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Politics : The Environmentalist Thread -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Wharf Rat who wrote (17495)	11/19/2007 5:25:42 PM
From: longnshort	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 36921

Global warming alert: UN Discusses Global Warming in Spain as Snow Pummels Switzerland By Noel Sheppard \| November 18, 2007 - 19:20 ET Remember when House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Cal.) traveled to Germany to discuss global warming with Chancellor Angela Merkel and was hysterically greeted with a late-season snowstorm that rocked Europe? Well, as the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change met in Valencia, Spain, last week to contemplate the supposedly catastrophic warming of the planet, Switzerland to the east received the most snow for this early in the season since 1952. You really can't make this stuff up.

To: Wharf Rat who wrote (17495)	11/19/2007 5:32:37 PM
From: Maurice Winn	Respond to of 36921

<"Competition from other energy sources will see to that." Just exactly what are those other sources?> Insulation for one. Little engines for another. Fuel cells for a third. Photovoltaics for getting too many to count. Cellulose is a fuel too. Migration to warm climates [or climatic migration to cold climates]. Walking to work. Catch a bus and use shared diesel fuel. Or a train and use nuclear power station electricity [super-conductor levitated and propelled of course]. Road vehicle movement control using position location, proximity detection, automatic braking, steering and navigation, at 160 kph one metre apart. Recycle all traffic light systems to scrap, powdering them to sprinkle iron in the ocean. You seem to be unable to do simple arithmetic Wharfie. While doing anything takes some energy, the whole idea of building power stations, be they nuclear, thermal, wind or photovoltaic is that one not only gets a lot more energy out than one puts in, but that there is also a whole lot of money made as well. Let's do some mathematics on a nuclear power plant for example and it just so happens that the same maths applies to a coal power station. Energy out = 10 gigawatts Energy in = 1 gigawatt-hours Profit = $10 bn Cost = $3 bn As you can see from that simple arithmetic, not only does the power station get more energy out than in, there is a whole lot of spare energy which can be sold for a profit. The same thing applies to Orinoco bituminous deposits which BP Oil used to extract quarter of a century ago. There is a LOT more energy involved in burning it than in extracting it. < Shale and tar sands? Need oil and gas to produce them. Any form of alcohol? Takes coal or oil, in a myriad of uses, beginning on the farm.. H2? Needs energy. Nukes? Energy to build, energy to mine. All costs go up as oil goes up. > So, as you can now see, yes, costs go up as energy prices go up, but more energy sources become profitable. Which, if the spike in energy prices is more than the long run marginal cost of production, results in energy prices going way down to below the old prices and all the way down to the sunk cost cost of producing another gigawatt. By way of explanation, since you won't have followed that, once a nuclear power station is built and is in production, it won't be turned off again unless the cost of keeping it running [more uranium to reload the reactor, disposal costs and Homer Simpson's salary to guard it at night] exceeds the money coming in from sales. Similarly, with photovoltaics, once somebody has installed a panel on their roof or out in the desert, they won't turn it off and start buying electricity from an oil-fired power station even if it's 1c per kilowatt-hour. Peak oil means peak global production of liquid hydrocarbons/bituminous deposits/shale oil/tar sands from in the ground. I think we aren't including methane in that figure. But we could if you like as it's still more or less the same thing = fossil hydrocarbon. Reserves are increasing. Production is increasing. Exploration is going flat out. With profits as they are, you can be sure that people in the business of finding and producing oil are going flat out. So are alternatives which are economic. The easiest oil to produce is the oil you don't buy = when the SUV needs replacement after crashing into a ditch, the owner buys a little 1.3 litre car and a bicycle. They also move closer to work. Peak Oil and Peak People will be 2037. Peak Gas might be too though I haven't checked the likelihood of that. Mqurice