battery technology is only now proving possible in very limited laboratory experiments. How long it will take to hit production plants (and whether the Luddites will allow THAT) remains to be seen.
And hell, the economy might collapse for other reasons long before we run out of oil.
A plug-in hybrid, which would let you make "motor fuel" from the sun currently wasted on your roof, would be better still.
Except if you're going with "total energy" they're hardly a slam-dunk.
Plus currently, there's no hybrid with the capacity I need at times - and yes, I might could work around it. If I wanted to spent a lot of extra money up front, in the "hopes" that ruinous taxation is imposed. It's not the way to bet, IMO.
This is one reason we need a several-dollar-per-gallon motor fuel tax: to get the public to take efficiency seriously, and keep that money away from the oil producers like Chavez and the oil sheikhs.
Right. So we need to raise the price (which also makes those earlier energy deposits profitable), dump billions of dollars into the government, and this will work well.
If you're going to insist on such things, then just continue down the CAFE path, and institute more insane and damaging requirements.
Running out of peak capacity, but the beauty of electric vehicles is that most of them can take their energy during off-peak periods or when intermittent resources are available.
If everybody drives EVs,and plugs them in with current batteries, there is no off-peak. It's only off-peak because of how few EVs are out there.
Batteries, barring some huge evolutionary jump, ain't gonna be workable for the vast majority of uses. I won't say that won't happen, but neither am I going to plan my policy to depend on it.
Also I have yet to hear of any source of "green" energy that actually makes money all on its own. Until that happens, it won't be economically practical, it just ain't gonna. So until "green" sources produce a value of electricity notably higher than the costs running them incur, "electric __________" of any sort is going to be taking those "non-green" systems and converting their output to stored electricity with the accompanying loss of efficiency. There's no such animal as conversion without loss.
And this will improve our energy efficiency and reduce pollution how, exactly?
Waitaminit.... I've got it.
President Hussein is going to repeal the law of conservation of energy, right?
Quoth KB:
What you're missing is where the economic benefits of that oil will go, absent a serious policy change on our end. If we are going to make the transition, we need to have a big enough surplus to shift over a trillion-dollar segment of the US economy; pretty much the entire oil infrastructure will be scrapped and replaced. If the high prices resulting from shortages go to the benefit of oil exporters (especially Islamists), that is vanishingly unlikely to happen.And I think you're ignoring the negative economic effects of roller-coaster oil prices (trucks got popular again after the collapse, though the market share of hybrids continues to climb) and the fact that money which goes to the government is at least kept in the national economy. Barry Goldwater is the kind of person who could make a principled case for economic conservatives to slap a rapidly rising tax on petroleum and rebate all of it as a deductible on payroll taxes, but Saudi Arabia would have managed to purge him from the party if he wasn't already dead. (The KSA appears to own critical people in both parties, blocking major policy changes.)
Seriously, we can worry about that later. Even if we were burning oil, burning it in GE LMS-100 gas turbines at 46% efficiency is 3 times as good as burning it in the typical ICE at 14.9% overall efficiency. We can substitute wind, solar or shale gas for electricity much more easily than we can for liquid vehicle fuel. And when the country gets rational about nukes, the vehicles don't need to change a thing.
Do you really think we need an order of magnitude improvement? Have you looked at A123Systems' cells? Their specific power is sufficient to run light airplanes, and the White Zombie electric dragster ran an 11-second quarter mile using them for power. Yes, they're expensive now, but so were LEDs not so long ago.
Maybe we don't need secondary cells except to recover braking energy. Primary cells, like zinc-air fuel cells, have a much greater energy density. At least one ZAFC technology can be refilled by flushing slurry and adding powdered metal; the "waste product" is commonly used as sunscreen. I can't find my figures at the moment, but I recall calculating that the required fuel tank volume would be roughly the same for zinc as for gasoline.
Quoth UJ:
GM and Lexus have both put hybrid SUVs on the market. Neither of these will do for you? Remember that the standard freight locomotive these days has an electric drivetrain; motors are far more durable and powerful than piston engines, and have been since the 19th century. The hangup has always been the battery.No, it does not make the Bakken worthwhile; if you failed to tax Bakken oil you'd just launder a huge stream of money through e.g. steel producers and other suppliers of oil-producing gear, many of them foreign. The point is to get consumers to get their business done with the least damage to the economy; taxing all oil enough to get people to drive 50-MPG cars (whether hybrid or diesel) is good, creating windfall profits for certain favored classes of producers and their suppliers is bad. (The windfall profits from free emissions permits is one of several reasons why the Waxman-Markey bill is a calamity.)
If I didn't give a damn about the country, I could drive around in a Hummer. My ex-landlord does exactly that (and he's a complete asshole). Instead, I drive a car EPA rated at 38 MPG highway, and I hyper-mile it so I often hit that figure for my average. Today I didn't even take it out of the garage; I did all my business on my bicycle. I'm walking the walk here.
Relax. Something like 50% of the US vehicle fleet can go PHEV before we need any additional generating capacity (one study found a figure over 70% but I believe an error was found in the calculation). It will take us a long time to get to that level of penetration.
And while we're doing it, the economics of the grid changes. The flattening of the daily load curve means fewer simple-cycle gas turbines for peaking and more combined-cycle plants (or nuclear) for base load. The overall efficiency goes up. And if you want to slap 10 kW of PV on your house, a big fleet of PHEVs will allow you to make full use of its output whenever it's producing. The same PHEV can be the backup power supply for your house if the grid goes out. It's not just an environmental and national-security measure, it's an addition to civil defense too.
I think you're over-estimating the difficulties (think Shai Agassi's Project Better Place), and also under-estimating the number of ways we can take batteries out of the equation completely. For instance, put semi-trucks on rails and then electrify the rails, either with overhead catenary wires or switched third-rail segments at ground level (only live when beneath a vehicle). Voila, a truck that only needs a battery to get from the rail siding to the loading dock and back; all the rail mileage is powered directly.
These things require policy changes and infrastructure investments, but given how expensive roads are to maintain and how much longer rail beds last than freeway pavement (especially under the pounding of semis), this sort of thing makes huge sense in several different ways at once.
GOF: I think you missed the little detail that even old fossil-fuel plants are much more efficient than the typical ICE vehicle (33% vs. ~15%). Modern simple-cycle gas turbines (the LMS100 from GE hits 46%) and combined-cycle plants (60%) are far better yet; you'd burn 1/3 to 1/4 of the fuel, and the fuel doesn't have to meet transport specifications. Even burning powdered coal at 33%, you would double the efficiency of the typical vehicle; if you converted coal to gasoline, you'd instead get about half the efficiency (50% loss in the liquefaction process). Electric is definitely the way to go.
Even burning powdered coal at 33%, you would double the efficiency of the typical vehicle
Ah, no.
You convert the coal to electricity at a 33% efficiency, no? Then you lose efficiency transforming and transporting that power to the point of use, again when you transform down to the point of use voltage (probably through more than one step - 13.8kV up to 230kV cross-country, 230kV back down to 46kV or 13.8kV for local substations, then down to 4160V for neighborhoods, then to 120/240 for household use) convert from AC to DC to charge the batteries, again from the action of actually CHARGING the batteries, and again when you convert the stored charge into mechanical motion. What's the total system efficiency? Better than ~15%, I'd assume, but how much better? It matters.
EP:
GM and Lexus have both put hybrid SUVs on the market. Neither of these will do for you?
Nope. Not for what I get, for what they want for 'em, and what I need to do. Lexus? Even if it did what I wanted, there's no way in hell I could (practically) afford just the nameplate.
Remember that the standard freight locomotive these days has an electric drivetrain
You know, you might find this funny, but I almost never, ever, drive on rails for long distances with no stopping. And the hauling? I mean, occasionally a trailer, maybe three, but that's only when the Jones are harvesting.... I think we all know how trains work. And they're great. For trains. There's a reason why we all don't run on rails and deal with switching and all of those issues.
Plus, the damn locomotive won't fit in my garage!
The hangup has always been the battery.
Which is a pretty damn big hangup.
The point is to get consumers to get their business done with the least damage to the economy
You could have fooled me.
taxing all oil enough to get people to drive 50-MPG cars (whether hybrid or diesel) is good
50? Why not 100? Why not 400?
50's not even beginning to be practical, so why stop there?
If I didn't give a damn about the country, I could drive around in a Hummer. My ex-landlord does exactly that (and he's a complete asshole). Instead, I drive a car EPA rated at 38 MPG highway, and I hyper-mile
Dissonance alert. I've never, not once, met anybody who used the term "hyper-mile" who wasn't a complete and total ass. You might be an exception. But you might want to be careful tossing those asshole comments around. Usually those sort of claims are - and appear to be here - to be a holier-than-thou appeal to morality. And it won't work here. (Wait, 38? I thought you were going to start shooting people for not driving 50 mpg?)
I'm walking the walk here.
More power to you. (Well wait, why do *I* have to drive a Montgomery-Scott Laws of Phyics violating 50 mph, but you can get away with a wasteful 38?) But when you tell ME I've got to walk the same walk with you, and to shut up about what I want to do, because you're smarter than I, well, let's say you're going to keep running into problems. (more on that, next comment.)
If everybody drives EVs,and plugs them in with current batteries, there is no off-peak. It's only off-peak because of how few EVs are out there.
Relax. Something like 50% of the US vehicle fleet can go PHEV before we need any additional generating capacity (one study found a figure over 70% but I believe an error was found in the calculation). It will take us a long time to get to that level of penetration.
That's highly unlikely considering the level and planning that currently takes into account those peaks. I know people say that, I'm calling shenanigans on 'em, and/or expecting they, like you, have ulterior motives in place to control people and demand funding after we start heading a certain direction.
And while we're doing it, the economics of the grid changes.
Economics are one thing. Capacity is another. The grid is built to peak - and not sustain it. Many cities have issues now on hot days when air conditioners start browning out the grid, and I've been at more than one computer center where they were on generator and/or backfeeding the grid to deal with a over-planned-peak situation.
You can make that claim, but when we can see a minor brownout that ends up taking down the entire NorthEast and a good fraction of Canada, I'm not taking your word for it. Not when every utility is claiming the grid's stressed. Currently, we've been constrained on some new capacity planning due to grid loads. This again, doesn't seem to jibe with your assurances.
And if you want to slap 10 kW of PV on your house
Oh, sure, what the hell, why not. Lemme get my piggy bank.
a big fleet of PHEVs will allow you to make full use of its output whenever it's producing.
Damn that real-life, getting in the way.
The same PHEV can be the backup power supply for your house if the grid goes out. It's not just an environmental and national-security measure, it's an addition to civil defense too.
Again, nice concept, when you consider the total cost, not viable.
Batteries, barring some huge evolutionary jump, ain't gonna be workable for the vast majority of uses.
I think you're over-estimating the difficulties
No, just looking at history, and the fact that of all the progress we've made, battery technology, for all the jumps it has made, is still little better than the turn of last century. Especially charging. Disposal is a huge issue, and while engines can rust, by and large they can sit for a year without a problem. Not so batteries, which require constant maintenance and attention, compared to gasoline or diesel engines.
But onto your biggest issue: (to be cont.)
*sigh*
Sorry, Kevin. I previewed! I did! I did! .. I just made ONE little edit... (and it was because I had too many line breaks! and it made me re-edit.)
Mind closing the on "Which is a pretty damn big hangup."?
Get late and in a hurry...
*facepalm*
Wait, no..
http://www.icanhasmotivation.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/04/doublefacepalm21.jpg
Ok, the BOLD tag, I'm not spelling it out this time? Yeah.
Ok, as I was saying though....
OK, Sorry for the HTML tomfoolery, people.
Engineer-Poet, getting back to the biggest problem I've got with your plan:
Why should we do it your way? If the plan requires us to just decree new ways of doing things, why is your way the best? Why not just outlaw all light bulbs? No electric dryers allowed. Wash dishes with greywater from the showers... Hey, there are a LOT of solutions that will get us to the same spot - even saving a lot of money on the way - why should yours be pre-eminent?
Know how bad our situation is? If the USA had the per-capita oil consumption of Brazil, this nation would currently be able to export oil. We are at the mercy of exporters only because we are so wasteful with the stuff.
"Wasteful." So do I get to decide if you're wasting it or do you get to decide if I am? (I know, rhetorical question, you already decided that.) I used 3 gallons this weekend mowing the grass. Now, I'm actually opposed to doing that, but my neighbors and the city I live in have some requirements. Personally, I'd prefer to put it all under cultivation, and possibly that's allowable, but then I've got to get a tractor (mules and horses are disallowed under zoning) to help turn it, and well, all in all, it's just cheaper to keep most of it in wasted grass and have a small raised garden.
For instance, put semi-trucks on rails and then electrify the rails, either with overhead catenary wires or switched third-rail segments at ground level (only live when beneath a vehicle). Voila, a truck that only needs a battery to get from the rail siding to the loading dock and back; all the rail mileage is powered directly.
For grins and giggles, go talk to some warehouse foremen about your idea. When they start to get mad and grab prybars, yell you're working for John Stewart and it's a joke, a joke.
Sure, let's just require a complete and total deconstruction of every single town, city, warehouse, and most businesses.. What could possibly go wrong?!? It's so logical.
It's also totally impractical, the cost would be astronomical, wait, strike that - governmental. It's easy to wave your hand and say "Voila, it's done!" But it's not so simple in the real world. If you look at the modern trucking industry, for the most part, there's no way you'll increase their efficiency. They've done the math, the thinking, and they're good at it. Stuff is on the rails until it's no longer profitable, and then it goes onto the semis.
Expanding the rail system is also not practical in the real world, given the cost of railbeds. Yes, they last longer. Yes, we could simply build the roadbeds to last almost as long, for something not he order of half as much as the railway. Plus, the railway's only 1-way.
These things require policy changes and infrastructure investments, but given how expensive roads are to maintain and how much longer rail beds last than freeway pavement (especially under the pounding of semis), this sort of thing makes huge sense in several different ways at once.
"Makes sense."
Ok, back to my main point.
To you. Makes sense to you. Everybody else should be subordinate to you, and your plans and desires? Notice that very few people actually agree with you? (You can observe the market.)
All of the math and specifics aside... your plan is that we should make, mandate, force people to act ina certain manner, constrain their purchases and actions and lives to live in a manner you see fit.
Sorry, I'm not going to buy it, you're not going to successfully sell it to America, and that's why you'll fail.
Been to Brazil? Yeah, it's got some nice things about it. And some areas that are still very third world. As in right in the main parts of major cities, not super-rural and rare areas like the Appalachians. (Which is the level of energy use you'd apparently like to reduce us all to.)
But the total cost of what you're proposing is just utterly mooted by the level of contempt that you seem to have for us. I made my last car purchase in 2005. A hybrid would have been a poor use of my money then, and is now. For me. Based on what I do, what I want to do, and how I want to do it.
I'm not telling you to change how you do things, but you're telling me that my way must change, coincidentally to the way that you live.
Funny, that.
UJ, I'm not going to respond to that right away. For one thing, you have latched onto two words and have used them to leap to a whole set of conclusions about my character, politics, and probably have comments in the queue about my diet, personal habits and ancestry (I kid, I kid!).
But more to the point, you're confusing policy preferences with necessity. If your juice comes from a hydroelectric dam and you have a drought, your choices are to get more efficient or do without services entirely; you have no other options. If your region turns into a dustbowl, growing more wheat isn't an option either. Similarly, if the world is making less oil, one of the consequences is less asphalt for roads. Take a second look at what I wrote above, and if you can find factual errors which invalidate the basis of my policy suggestions I will retract or modify them (can you say the same?). But if all you're doing is attacking the messenger because you don't like the message, there's no point in going further with this.
I'll sit on this until late tonight and see if you've got further thoughts.
For one thing, you have latched onto two words and have used them to leap to a whole set of conclusions about my character, politics, and probably have comments in the queue about my diet, personal habits and ancestry
Am I *that* predictable?
In all honesty, it's not just that compound word - but it's also the hand-waving and ahistorical dismissal of personal preferences, the view that your way is the only logical way, and whatever collateral damage your plan creates is better for the people, and its for their own good anyway.
It also presumes that your plan is better than the somewhat-free market, and there's little proof that's correct, and a lot of evidence that it's not.
if you can find factual errors which invalidate the basis of my policy suggestions
I pointed quite a few out. Yes, if we rebuild everything in the US, we could get a few more ergs of efficiency. But it wouldn't be worth the cost of rebuilding.
That's what you're really missing there, the cost differentials. Hybrids barely make economic sense at $4/gal. Your plan to rape the economy and raise the price via taxation to more than that would drive hybrid and smaller car sales - at what cost?
Hopefully you're not against moving production overseas, because who would be able to afford doing anything in the US with ruinous taxation, when they could do the same thing and save 75% of the energy price off the top, before even labor and other considerations?
But all of that pales next to your conceit - not just that I and everyone else should be forced to your preferred way of life - but that your utopia is better than anybody else's.
The first point will be hard to prove, but the second you'll find much harder.
The efficiency thing has already been rebutted by the same line of argumnt that I would have used. More, he's an electrical engineer, he's got the math, so I'll leave him to it. All I'd like to point out is that regardless of how efficient ______ method is, 1) the more steps between raw fuel and final work, the more inefficiency multiplies, and 2) shifting power methodology does not magically do away with old sources and create new ones. In other words, unless the old and new methods of power generation use identical fuels, your production model isn't going to match an existing economy that grew in response to availability.
In short, whatcha gonna do with the unused gasoline? Where ya gonna find more fuel for the turbines?
On 'electrifying' the rail and trucking industry.... you may not realize, a lot of freight moves by train/truck combination right now. Ever see a container ship? Those containers go straight to rail, and from rail straight to trucks. Lemme give you a short run-down on the freight industry. Most freight does not move by that train/truck combination. Why? Because most freight is too perishable, too seasonal, or both, for trains to be profitable. The vast majority of all goods in the US are "Just In Time" or JIT freight, because warehousing (with bills for things like refrigeration, lights, forklifts and security cameras) is too big a bite out of a product's price. Nearly all food is JIT freight, and 1 in 4 trucks is loaded with food. All seasonal items (Turkeys before Thanksgiving, fireworks, summer clothing in late spring, etc.) is JIT freight. The vast majority of what is sold between Thanksgiving and New Year's is JIT freight.
None of it goes by rail because JIT freight by truck is at the destination, in and out of the warehouse and sold already by the time the train even gets there. This allows for cutting prices without cutting profits.
To call this arrangement a bad thing is to suggest that consumers (ie you and me) should be forced to accept less value for their money (that is, the value of their time and their work) than is easily available.
I'm having trouble making this jive with "efficiency".
Also on a side note re: electric cars...
When hurricane Ike hit last summer, Entergy (the local power company) lost 395,000 people off its grid. Trucks showed up from all over the country and put the system back together, IIRC fewer than 50,000 were still without power a week later.
I'm not fishing for sympathy. Ike was a typical nasty of a typical hurricane season, nothing to get excited about for those who live here and know the climate well.
But consider 395,000 people without power...
Okay, a lot of them had evacuated already, but say 5% or just under 20,000 stayed. Many did, I know that.
20,000 people without power.
Who cannot clear the downed trees from yards and roads, because there are no gas chainsaws.
Who cannot go to the disaster relief stations for food, potable water, ice, etc, because there are no gas powered cars.
Who cannot refrigerate what food they have because there are no gas powered generators.
Even for one day, you've just expanded the casualty count of such a disaster by an order of magnitude at least.
Now I realize we're not talking about doing away with organic-liquid fueled engines entirely. Nor do I contest that in many ways the IC engine is an engineering dinosaur that should be quietly put out of its misery. (I will in fact argue that liquid crude oil products should not be used for fuel under any circumstances, albeit for different reasons than the ones the lefties like. I think we should quit burning oil because the plastics industry can't afford the loss.)
Nonetheless, before you start putting eggs into a single basket, remember that Mother Nature is not going to play by your rules.
Okay, that clears me to pick this stuff apart. UJ can speculate about my control-freak tendencies all he wants, but I'm motivated by very different considerations (which I'll detail later). But first I've got Kevin's short comment to reply to:
The last figure I saw for total T&D system losses are about 7% of net generation. Once you get from the wall to a vehicle the analysis gets strained because ICE and electric drivetrains aren't directly comparable; however, vehicles like the Tesla Roadster consume about 200 Wh/mile at the wall, and rumor has it the Toyota RAV4 electric used about 330. If you figure that 25 MPG is a pretty good number for the equivalent ICE (especially something with Tesla performance!) and 115,000 BTU/gallon, 200 Wh/mile is equivalent to about 6.7 times the efficiency of gasoline (wall-to-wheels) and 330 Wh/mile is about 4.1 times the efficiency. Both are substantially more efficient than gasoline's pump-to-wheels figure even after taking the 2/3 hit in generation and 7% in transmission.For lagniappe, there are no refining losses for coal and NG and you can supply electricity with solar, wind or nuclear and move very little besides electrons.
To pull all the hyperbole possible out of my last comment, let me run the numbers again assuming 10% of cars are electric, that all the other gas powered goodies are there.
39,500 people in the power loss area have elctric cars. 2,000 of them are stuck there, did not evacuate. By the end of the week, 1 in 8 or 250 of those elctric car owners have gone a week in a disaster zone without being bale to recharge their cars.
Ike was only a typical hurricane, not a really bad one.
Any way you look at it, it looks to me like that plan will generate civilian casualty figures.
UJ can speculate about my control-freak tendencies all he wants
It's not really speculation when you're detailing it for all to see.
I'd just like you to explain why your logical utopia is better than any of the other alternatives. What trumps, say, those who insist that we need multiple children per family, and would set up the regulation and taxation to benefit those with more children? Why is your plan better than the Amish's? Those who'd... insist that we should develop nightvision sensors and implant them into the eyes (We've got artificial eyes, surely with a trillion here or there we can build some bio-NV).... Or those who'd tear down any house bigger than so many square feet, or demand that all new houses be built of old tires, or straw, or.....
I'm pointing out that you're breathlessly demanding that we Must. Right. Now. Do. These. Things. But most people wouldn't agree with you. You might well even be right (minus some of your more egregious math and economy errors).
But why do you get to decide that? What makes your utopia so much better than mine? Or the hippies down the street, who want to outlaw your car? Or say, Stingray, who's good with outlawing bicycles?
Aside from your math, and your stated (and hypocritical) demands for control and mandates you've presumed your way is the best, but you've not even started to debate that amongst others with ideas and plans that would result in similar outcomes.
GrumpyOldFart is my kinda guy. He picks on the details that he thinks are weak spots until either he's satisfied that they aren't weak, or the thing breaks. And since he slipped in with something a lot shorter than UJ's essay, I'm going to address him out of turn.
Basically, we wouldn't have any unused gasoline; we would just stop buying the oil. But the intermediate fractions from the refining process make perfectly good gas-turbine fuel, without going to the expense (or taking the energetic losses) of achieving the right balance of low aromatic content, octane rating and vapor pressure to be sold as motor gasoline. If you can replace 1 gallon of gasoline at the pump with 1/3 of a gallon of fuel oil at the generating station [1], you're way ahead. If you can get 40% of your electricity from sources like wind and nuclear, you're even further ahead.I don't think either you or UJ clicked through the Bladerunner link. The scheme essentially turns rail segments into extensions of the road system, with the trucks able to use either. Electrified rail would eliminate fuel consumption while running there, and relatively small batteries would suffice to drive from a rail endpoint to a destination and back without using any fuel. For those off-rail legs too long, the trucks could have small sustainer generators.
Last, one of the benefits of semi-on-rail is that the guidance is taken care of, which allows the potential to run the truck on autopilot. How much better is your JIT delivery when the truck can cruise 60 MPH all night while the driver sleeps? How much cheaper is it when you're consuming 20¢/mile of electricity instead of 40¢/mile of diesel fuel? How much faster can you pay off your investment when you can make half again as many runs per year? You tell me.
[1] Figuring the wall-to-wheels efficiency of the electric is 6.7 times as high as the 25 MPG car, times 46% efficiency of a modern gas turbine, gets 3.08 times as much per unit of fuel. Reduced refining losses would make this greater as a fraction of crude oil input; the efficiency of gasoline production from crude is about 83%.
GOF again:
Who says you wouldn't have that stuff for emergencies? Who says the cars aren't plug-in hybrids, able to use liquid fuel when you don't have the time to charge it... or the ability.Let's look at it from a civil-defense POV, assuming a few other adaptive changes:
1. You've got 20,000 people with cars which can generate 110 or 220 V power on demand, to run appliances at home or chain saws to clear the roads.
2. If they have enough PV panels to satisfy their basic needs, they can sit tight and even re-charge the vehicle for short drives without needing to use any fuel. If they have stabilized gas in sealed containers, they can just leave it.
3. Few people would be using electric stoves, water heaters or air conditioners, but being able to run the fridge and drive short trips is all most people need. The vehicle supplies the storage system.
4. It works just as well during winter outages from ice storms, plus a cogenerating furnace can supply the vehicle with juice while heating with the "waste" heat (emergency or no). It essentially turns ice storms into minor inconveniences while substituting heating fuel for motor fuel.
Yes, I have thought this through; I worked out many of the details years ago, and some people have actually done what you seem to think is impossible.
some people have actually done what you seem to think is impossible.
I think you were speaking to GOF - but in case I was in that direction, I never said it was impossible. I've done more than a bit of work trying to be able to get myself off of the grid.
It's possible. It's just not cost-effective or affordable right now.
From your original link:
Pam Wall was able to relax while the rest of her neighbors were cloaked in darkness after Hurricane Wilma struck. The Fort Lauderdale resident still had all her modern conveniences -- working lights, TV, hairdryer, coffee pot and refrigerator -- all thanks to solar power.
Two solar-powered panels attached to the homemade sailboat docked in her back yard enabled Wall and her husband to enjoy all the noise-free, stress-free power they wanted while they waited almost three weeks for electricity to be restored to their house.
"We just lived on the boat and all the power we needed was from our solar panels,"...
Remember, you're talking about cutting BACK on people's luxuries, and these people had a BOAT in the backyard with enough room and amenities that they could abandon their house and live comfortably in it!
You're being hypocritical pointing to that approvingly, while bemoaning "waste" and excess.
Additionally, yes, photo panels are nice.
BUT... They usually don't *work after a hurricane*. I know many people who had them. They didn't after Hurricane Charlie. When Ivan ripped through. it tore off the tarps covering the holes where the panels had been. That's not to mention all the other damage that occurs in the aftermath of a major hurricane to the grid and even the housing electric wiring.
While I'm posting, let me send you two thoughtful posts that I think you should consider. (Hat Tip to LabRat, who reminded me of the first):
http://www.coyoteblog.com/coyote_blog/2005/11/statism_comes_b.html
http://www.inc.com/magazine/19931201/3809.html
Thanks for the clarification, Kevin. I would agree with you to a certain extent. I have spent many an evening arguing with people who are against nuclear power. Their viewpoint of it reminds me of the explanation of the definition of a witch from Monty Python and the Holy Grail. They can't see that it really is one of the cleanest, if not the cleanest, energy that there is. This is the energy that will carry us into future exploration in space.
That doesn't mean, though, that I support increased drilling for oil. As Thomas Friedman has said, that's like supporting increased production of typewriters. Eventually, the oil supply will run out. 50 years maybe? Then what? It just doesn't seem very forward thinking and it financially supports murderers.
We have to explore all options and that is going to mean stepping on some toes. In fact, it will probably mean crushing them and it won't just be people on the right who will have trouble walking.
"We have to explore all options and that is going to mean stepping on some toes."
I've always likened this approach to breaking a man's legs to make his arms stronger.
I find it odd that the same mentality that doesn't trust a free market expects it to fill an energy vacuum magically.
Grumpy: "I'm having trouble making this jive with "efficiency"."
I can't help but think of the Soviet model of efficiency: one clerk in one shoe store in one city with a line of (ahem) customers extending three miles beyond the front door.
EP: "The scheme essentially turns rail segments into extensions of the road system, with the trucks able to use either."
Can you say "traffic jam"?
Pardon me, but I can't help but think of the German invasion of the West in August, 1914. This had been planned to the minute for years. Barbara Tuchman's description is, in brief:
"Once the mobilization button was pushed, the whole vast machinery for calling up, equipping, and transporting two million men began turning automatically. Reservists went to their designated depots, were issued uniforms, equipment, and arms, formed into companies and companies into battalions, were joined by cavalry, cyclists, artillery, medical units, cook wagons, blacksmith wagons, even postal wagons, moved according to prepared railway timetables to concentration points near the frontier where they would be formed into divisions, divisions into corps, and corps into armies ready to advance and fight. One army corp alone, out of the total of 40 in the German forces -- required 170 railway cars for officers, 965 for infantry, 2,960 for cavalry, 1,915 for artillery and supply wagons, 6,010 in all, grouped in 140 trains and an equal number again for their supplies. From the moment the order was given, everything was to move at fixed times according to a schedule precise down to the number of train axles that would pass over a given bridge within a given time."
This plan began execution on the Kaiser's order. Then he received a telegram which hinted that he might face only a one-front war against the Russians, in which case the mobilization against France per Schlieffen's plan was a bit premature. Tuchman continues:
"The Kaiser was himself again, the All-Highest, the War Lord, blazing with a new idea, planning, proposing, disposing. He read Moltke the telegram and said in triumph: "Now we can go to war against Russia only! We simply march the whole of our Army to the East!"
The Kaiser's proposal is known in the trade as "executive management". Been there, suffered that.
Von Moltke was horrified:
"He saw a vision of the deployment crumbling apart in confusion, supplies here, soldiers there, ammunition lost in the middle, companies without officers, divisions without staffs, and those 11,000 trains, each exquisitely scheduled to click over specified tracks at specified intervals of ten minutes, tangled in a grotesque ruin of the most perfectly planned military movement in history."
Now, to the point, given that picture of proposed ruin.
What makes our economy hum along is that one can move damned nearly anything damned nearly anywhere at damned nearly any time, all without having to schedule anything except when the trucks depart. Otherwise, it self-schedules, self-tunes, self-corrects, and self-heals, subject only to road maintenence and the prudent needs of pit stops for drivers.
To be fair, one could replace much of a network of roads with a network of rails, but consider that rails require gentle grades, rails don't like intersections except at terminals, rails are one-way, and one can't simply turn around or change one's mind as necessary.
I don't see it happening soon, at least not in my lifetime.
And now to rebut DJ:
The so-called "Intelligent Vehicle Highway System" has as one of its elements a system for running vehicles essentially nose-to-tail at freeway speeds. This allows many more vehicles to use the road, eliminating jams. If you eliminate the need to steer the vehicles (by e.g. putting them on a guideway, such as rails), this becomes much easier.I live where you can see trains of Triple Crown semi-trailers going by, a hundred or so at a time, on the CN tracks. Now imagine such a train where each unit is independently propelled and is formed ad-hoc from whatever is going in that direction at the time; individual units leave here and there and add themselves onto the end as the train goes by their "entrance ramp". You will move more freight in fewer lanes, faster and for less money.
If you formed a train out of 65-foot semis with 5-foot gaps, a mile-long train would hold 75 trucks. If they ran at 60 MPH with a 3-minute gap between trains (to allow for slowing at interchanges), the capacity of a single pair of rails would be 1125 trucks per hour. The capacity of a freeway lane is only about 1500 cars per hour; you'd move more freight as ad-hoc trains on rail than you could driving manually on roads.
And that's what you'd have. We'd probably save money by taking freeways in need of repair, tearing up a lane of pavement and putting rail on it; it would be cheaper to install and last longer than new pavement, and the pavement next to it would be spared the pounding of semi-trucks. Electrifying that rail would eliminate the fuel consumption, pollution and noise. What's not to like?
Somebody else who didn't read the link. Propulsion by rubber tire has a high enough coefficient of friction to handle freeway grades. All the other faults are shared by our current system, limited-access highways. Seriously, what's so hard to grasp about this? You have some deep emotional attachment to piston engines burning imported fuel?
Seriously, what's so hard to grasp about this?
Its practicality. (And its cost. And its reliability. And its usability. And its lack of backwards-compatibility. And its control.)
Somebody else who didn't read the link.
Don't be so sneeringly dismissive and then object to being called sneeringly dismissive.
The link is a sales pitch. It's not a description of anything that's been delivered - and it was written in 2004.
More notably to me was this standout:
This has been done before but has been heavy, complicated and expensive because of attempts to drive the rail wheels.
This will come as a great surprise to all those railroad service vehicles I've seen for 20? years that have that exact setup. Or the guys in Logistics going inland after the Normandy invasion (Where all the train engines had lots of .50 holes), but quickly adapted jeeps to run on the rails.
When someone announces that they've surmounted a hereto-impossible goal... which isn't all that new and has been surmounted, well, the rest of the sales pitch is now coated with a lot of salt.
I suspect DJ will have a similar view - I know he's seen a lot of pie-in-the-sky sales pitches that turned out to be the same old mud-and-shitpile.
Before I go on, I'm going to make my viewpoint explicit.
1. Decreasing our usage of petroleum is not an option. Increasing the flow of oil costs more than the world can afford to invest, so we have already passed Peak Oil. The world's options are to increase efficiency, use substitutes, or cut back our use of petroleum-dependent services. None are easy or necessarily attractive, but facing difficult tradeoffs is part of being an adult. I am interested in the best tradeoff for the USA.
2. The "free market" is unable to address this issue, for several reasons.
2a. The theoretical free market is dependent upon all participants having adequate information. Such a market does not exist for oil. Information about Middle East oil reserves is corrupt, to list just one problem.
2b. The market isn't looking ahead. Investments in durable goods are being driven by conditions which change within months. Somebody has to think about the future, and the NYMEX isn't it.
2c. Economic collapse and even starvation are among the free-market solutions to shortages. However, they are not politically acceptable. Policy responses are required.
3. This situation is unprecedented: hostile interests have a stranglehold on something the USA cannot currently do without. This is the position that Japan found itself in before WWII, and it constitutes an existential threat to the USA today as it did to Japan then. When we previously found ourselves in such a situation, we went on a war footing and asked for sacrifices from the public. We need the same now. The last time, it was "When you ride alone, you ride with Hitler". Today you can substitute "Osama".
4. This is not a problem without a solution. However, people are reacting to this as they do to major losses. Most of the commenters in this thread are still in the denial stage. This delays productive responses and makes the ultimate pain worse.
Back to UJ. First, here. For all the "facts" he said he marshalled, I sure don't see them.
I note that you have not specified what you need to do. I have a very strong suspicion that the required capability falls somewhere between the Prius (50 MPG hybrid, 90+ MPG with PHEV retrofit) and the Smith Newton (all electric). If you aren't just trolling, make your case.Maybe you DO have one of the few applications which cannot be done without liquid fuel and cannot be replaced. That's okay! There will still be some liquid fuel around; it's just that most things need to migrate away from it, the easiest ones first.
Not practical for what? There are plenty of ways to make vehicles get upwards of 50 MPG; it's quite common in Europe, my own car can manage it with some work, and a different engine by the same manufacturer would make it rather easy to do even with my 3400-lb 5-passenger beast. (If the USA's fleet met 50 MPG average, our gasoline demand would be less than 4.5 million bbl/day. This figure is important, because US oil production is about 5.8 million bbl/day; we would be almost invulnerable to embargoes and have few issues with trade deficits.)
A Scroogle search finds no such thing as a Montgomery-Scott Law. Troll?
Ad-hominem, and evidence-free. Where are these facts you were talking about?
It wasn't a brownout, it was a failure of interconnected systems (compounded by inadequate information... the same thing which makes the current market anything but free). And I was directly affected by it, so don't lecture me about it. I happened to have battery backup for essential functions and came through just fine.
Where is the factual support for this assertion?
Lithium-ion and sodium nickel chloride are far better than anything known at the turn of the 20th century. Further, sodium nickel chloride appears to have a lifespan equal to or longer than the typical car. Zinc-air, vitreous-carbon backed lead-acid... who conceived anything like that in 1900?
Continued next comment.
Unix-Jedi wrote:
You misunderstand. I am not offering the way, I am refuting the all-too-common claim that there is no way. I have given what I believe are feasible methods, I have stated above what I think our national motives should look like (which you have made no effort to rebut), and I think we have been fools to squander the opportunities we've had thus far; my fear is that we have now run out of them.That's just trolling. I've been explicitly detailing how to achieve the same level of utility (output) while getting rid of the problematic inputs; claiming that I want to get rid of light bulbs is simply dishonest.
Only because you didn't have a GE Elec-Trak. I'd love to have one myself, and it's not like they would be difficult to start making again. Why is it that such a great product has been out of production for almost 40 years?
Why would they care? About the only thing that might change is that the truck plugs in a cable to grab a quick charge while the lumpers are doing their bit. If the truck comes from and heads to a rail siding instead of a freeway ramp, what difference is it to them? Are they addicted to diesel soot?
Please provide the logic behind this conclusion. I categorically deny that any such thing is either necessary or desirable. Reconstructing some roadways, yeah... but we do that every year anyway.
Where was the sense of moving all our freight to trucks, before we had made an enormous investment in interstate freeways? I'll give you a hint: it was a policy initiative which made sense at the time. Now we have issues including the fuel supply for these trucks, congestion on the roads and pollution from the engines; it makes sense to adopt new policy initiatives to address all of them.
You haven't been paying attention at all. I'm telling you that your way WILL change, because the geological, economic and political situation won't allow it to go on. This has nothing to do with me; I'm just a bit ahead of you, which you appear to resent. What I'm trying to do is sketch out a way forward which is better than the life of cargo cultists, going through the motions and wondering why they don't work. I don't think you'd enjoy that, and the sooner you (and the nation) recognize that, the sooner we can do something productive. The particulars of WHAT we do are not as important as what we DON'T do, which is design our lives around perpetual availability of cheap petroleum.
Is this where you start on my diet, habits and ancestry? I'll give you a head start; dinner tonight was garden-fresh zucchini fried with onions, fresh basil and rosemary and topped with parmesan cheese. ;)
And the last comment from UJ here.
I don't get you at all.1. I see semi-trailers going by on rails all the time. What's impractical about running entire trucks on them, and electrifying the system? This is mostly 19th-century technology.
2. We're spending roughly a billion dollars a day on imported petroleum, plus a huge amount on our military to secure that supply. What's this I hear about "cost" of doing away with most of the need?
3. Electric motors are far more reliable than piston engines. This objection is risible.
4. A "lane" of rail is at least as usable as a lane of freeway, and can carry heavier loads. Also risible.
5. Dual-mode trucks are backwards-compatible with roads; that's the whole point. This objection is flat wrong. Either you have understood nothing I'm trying to get across, or you are lying outright.
6. What's this issue with control? It's as if you think traffic lights are a Communist plot.
Had you been paying attention, you would have realized that this was in the context of a dual-mode truck. And it is absolutely correct, your irrelevant talk about railroads notwithstanding.
Since I appear to have confirmed that you are not dealing in good faith here, I'll tell you to cordially bugger yourself and have a good night.
It's really too late, but I hadda check email one last time before going to bed... But I promise, I'll check the HTML, Kev.
"Engineer"-Poet - and I put that in quotes, because what engineer doesn't know who Montgomery Scott is?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montgomery_Scott
I note that you have not specified what you need to do. I have a very strong suspicion that the required capability falls somewhere between the Prius (50 MPG hybrid, 90+ MPG with PHEV retrofit) and the Smith Newton (all electric). If you aren't just trolling, make your case.
I'll take trolling over technocrat anyday as an insult, even if it's unwarranted. Hunt, fish, tow a horse trailer, boats ranging from 19' to 31', 4 wheel drive, capable of seating 5, space for 2 large dogs, 1 small dog, 2 cats, and luggage for a family.
Nope, Prius ain't going to cut it, and it cost more than my SUV.
What is it with you linking to European vehicles and products? You are aware that I'm not in Europe, and I'd hardly be buying a $50k? (can't find pricing information) vehicle I can't get parts and service on? And has a top speed of 50 MPH?
Just because something exists doesn't mean it fits the requirements. Additionally, you're ignoring the total costs involved, both with the Smith Truck, and with the aforementioned Lexus. My SUV, which will do all that I need it do was $3k less than a Prius. Is far more comfortable, and dammit, I prefer it. I get to do that.
There are plenty of ways to make vehicles get upwards of 50 MPG
Most US motorcycles don't get 50 MPG. Yes, Europe has a lot of small cars - (some actually made out of cardboard!) But they don't sell well here except in niche markets. Because they don't meet the requirements the market places on them, either performance, safety, capacity, or comfort. I routinely drive 9 hours at a time. There are no viable railways between these places, before you ask, and the non-viable ways take almost 3 days.
And I was directly affected by it, so don't lecture me about it.
I shall and will, because that's irrelevent to the discussion. The point is that the system doesn't have the capacity you're saying it does, and that brownout that lead to the several days blackout is part of the demonstration that you're wrong. How well you weathered it, and what caused it are interesting. The grid as it's currently constituted - and you're not explaining how you'd fix it, cannot, even if batteries were up to snuff, deal with the replacement of the equivalent of 5-6 million barrels/day of oil. That's one thing the brownout/blackout demonstrated, as well as the fact that an overload in one area has the capability and likelihood of having a huge effect.
nice concept, when you consider the total cost, not viable.
Where is the factual support for this assertion?
$1 for the chalk. $49,999 for my experience. (That's a old engineering joke punchline, in so you can Scroogle it.) Plus there's the minor fact that if they were price competitive, you'd be seeing a whole lot more of them. PV's have been "5 years away from wide acceptance" for at least the 30 years I've been paying attention. And they have improved - just not enough to make them really usable unless you're willing to pay extra now.
Why not just outlaw all light bulbs?
That's just trolling. I've been explicitly detailing how to achieve the same level of utility (output) while getting rid of the problematic inputs; claiming that I want to get rid of light bulbs is simply dishonest.
For someone who insists I'm not paying attention, you should be far more careful. I never claimed you did, I asked you why you didn't. It helps to 1) read for content, and 2) understand the concepts of humor, exaggeration, metaphor and example.
You never explained why light bulbs should not be outlawed. My point to you is you're picking various methods and technologies that you're going to mandate and require - it's perfectly within the realm of debate to offer you an example in the same vein and ask you to explain why or why not it would also be affected.
Since you are picking and choosing what must be done by fiat, why is that a better overall decision than say, outlawing light bulbs, which would free up massive amounts of power? We have a current metering system, but you are unhappy with it and wish to replace it. It's up to you to prove how your system would work.
For grins and giggles, go talk to some warehouse foremen about your idea.
Why would they care?
This is why doing things for a living, and meeting the people, I mean, peons who do the gruntwork is important. To a technocrat, they're idiots. Johnny and Jane 6-pack. Negligible. Inside the margin of error.
But they'll damn sure derail your fine plans. I know, too bad we can't just beat them until they did it right like the old days, Ah, Smithers, memories. (That's a reference to "The Simpson's", specifically "Mr. Burns". That should cut down on your Scroogling.)
Most of those places have built systems to be very efficient, and you're talking about wholesale destruction of that system, in the hopes of eventually - getting back to a similar level of efficiency.
You haven't been paying attention at all.
Oh, no, I have. That's what you're objecting to.
I'm telling you that your way WILL change, because the geological, economic and political situation won't allow it to go on.
That's possible. The world turns and all that. But you're saying what I've been hearing since the 70s, and so far, they've all been wrong. It's possible this time it's not. It's also possible we'll enter a ice age and every presumption will be changed. It's possible a big rock will impact next week. But there's a limit to how much I will change my habits, and there's a severe limit to what I will insist on constraining the freedom and ability of other people - who know what they want and need far better than I do.
This has nothing to do with me; I'm just a bit ahead of you, which you appear to resent.
Don't flatter yourself more than's required to get you through the day.
I only resent your sneering dismissal of people doing the hard work that allows you to be this snooty internationally and your presumption that you're smarter than everybody else, without realizing everybody else thinks they're smarter than you.
I resent the fact that you're incapable of having a debate with humor, common reference, and understand that you're hardly the only utopian out there, and cannot present a viable set of reasons why your utopia is better than any of the others, much less that you're actually making a philosophical argument that I have to resent and resist because it's the promise of the technocrat - often made - so far, never right.
I also have a strong suspicion that you're used to living in an urban area and have no idea what life outside of the luxury of the urban core consists of, that you've never worked a loading dock, or a warehouse, or realised how much thought and work has gone into the current system, and would scrap it as useless and wasteful immediately.
the sooner you (and the nation) recognize that
... A truth that you see and almost no one else does..
The particulars of WHAT we do are not as important as what we DON'T do, which is design our lives around perpetual availability of cheap petroleum.
Possibly. But it's not anything I'm concerned about in my lifetime. The reserves are there. If nothing else, we can liquify coal for well under $3/gal at current prices, and we've got somewhere in the vicinity of 500 years under WV and PA. I'll start panicking in 400 or so years.
I don't get you at all.
Obviously.
What's impractical about running entire trucks on them, and electrifying the system?
Building rail is much harder than building road. There's reason we've mostly stopped building rail lines.
3. Electric motors are far more reliable than piston engines. This objection is risible.
I wasn't talking about the motors. You're talking about a complex network of systems that will be switching and controlling flows.
This is not a simple project and it's very much prone to errors.
Your ignorance of this area doesn't absolve you of the need to educate yourself before you airily wave your hand and say "Make it so."
One reason I refuse to fly in an Airbus is that technocrat mentality that permeate(d) the engineers. The head engineer was reputed to say "If we could get rid of those two morons up front, we'd build an airplane that would never crash."
Risible. Right. Seen the footage of the Paris Air Show and the Airbus demonstration at tree-cutting? Risible. Right.
4. A "lane" of rail is at least as usable as a lane of freeway, and can carry heavier loads. Also risible.
You cannot expand that lane of rail at anything like the minor incremental cost that you can for a freeway. It's also more prone to damage, and any problem ... well, derails you. Pun intended and meant.
5. Dual-mode trucks are backwards-compatible with roads; that's the whole point. This objection is flat wrong.
No, it's not, but you know, it's too late to keep trying to explain reality to you. "Backwards compatible" means the current trucks on the road. You claim to be an engineer, think on it a bit.
Either you have understood nothing I'm trying to get across, or you are lying outright.
That's the 4th accusation you've made of me being dishonest, and it's getting tiring, since I am attempting to deal with you in good faith, and the appearance is that you're not willing to reciprocate.
6. What's this issue with control? It's as if you think traffic lights are a Communist plot.
This speaks for itself. But since you don't seem to follow most paths without a map and some directions and a GPS... Control, who has it, and how it's administered is always a focus and concern of mine. For some reason, it always seems to be important.
Had you been paying attention, you would have realized that this was in the context of a dual-mode truck.
So, I wasn't paying attention, yet could accurately describe that it wasn't a new innovation.
http://www.northeastfoto.com/gallery/files/4/3/2006_06_20-R06.jpg
And it is absolutely correct, your irrelevant talk about railroads notwithstanding.
It's totally incorrect that's not an innovation, it's not new, and it's been known for at least 60 years that I know of. I suspect it's been known as long as automobiles have been around.
Since I appear to have confirmed that you are not dealing in good faith here, I'll tell you to cordially bugger yourself and have a good night.
You might want to take some O2 up there with you. The soapbox seems to be pretty high.
If you want to start tossing accusations of "good faith" around, I think you'll not like the results. Especially someone who so assured of their superiority that they can't realize that they're flat wrong.
Or that you ignored things that differed with your sales pitch.
Sure, let's just require a complete and total deconstruction of every single town, city, warehouse, and most businesses.
Please provide the logic behind this conclusion. I categorically deny that any such thing is either necessary or desirable. Reconstructing some roadways, yeah... but we do that every year anyway.
Okay, electric trucks that run on rails, can hook up to trains by themselves and unhook by themselves whenever the train's direction fails to match their own...
Sounds good. All you need is to 1) rebuild the entire US elecrical grid, 2) rebuild the wheels and suspension of every truck and every rail car in the US, 3) fit all the aforesaid refitted trucks and rail cars with guidance systems like cruise missiles, and 4) rebuild every rail line and every primary and secondary road in the US.
Right?
Piece of cake.
"Hey Farva, what's the restaurant you like with the mozzerella sticks and all the goofy shit on the walls?"
LiL:
That won't show up on Scroogle.
"Somebody else who didn't read the link."
Somebody else who jumps to conclusions.
"Propulsion by rubber tire has a high enough coefficient of friction to handle freeway grades. All the other faults are shared by our current system, limited-access highways. Seriously, what's so hard to grasp about this?"
The vision that link describes addresses how a single truck works. It does not address meaningfully how an overall system works, and that thought is what gave rise to my comment.
Visions of trucks on rails, nose-to-tail, and going like (ahem) hail is inspiring. The lack of elasticity in such a juggernaut is not. The infrastructure to get a truck up to speed, open a gap, feed it in, and so on, is easy and self-controlling when using paved roads, but using rails, nose-to-tail? It is to laugh.
And I do laugh. As an engineer, I do what engineers do, which is laugh at impracticalities. Of course such a system could work. I haven't said otherwise. I simply point out that it is nowhere near as practical, convenient, and easy to use as what we have now. If it is your proposal that it is, then it's up to you to show why it is. Good luck with that.
"You have some deep emotional attachment to piston engines burning imported fuel?"
No, I simply appreciate their utility and versatility. So do billions of other people. My expectation is two-fold: 1) they'll give them up when they can't fuel them any more, and not a minute sooner, because of their utility and versatility and their convenience to them; and, 2) I'll be dead before that happens, which simply means it ain't gonna happen real soon.
I have a friend (actually my brother's brother-in-law) who ramrods a railroad track inspection crew. Day after day, he drives the rails all over the country in a 45,000 lb truck that is both road- and rail-capable. It is equipped with computers, sensors, and cameras that inspect the track and log problems with it so it can be repaired.
I consulted him about your ideas. His response squares with what I wrote, and it consisted largely of uncontrollable laughter.
He pointed out that trains roll on steel wheels on steel rails. They can't handle grades steeper than two percent. It's not a question of friction, it's a question of inertia. It is difficult to accelerate a train up to speed because it requires expending a great deal of energy, but it's easy to keep it there if the grade is level because the power level needed is only to overcome friction losses. A grade steeper than two percent is known in the trade as a "brake". So, unless you would replace long, heavy trains run by locomotives (which are quite efficient at hauling heavy and/or bulk freight long distances) with trucks that have their own motors, or give those trucks their own, independent rail system, then you are stuck with rails those long trains can run on.
Possible? Sure. Practical? No, I don't think so. If they were, we'd be doing them, perhaps? No, if it happens, it won't be replacing what we have now because of relative merit, it'll be because what we have now is out of fuel.
Now, you can rant all you want about how people have no vision for the future and won't see the hole in front of them until they fall in it, and when you speak of people as statistics, you'd be right. But when you talk about actually doing such things as you write about here, that's what you face.
"That won't show up on Scroogle."
Maybe not. But it only took a few seconds to find it on IMDB.
Ed:
Meow, for shame, you didn't know it off the top of your head? Meow, what are you, some kinda bear-f***ker?
" they'll give them up when they can't fuel them any more, and not a minute sooner, because of their utility and versatility and their convenience to them;"
I don't think that's the only reason people might switch from internal combustion engines. Most people will switch if someone actually manages to design a system which is better than the current one. The old canard, "Build a better mousetrap and the world will beat a path to your door" has been proven over and over again.
How many people still use reel to reel tapes, cassette tapes, VHS tapes, etc? They've been almost completely replaced by CDs and DVDs. And most people switched willingly because CDs and DVDs are better than the old technologies. (To be honest, in our house, the CDs tend to sit on the shelves while we use iTunes at the computers and carry iPods around.)
I don't need to be convinced of the superiority of electric motors over internal combustion for propulsion. I'm already convinced. It's the technology to power the electric motors that isn't better yet. When the engineers figure out how to make it better, you would have a hard time preventing people from switching.
It's this desire to force people to act against their own interests that I find troublesome. It's too much like holding a gun to someone's head to force them to give up their wallet.
U-J, Why spend time watching what looks like a dumb movie when I can spend it here watching you bash some naive ivory tower technocrat with a messiah complex?
Ed:
Because it's a cult and a cultural classic.
It's actually not a good movie - what it is is a collection of skits that are superb.
"How many people still use reel to reel tapes, cassette tapes, VHS tapes, etc?"
Sigh ... (raises hand) ...
I have an 8mm Hi-Fi camcorder that dates from about 1990 or so. It might as well be brand new, no more use than I've given it. It might as well be buried, because it's broken. It will record and play back just fine, but it will not drive a cable that connects it to a TV. I have tried finding the failed component, but the cable drive circuitry is all unlabeled surface-mount parts, and I have neither a schematic nor instruments, other than a Fluke 75.
Now I'm searching for a good way to transfer the contents of 23 tapes to DVD without breaking the bank. I'm open to suggestions, if anyone has any.
Pardon the digression here, but that hit a raw nerve.
Oh, and you're dead right, Grumpy. How come you say it in fewer words than I do and still get it right?
"He pointed out that trains roll on steel wheels on steel rails. They can't handle grades steeper than two percent. It's not a question of friction, it's a question of inertia. It is difficult to accelerate a train up to speed because it requires expending a great deal of energy, but it's easy to keep it there if the grade is level because the power level needed is only to overcome friction losses.
The picture that flashed into my head when "electric semis" were first mentioned was something truckers call the Cabbage Patch grade, just SE of Pendleton, OR on I-84. I don't remember for certain how long it is (6 miles I think), but the grade varies between 7% - 12% along its entire length. They have truck speed limits posted by gross vehicle weight at the top. Maximum speed for 70,000 - 80,000 lbs. is 18 MPH going down the grade, and they have several emergency runouts on the way down. 18 MPH on the Interstate, mind you. I guess the folks in Pendleton got tired of trucks barrelin through at 130 with their wheels on fire. No, that's not an exaggeration.
To be fair, Cabbage Patch has a reputation as the worst grade anywhere in the US Interstate System. But it's there, and US Highways and State Highway systems are worse.
This has nothing to do with me; I'm just a bit ahead of you, which you appear to resent.
Wow, for someone with a pretty big disregard for economics that sure is a lot of hubris you're toting.
Nothing like saying "it isn't about me" immediately followed by a neon sign proclaiming my greatness, especially in comparison to YOU.
I think someone's been taking lessons from Markadaffya.
Grumpy, I-70 west of Denver is much like that, up and down and 6-7% grades. It's a deathtrap at times.
I recall making several fly-in ski trips to the area, traveling by bus from Stapleton Airport to Winter Park and back. The bus driver shunned I-70 in favor of US-6, which followed the twisting course of what passes for a river in that area. I asked him why, and he answered that the road followed an almost constant and fairly gentle grade. He didn't mind the turns, but he loved being able to hold a constant speed without shifting. Having driven both routes, I think he had it right.
Since I brought up the subject before EP, I feel compelled to note:
The trucks-on-rails thing is so not what I was talking about.
And, give it five years or so and battery power will be much more practical for automotive use than it is now. A combination of increasing battery capacity and supply.
Will it be practical enough for mass adoption? Probably not, but even a few percent will make a big difference at the margin.
And, solar power has crossed some significant cost thresholds recently. Now the biggest problem is with lack of manufacturing capacity, and they're rapidly building new capacity.
It will still be a few years before we even hit 1% of total grid output, but that won't stop motivated individuals who can get ahead of the curve.
******
A digression.
To compare the cost of solar power exclusively to the present cost of electricity is to neglect a few factors.
First, you are buying partial insurance against a rise in future electricity prices, such as through inflation.
Second, you are buying partial insurance against blackouts during air-conditioner season. (For some people, that's more important than for others.)
Third, you are making a capital investment in the value of your home (whatever that's worth, these days).
Fourth, you are lessening your dependence on big quasi-government agencies beyond your control or influence, to some degree.
It is also true that a solar installation brings with it new costs, depending on its type and where you put it.
At any rate, while I haven't actually priced out the value of the additional benefits to solar, it is probably greater than zero, and should be explicitly considered in such discussions.
Please understand, it sounds like a great idea to me. And sure, the technology exists to do it, just as the technology has existed to put a permanent colony at L-5 for a generation or so. But you'll notice there is no L-5 colony yet, either.
Any system generates bugs for several years after it is in place. As an example, Windows XP was generating bugs nearly until Vista came out. Unlike your OS, when a nationwide system that both communications and transportation are utterly dependent on generates bugs, it ruins lives and even generates civilian casualties.
Trucks, trains, electric motors, batteries, road surfaces, all get improvements made every single day. How does that happen with no support, no funding? It is supported by individuals, voluntarily spending their own time and/or money in hopes of increasing their profits by those improvements.
When the improvements to all those things reach the "Service Pack 2" stage, you'll begin seeing the changes you've proposed, you won't be able to stop them. Until then, you won't, without forcing the pace and breaking or killing people in the process.
I'm thinking out loud here (as it were), so I'll ramble a bit.
Locally, the UPS delivery trucks here in Oklahoma City are using compressed natural gas as fuel. I asked a driver how he liked them and he said they drive just fine except for a slight tendency to stall while waiting at stop lights. He wasn't concerned, as it is new technology and will undoubtedly get better.
Using hydrogen as fuel is quite similar. In fact, it is now in use in Iceland, with hydrogen being generated by hydrolyzing water, with the source of energy being electricity produced from geothermal heat.
Hydrogen as fuel has some appeal:
1) Hydrolyzing water produces hydrogen, which is stored, and oxygen, which is released into the atmosphere. When hydrogen is burned, it recombines with the previously released oxygen and produces water, which is released as vapor. So far, that is carbon-neutral, and it is clean.
2) Hydrolyzing water is easy, requiring only electricity and simple technology. Thus, the source of energy is anything that can produce electrical energy.
3) Hydrogen generating plants could be located anywhere as needed, and (in effect) fuel delivery is by electric transmission lines instead of by pipelines, ships, more pipelines, and trucks. This makes the whole system much less susceptible to foreign threats, hurricanes, and so on.
4) Engines of any type could be used, including rockets, turbines, and (sigh ...) internal combustion reciprocating. Such engines are remarkably clean running and long lasting (as decades of such engines running propane have proven), and thus the utility, versatility, and conveniences they provide are not lost.
5) Migrating to a hydrogen fueled transportation system is relatively straightforward and could easily be gradual, as the use of any particular vehicle is limited only by the availability of a place to fill the tank. So, it would start small and localized (as in a UPS fleet, perhaps), and then expand gradually. As economies of scale appeared, such migration would be easier.
6) Finally, people using it would not do anything remarkably different from what they do now, thus they would have little grounds for objection based on utility, convenience, and so on. (Can enough be stored in an aircraft to make it fly right? Beats me, but that's a good question.)
The cost, you say? Well, we complain about the cost of gasoline at two bucks per gallon, and I remember eleven cents per gallon.
This whole train of thought does not address issues such as where the additional electric energy generation capacity comes from, how the transmission system would be beefed up to carry it, and so on. The focus is on how to use such energy to drive a transportation system.
Pros?
Cons?
"Cons?"
No free beer. :(
DJ:
Biggest problem with Hydrogen is the storage, and compressing enough of it into a tank to be useful (Which requires more power). The total power differential is so large it really only makes sense if you either have nuclear or "Free" power, be it solar, or hydro that's otherwise untapped.
Other than that, Hydrogen has a better chance at actually being usable for the US over most electric vehicles. For EV's to take off, Fuel cells would have to really be an option. But with either of those, it's possible to tank up rapidly and cover a lot of ground, unlike charging batteries, or putting millions of square miles of a theoretical induction webbing under roads.
Can enough be stored in an aircraft to make it fly right?
Not really.
There's 1 electric airplane I know of - it's nominally a 2 seater but can only carry one with the weight of batteries. There's also a fuel-cell airplane, again, only a small 2 seater. The problem is that scaling works against you very quickly there - the 2 seaters are small and light enough that you can somewhat make them manageable, but there's no way to put enough hydrogen or batteries to power something airliner sized. Best bet there would be Dirgible'd, with solar power, some fuel cells, and maybe even just gassing it with hydrogen. (The educational effort to explain that the hydrogen wasn't the cause of the Hindenberg fire would be large, however.)
Electric Sonex:
http://www.sonexaircraft.com/press/releases/pr_072407.html
(I saw this last year and make a lot of jokes about "flying in circles" with the extension cord out the window...)
Fuel cell RPV:
http://gtresearchnews.gatech.edu/newsrelease/fuel-cell-aircraft.htm
I'd heard they were working on modifying a Colombon MCR-2 for a fuel cell, but I don't see anything recently about that.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colomban_Cri-cri
Would probably be small enough to convert - they've run those off of R/C jet engines before.
Here in Oz, the .gov.au decided that it was important to encourage up-take of PV solar power (we have been using non-PV solar heating for hot-water for 40 years that I can remember).
They instituted a subsidy system, and set the value of the subsidy at about 80% of the cost of a 5 kva domestic-type system.
Nett result? The price of such systems went up by 80%. Kind of obvious in hind-sight - buyers were prepared to pay $X for such a system with no subsidy, and they will continue to be prepared to pay $X.
The subsidy becomes extra cream for the supplier/installer.
Burn it all
There is no doubt that the world is going to pump up and burn every drop of oil. Even if the west switches to alternatives the second and third world will still have to burn the oil. And that's not taking into account the other products like plastics that we get from oil - even if all our energy was derived from alternatives, we'd still use up the oil.
So if we're going to burn it all anyway, there are only three questions.
1. How much will we pollute the earth before we run out of oil
2. Who is going to have the economic strength to take advantage of a non-oil world
3. Who is going to have the industrial and technological capability to switch to a non-oil economy
How much will we pollute the earth before we run out of oil?
Due to cleaner, more efficient technology the west pollutes less per drop of oil than the second and third world. Our auto's and plants are cleaner than those found is less modernized nations.
Imagine if we stopped all oil usage today, the third world would still burn up every drop of oil. Except they would burn all that oil using smoky, nasty polluting technology.
From the environmental perspective it would be better if the west burns that oil - it would produce less total pollution.
Who is going to have the economic strength to take advantage of a non-oil world?
At the rate China, India, Indonesia and other second world countries are mushrooming economically, the west is in real danger of being overtaken economically. These countries economies are even more oil dependent than the west. It would be in the west's best interest to use up all the oil as fast as possible before we become the second world countries.
Who is going to have the industrial and technological capability to switch to a non-oil economy?
Currently only the west has the industrial and technological capability to switch to a non-oil economy. But, as time passes, the second world will be more capable of making the switch, and do it easier and cheaper than us. Therefore, again, the faster we burn up the oil the better positioned we will be when it runs out.
Ancillary bonus to running out of oil
Once we pump out the last drop of oil that will finally take some of the more troublesome countries of the world out of play. Such countries who make fortunes from their oil production, all the while hating the west with every breath. The faster those countries run out of unlimited income, the less likely we will have hostile, nuclear armed countries sprouting up everywhere.
So I say burn it all, burn it fast, don't look back.
Flock:
Those are also some very valid points.
I was trying to figure out how best to articulate some aspects of some of them, but I was complicating it with the economics (why raise our costs when the competition won't.)
Very nice comment.
I stand by what I have said before: I don't think we should be burning oil at all, I think we can't afford the loss of resources to the plastics industry. However, that's not just about who "the polluters" are or are not.
Making plastics from oil 1) takes the opportunity to burn that oil for fuel out of the hands of everyone, whether they pollute a little or a lot with it. But, it also puts it into a form that can be shredded and recycled, over and over and over.
So the question becomes one of liberty, the usual political question of how to force people to do what you want. Answer? You don't. You just keep supporting the plastics industry and it happens all by itself. Why? Because basic pysics suggests remolding something that is already here and already plastic will be cheaper in the long run than dragging oil out of the ground and refining it. In other words, people are already trying to make that happen without you pushing them. Basic physics suggests that finding a fuel resource for transportation that can be re-used will be cheaper in the long run than dragging oil out of the ground, refining it, using it once and then losing access to it forever. In other words, people are already trying to make that happen without you pushing them.
I think most people's gripe about the state of petroleum usage isn't a gripe about where the trends involved are headed, but rather a gripe about how fast they are going and what side trips are made along the way. I suspect those gripes generally miss the point, that it's already happening, and trying to force the pace consistently damages the economy in ways you really do not want.
Finally I get the time to come back to this. Yes, I'm somewhat recovered from the breathtaking level of dishonesty I'm seeing from Unix-Jedi, though I did take some time off to rip on some Politically Correct posters on another blog for practice. I think it took the Afrocentrist to make me appreciate just how badly tribal loyalty can disconnect people from reasoning and even fact, but that's just warming up for the real event here.
Get this: Unix-Jedi is using a television character as an authority in a technical discussion! A television character from a series whose writers invented the term "balonium" to describe the treknobabble written for him, no less.UJ is nothing if not disconnected from facts, as shown by this:
(Halocrap says "too many links", so this will be continued next comment.)
And when UJ's wrong, he's spectacularly wrong. Case in point:
Wal-Mart started the process of DOUBLING the fuel efficiency of its fleet of semis... two years ago.However, semis on roads are never going to match rail for efficiency. You can't platoon them close enough to equal the aerodynamic efficiency of a train, and rubber tires on pavement can't get close to the rolling resistance of steel on steel. (You can use rubber tires on rail for thrust, varying the weight to match acceleration and braking demand.)
Except that the point of profitability keeps moving toward rails. This applies even to perishable goods; Railex is now running 3x weekly refrigerated trains from the West Coast. This raises some questions:What, save lack of demand, prevents such a service from running daily?What's going to keep it from taking more business from trucks as diesel heads back towards $5/gallon?When an electrified rail system eliminates the direct fuel requirements both for the locomotives and the reefer cars and cuts energy cost by half of even today's figure, how can diesel trucks compete?
They can't. They won't. We're going to see abandoned rights-of-way returned to service and electric trucks used for the "last mile" in any event. Public policy can drive things further by creating new standards and new infrastructure.
I have no idea why you think this is about me. The market has been moving in the direction of greater efficiency for years (your claims to the contrary notwithstanding). All I'm doing (ha!) is suggesting ways to get more bang for our buck and put a stake in the heart of Wahhabism... and what I get from you is knee-jerk denial and personal abuse.
It's almost as if you want Islam to win out of spite.
More when I have more time.
Sorry, HaloCrap removed the ordered list tags instead of bouncing and letting me edit. Morons.
And more:
Yes, that's true. So what? I once talked to a guy who drove a Gold Wing 3-wheeler with a little tent trailer; my '94 Taurus got better mileage than he did. My old 4-door VW got about the same mileage as a friend of mine got with his Honda 350. It's the aerodynamics, stupid!Like a certain word overused by Vizzini, it doesn't mean what you think it means.
EPRI knows more about this than both of us put together. Here's EPRI's position:
Problems like the 2003 blackout would be prevented by smart chargers managing peak demand and providing regulation and spinning reserve (the lack of which started the cascade in Ohio).
(continued next comment to avoid the link limit)
If plug-ins had 25% market share, it would require as few as 10 new powerplants nationwide. If all new vehicles were plug-ins starting tomorrow, it would take about 5 years to get to that 25%. Do you really think we couldn't build 2 plants/year in that time?
You don't need to replace the energy in the oil, you only need to replace the energy it delivers. Since this isn't very intuitive, let's go over it in detail.1 barrel crude = 6.1 GJ
Conversion efficiency to gasoline: 82.9%, net 5.06 GJ
Net vehicle efficiency (drag losses over fuel input), 14.9%: net 0.75 GJ
What you actually need to deliver up to air drag and rolling resistance is about 12.4% of the energy in the crude; a conventional vehicle loses everything else in refining, engine losses or brakes (braking energy can be reclaimed). Replacing 6 million barrels/day of oil (36.6 PJ) requires just 4.54 PJ of energy at the wheels; if you've got 75% wall-to-shaft and 93% transmission efficiency, this is 6.51 PJ/day or 75 GW. Net US electrical generation averages ~460 GW, nameplate capacity is over 1 TW. If consumed off-peak, this is well within our capability to deliver over the grid.
And back to this again:
You beg the question. Why would they care?
You keep asserting this with zero evidence, not even an explanation of why you believe this would be so. The efficiency in many respects would go up, starting with the quantity and cost of energy to drive the system. If you wonder why I see you as breathtakingly dishonest, look no further.
But this time, even the EIA is sounding alarm bells, with production falling at 6.7% per year.
You don't acknowledge my humor, you refer to nonsense (and yes, I got your Steinmetz reference without searching), and you keep referring to me as a utopian when I am talking about evolutionary strategies which can be reached by incremental steps from the status quo—steps which you see as frivolous only because world oil demand is depressed and crude is ONLY at about 3x the price it was in 2000, instead of 6x.
6.7%/year decline rates mean $150/bbl oil is coming back, and coming to stay. Let me tell you a few things that this means:
- Your powerboats will be unaffordable for all but the rich.
- Most marinas where you dock them will be out of business; the remainder may be private and not serve you.
- Most businesses dependent on customers driving 4x4's will be bankrupt.
- Most people driving thirsty vehicles will be forced to drive them much less.
- The US economy will be held in recession, as capital is siphoned off to oil exporters. This is the essential cause of all the preceding phenomena.
I am not a utopian (the utopians in this case are the cornucopians, like you). I am looking for ways to survive the environment of $200/bbl oil and 5%/year production declines (5%/year may be optimistic). It appears possible to do this with things remaining much like today's status quo, but we have to take the problem seriously and start acting while we have the capacity. The ideal time would have been 20 years ago, but we frittered that away; we cannot afford further delay.
Get this: Unix-Jedi is using a television character as an authority in a technical discussion! A television character from a series whose writers invented the term "balonium" to describe the treknobabble written for him, no less.
Yep. And I think this illustrates how for all your book education, you're a utterly specious fool, a technocrat who would build a system that would crash and burn almost immediately.
Let's go back to what I said:
Well wait, why do *I* have to drive a Montgomery-Scott Laws of Physics violating 50 mph, but you can get away with a wasteful 38?
The reference to Montgomery Scott was to his most-notable line in the series, where he told the commanders that he "canna do eet, it violates th' laws of physics!"
It's a cultural reference that anybody in engineering should follow. I wasn't citing him as a ENGINEERING AUTHORITY - and if you want to talk dishonesty, well, you're setting the bar pretty low for you own - but as a common reference.
It's not possible to get sustained > 50 mpg with the level of technology we have, or are likely to have in the next few years for anywhere close to the majority of the cars on the market. That's the reference I refer to. Claiming otherwise is "violating the laws of physics" and that's why I referred to your wish to require all cars to get more than 50 mpg as "Montgomery Scott." I was using that character to make fun of your controlling desire, and your lack of understanding of the culture.
I think the fact you don't understand culture is really hammered home by your screeching there.
If you look at the modern trucking industry, for the most part, there's no way you'll increase their efficiency. They've done the math, the thinking, and they're good at it.
Wal-Mart started the process of DOUBLING the fuel efficiency of its fleet of semis.
My point, really. Yes. Walmart did. Yes. My point exactly. So you're going to better their efforts, how, exactly?
However, semis on roads are never going to match rail for efficiency. You can't platoon them close enough to equal the aerodynamic efficiency of a train, and rubber tires on pavement can't get close to the rolling resistance of steel on steel. (You can use rubber tires on rail for thrust, varying the weight to match acceleration and braking demand.)
Everything you said there is true, and totally wrong in practice.
This is why you're a technocrat, this is why you're a utopian, this is why you will fail.
Yes, if you have a road and a rail, point to point, the rail will win. Usually. There are times it won't. But we'll postulate that for this argument, at this moment, those aren't in play.
What do you do when the destination isn't served by rail? What do you do if you have to transfer 2 or more time to get to the proper rail?
All of a sudden all that theoretical "efficiency" you had evaporated. Rail is more expensive than road, and if you cannot grasp what an impact your beautiful ideas would have on every industry then you are not cognitively capable of actually making plans and advocating for change.
I have no idea why you think this is about me.
Maybe because of your lack of humor, your inability to know what other people want, and your overwhelming need to crush individuals under your utopian ideals.
Most US motorcycles don't get 50 MPG.
Yes, that's true. So what?
You know, this is just so sadly indicative that I just can't make fun of you any further. It's just too painful to watch you continue to flout your utter ignorance and contempt for other people. So I'll dispatch my funny answer, since you won't understand the humor, and ask you how many deaths you're willing to see on the roads.
If plug-ins had 25% market share, it would require as few as 10 new powerplants nationwide. If all new vehicles were plug-ins starting tomorrow, it would take about 5 years to get to that 25%. Do you really think we couldn't build 2 plants/year in that time?
No Way In Hell.
We couldn't build 10 in 10 years starting now.
Again, back to reality. New powerplants take 10 years to get through the NGOs that get in the way. And if you're talking Nuclear? .. Yeah, you can forget that. Not in 10 years. Not in 20. We might - maybe - have one nuke coming online in the next 20 years.
If consumed off-peak,
We dealt with that, and you just ignored it. If everybody plugs in, there is no off-peak. Those 10 plants you're saying we'd need? Yeah... When were you expecting them to come online, who gets to profit from them and... Yeah, see, it starts to get complicated, doesn't it?
You beg the question. Why would they care?
No, I don't. I cannot explain this to you. You've got your nose so far up in the air that you cannot understand this. It's a fundamental change in paradigm that you cannot grasp. They care because you're dictating to them the choices that you will allow them to make. They care because it's their life and their work and their efforts that you're airily waving away.
In the real world, E-P, people fight both rationally and irrationally over those things. Even when they're being irrational, they're rationalizing. And often when they're dismissed as irrational, they've got a perfectly rational reason that the planner didn't take into account.
The fact you cannot grasp this, that you utterly dismiss it is what defines you as a utopian and a technocrat despite your denials. It is why you fail now, and will continue to fail. It is why you will fail to see the forest for the few trees you're studying.
The ideal time would have been 20 years ago
The ideal time was always 20 years ago. It always will be. 20 years ago, the same thing was said. 10 years ago. 5.
we cannot afford further delay.
And here's where my prognostic ability goes head to head with yours.
We'll be fine in 20 years. If we can get the government out of the way, we'll be far better off, if we don't, we'll be far worse off, but we'll still be overall OK. Because those peons you want to crush are good people, and because people like you aren't in charge and don't have the ability to Lysenko up our power and transportation.
But the single biggest reason you'll fail? You cannot answer me simply: Why is your utopia superior to all the others?
I see I missed something earlier that I should have dealt with:
and you keep referring to me as a utopian when I am talking about evolutionary strategies
You're talking revolutionary. Not "evolutionary". (Though if you'll keep using that word incorrectly, we might get LabRat in here yet.) You're talking about doubling or tripling the price of energy via legislative fiat to force people to do what you see as imperative. Right now. Immediately. Yesterday! We cannot wait!
The system you envision we had and it was surpassed in efficiency for the current system. Yes, efficiency. That can be measured more than 1 way. From the standpoint of most businesses, to get materials and ship goods, rail was slower and more costly. As people run a business, they need efficient transport, and the old way didn't cut it. There are ebbs and flows, the pendulum swings, and the rail companies don't stand still, but the road system is highly flexible as it is now, and the rail system is not, even with expansion it's still far inferior in many ways to the road system, especially in terms of personal preferences.
What you're proposing is a massive revolution that would run every manufacturing business out of the country - who would pay 5x the going rate for energy when they didn't need to?
You propose this with - let's be clear here - I'm sure good intentions. I'm not going to insult you with insinuations of dishonesty like you did with me. But you demonstrate an astonishing lack of understanding of what the effects of your plan would be, what reactions would be, and a remarkable lack of empathy and consideration for everybody else. That's why I keep calling you a utopian.
As for humor, I've seen no real attempts by you, save the last. But I'm glad you referenced the Princess Bride, for that was something I've been thinking of using.
"Life is pain, Princess. Anyone who says different is selling something" - Dread Pirate Roberts.
You keep referring to sales pitches. Proposals. And those are great, don't get me wrong.
But you see, I've evaluated hundreds of those and seen them - some I bought into and even more that I didn't - not pan out. Promises on paper are exactly that. The first question is to ask "Why is this new? What's new about it?" Thus my attempts to point out to you that the *technology* to run cars and trucks on rails is well known and has been used since at least World War Two. Yet it's not used as you envision it.
Sale pitches by their nature are rosy (for the product) and negative unless you buy their product now. Most of the ones you've pointed to have been for products that haven't taken off after years.
For your rail fantasy - and I'm sorry, I've worked in warehouses, it's a fantasy - it might be a failure of imagination, but when I consider the computer controlled nightmare that you airily say would be simple and easy and how we'll do it, it quite literally is terrifying. As well as impractical from a infrastructure perspective. Just from a simple standpoint of running multiple - at least one more - track everywhere we currently have rail - that's a massive shift in resources, and the people who's homes and businesses you're going to bulldoze will have something to say to you about it. It won't be nice, either.
6.7%/year decline rates mean $150/bbl oil is coming back, and coming to stay.
I don't buy your conclusions even if you're right - and I don't buy that you're right. You're missing some major market dynamics, but nevermind all of that.
If you're right - if - so what? If you're telling me the economy is dead and $150 barrels of oil are inevitable... OK? So I should rend my clothes and gnash my teeth and burn my boat? Why? Why shouldn't I enjoy it as long as I can? If it's inevitable then it's too late for me to change my possessions now.
But you miss some things in your math. My truck has taken 3 people, more ammo than I want to think about, at least 15 guns, coolers of food, water, and other luggage to a weapons training class. It gets ~ 21 mpg. The "alternative" Prius, for example, would have required 2 for the same trip. So my truck was more efficient than if the 3 of us had Priuses.
As I said above, efficiency can be measured in multiple ways. It doesn't matter how efficient I can rollerskate and deliver for you if you need me to pick up a 2000 pound pallet. Suddenly "efficient" is measured in a different manner, and this is why when you're making efficiency claims, you need to state what you're measuring and comparing. There's a reason that Walmart has a distribution system that's almost entirely truck-driven. For a small fraction of the cost they can have far more flexibility and the ability to sort products, trailers, destinations. With railcars, you need huge switching yard. With trucks, you need a few acres of pavement.
Your claims for photovoltaic is similar. Hey, it's great. Looked into a lot myself. I personally want a RV trailer with Solar for a hurricane/Katrina like situation. (Much as your sailboat example above.)
But on a roof? In Florida? After a hurricane? It *might* work. But I'd rather have a gas-powered generator. Much rather. (Especially because right now, PV isn't "home repairable" at *all*.)
You don't see to understand the reality in building new industry and new power plants - and you're speaking to someone who's all in favor of building nuclear power ASAP and posthaste. But it's not going to happen without massive changes to the regulatory atmosphere and the legal frameworks. Period. No matter how much sense they make or how badly they're needed.
What you have advocated above is not evolutionary, it's massive upheaval of industry, personal preferences and individualism, and I think you're going to continue to fail at your apparent mission. You're actually detracting from the plans you apparently seek to implement based on your approach.
Back to this old comment:
Patently false.1. It is far easier to build rail lines than Interstate highways; the USA was building massive amounts of both freight rail and streetcar lines 50-100 years before the Interstate system was begun. It's easy enough to lay railbed that it can be done mostly with hand tools.
2. The switch from rails to pavement was a policy decision. Interstates are paid for by taxes. Most US rail is privately owned and maintained... and it pays property taxes. Rail operators removed and scrapped perfectly functional track on lines to cut their taxable value.
While the rails may be gone, most of the rights-of-way are still there. We have the capability to add the equivalents of new highways in lots of places without using a single square foot of new ground.
And forward to recent history:You just exposed yourself as the king of pimple-faced couch potatoes. I watched ST:TOS but I was never deep enough into it to know that Scotty's given name was Montgomery. I read hard SF and studied real science; I didn't have the time or the balonium tolerance to be a Trekkie (or a fan of the old BSG, Space:1999, X Files, or any of that drivel). If you wasted time on the trivia, you should have spent it better. (See, I can snark too.)
50 MPG cars aren't particularly difficult; the 2009 Jetta diesel manages 50 MPG without sacrificing performance, and it's nearly as big as my older Passat. A PHEV version which got half its power from the grid would double that to 100 MPG and probably more, as the hybrid would allow the engine to be downsized and losses reduced. If you don't mind going down to 2 seats you can get 130 MPG out of the Aptera, 170 MPG or so from the LoReMo, and GM expects the Volt to get 230 MPG in city driving.
There are advances waiting out there, like dual-fuel partially premixed combustion. You can have a 50 MPG vehicle that still does what you want to do, but you're going to have to be willing to buy the technology.
First you claim that increasing efficiency is impossible "for the most part", then you admit that Wal-Mart is roughly doubling their efficiency. Well, which is it, Mr. "I cannae violate the laws o' physics"?Since you're having problems grasping this, I'll explain it to you in simple terms. The old style of truck was standardized when tires were bad, fuel was cheap and computational fluid dynamics wasn't even a gleam in Alan Turing's eye. It wouldn't have paid to do wind-tunnel testing of fully-faired rigs, and the Super Single tire was beyond the materials of the day. Over the last 40 years, advances in computers and materials have relaxed a lot of those constraints. When someone at Wal-Mart noted that it would be great for their bottom line if they could cut their fuel consumption, an "impossible" 50% reduction turned out to be achievable from advances mostly off the shelf.
However, these trucks still have the constraints of being supported by pneumatic tires on pavement and powered by liquid fuel. We know how to completely eliminate those constraints; we've been doing it for well over a century, we just haven't done it with dual-mode trucks. If you put most of the truck's weight on a steel wheel instead of a rubber tire, you eliminate the bulk of the rolling resistance. Using steel on steel gives you an electrical return path, so the constraint for substitution of liquid fuel with electricity is removed. Even if you continue to use diesel for off-rail operation, the total requirement shrinks to a very small fraction of today's figure.
And now, instead of merely yelling "it won't work, it won't work", you've finally gotten down to your actual concept of the system so I can see it through your eyes:
1. Almost no destination is going to be directly served by rail, as in having a siding up to the grounds. Almost no destinations are directly served by interstates, either. The step between is the same for both: surface roads. If you have a dual-mode vehicle, it leaves the rail at some point and drives on pavement to the destination.
I suspect that you don't see the rail network growing beyond today's heavy-rail rights of way. I do. Medians and inner lanes of 6-lane freeways may be worth converting to railbeds serving dual-mode vehicles (not conventional trains) for several reasons, including
a. Separating light vehicles from heavy trucks, increasing safety.
b. Eliminating pavement damage from truck traffic.
c. Removing most of the noise and emissions from diesel engines.
d. And of course, eliminating the petroleum consumption and its attendant economic, political and national-security risks. (RVs may also use the rails and the overhead electric power; the reduction in fuel cost is bound to increase tourism.)
Towns off existing Interstates and rail ROW will be served by trucks as now. These trucks may be electric, if the distance from the railhead is not too great. As fuel gets more expensive, it may pay to expand the reach of the rail network to allow cheaper electric trucks to get to more doors; it depends whether batteries or ROW becomes the more attractive investment.
2. I'm not sure what you mean by "transferring". A dual-mode vehicle can operate on pavement with the flip of a switch; this also lets it drive around blockages by hopping on and off at any convenient grade crossing. "Transferring" at e.g. a freeway interchange would be very familiar: pull up the rail wheels, change to the rightmost lane, take the ramp to the desired route outward, change back to the inmost lane and drop the rail wheels. Of course, that's just the first stage. As the system is upgraded, dedicated ramps and bypasses could be built for the dual-mode traffic to eliminate the need to mix with light vehicles and accomodate automatic routing.
On the contrary. Converting a lane of pavement to railbed appears to be relatively cheap and easy. Standard railbed is just ties laid in ballast, with none of the poured concrete, rebar and expansion joints needed for pavement. If the roadway is worn out already, converting it to rail is almost certainly going to be cheaper than repaving.
There you go with the mindless nay-saying again. The effect on "every industry" would be about as much as if their truck traffic took a different exit to get into town; if a lane of freeway was dedicated to dual-mode trucks, it's likely that not even that would change.
I don't think you appreciate the positive effects, because you're so fixated on any change as negative. Look at energy cost alone. If electricity delivered to the overhead wire costs 10¢/kWh, that's equivalent to diesel fuel at about $1.45/gallon in a 35%-efficient engine. It costs more than $$2.50/gallon at the corner right now; last summer, a gallon of diesel was going for about a quarter shy of five bucks! What effect do you think the high and volatile cost of diesel fuel has on industry? Trucks don't pay anything like their share of damage they cause to pavement; what effect do you think the cost-shifting has on the rest of the economy? Etc, etc.
I'm going to post this before I write a book. More later, starting with "No Way In Hell".
I agree, it's time to wind this down.
First you claim that increasing efficiency is impossible "for the most part", then you admit that Wal-Mart is roughly doubling their efficiency.
No, I claimed that you increasing their efficiency was impossible.
You. Not the people doing it. Right there is the biggest difference in viewpoint between us and why there's such a gulf.
I've had people like you tell me how simple something (that wasn't simple in any way, shape or form) was.. and then watched them try and assign blame for the failure of the enterprise. (Little e). Amazingly their arrogant presumption never was considered to be a factor.
we've been doing it for well over a century, we just haven't done it with dual-mode trucks.
And if you're going to attack me for "inconstancy" (which it wasn't, but even if it had been) you've got to own up when it turns out you miss something major in your presumption - you earlier thought it was some new concept.
But see, it's not. And me, from my perspective asks "Gee, why aren't they doing dual-mode trucks since it's old technology?" And my presumption is that there's a lot more to it.
Much as again, you missed my comment about how complex the system is, and assumed it was only running the trucks on rails and merging and taking them off (the rail system to allow that would be complex as well), you just can't understand what the complexities inherent in that controlling system. You even called me a liar, without bothering to understand what I was saying.
Ever flown through Denver? Ever heard of their luggage system? They built one that was totally automated. Because it "wasn't that hard" to build. Except after millions of dollars they never actually managed to get it to work.
the USA was building massive amounts of both freight rail and streetcar lines 50-100 years before the Interstate system was begun.
*sigh*
And this is where it's just gotten ludicrous. Yes. 100 years before the interstate system was begun, 50 years before a practical car was even seriously considered, it made sense to build rails.
I presume you're also not wanting us to go back to whale oil for lighting and wood for heating. Since, you know, that was state of the art in 1850....
But the gulf between us is too vast - you're too sold on the promises of startups, on the perils of the future...
And I'm not sold on most sales pitches, and I've got a pretty rosy picture of the future. I've been hearing how bad things are going to be my whole life, and yet, things keep getting better.
Just so we keep government from doing stupid things (also known as usual governmental acts and short-circuiting the market.
I guess that's a better difference between us. I can't find anywhere in history a better guideline for progress and hope than the free market, and I see all the times when technocrats have subverted the market and the disasters they created.
You insist that the free market can't be allowed to exist. We're not going to agree on the base assumptions, much less policy given the differences.
Oh, I did miss this, and I just can't let it go unrefuted:
you can get 130 MPG out of the Aptera, 170 MPG or so from the LoReMo, and GM expects the Volt to get 230 MPG in city driving.
That's bullshit. This is proof you can't look beyond the sales claims to the reality of these things.
"230 mpg". Gee. When I drive my Xterra to the shop, put it on a flatbed, and drive 100 miles, how many "MPG" did I just get?
That's not "free" energy, and the fact that "plug in" proponents are making such rigged claims is a large part of the reason why I ignore MOST of those sorts of claims.
That "Claim" has been getting debunked roundly with the real figures - and yet you cite the original approvingly.
... But given the proposed price point of the Volt, it would need to get that sort of milage to make up for the original cost difference.
Sorry for the 2nd reply, as I was saying, you're too susceptible to sales claims.
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