Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Politics : Politics of Energy -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Eric who wrote (32924)	7/2/2012 2:38:08 PM
From: Maurice Winn	2 Recommendations Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 86352

Eric, there are flue gas scrubbers to remove particulates. SOX can be removed too as can other things like vanadium. The CO2 can be removed too. In 1986 I came up with a CO2 liquidizing process for piping to about 500 metres under the ocean from power stations to sequester it. While it's not an economic process in the absence of a carbon tax, it does cost only about 20% extra in energy which is not much at all to avoid the end of the world [if that was actually a problem]. If the waste heat from the power station was used too, such as for heating of buildings in the vicinity or for supplying hot water or something, the heat from that extra fuel would also be used. Removing CO2 is a bad idea though. The CO2 people put into the air is [as far as I can tell so far] a good thing not a bad thing, with a huge improvement in crop yields and plant growth in general, a substantial reduction in water requirements and hence irrigation costs and maybe even a prevention of reglaciation in 2020. If you think a few extra degrees and 50cm of sea level rise would be bad, wait until you see the cost of reglaciation. Hundreds of millions of people would have to abandon their high latitude lives and head for the equator. The fundamental faulty premise of the Alarmists is their idea that Earth is in some kind of balance, which is not true. On the contrary, there is no balance but more like an oscillation with varying amplitudes of greater or lesser extremes. Given the eons long history of CO2 levels, it's apparent that carbon has gradually been stripped from the ecosphere and collected in permanent storage in limestone, coal, shale, oil, tars, gas. Some of that stored carbon does get recycled due to erosion, such as in limestone caves, leakage of hydrocarbons back to the surface or by erosion of coal and shale deposits. But stupendously vast quantities are never going to see the light of day again. All humans have done is recycle a tiny proportion of that stored carbon back into the ecosphere. Already, about half the CO2 produced by people has been stripped from the atmosphere, so it's like filling a leaky bucket - the more we produce, the faster it's stripped and dumped back at the bottom of the ocean. Don't worry about CO2. After Peak People in 2037, continuing technological revolution and avoidance of buying carbon for combustion, CO2 per GDP will continue to fall and the total produced will reduce too. People avoid buying it if they can. They continue to find ways to do more with less. With 2020 foresight, I have predicted 2020 reglaciation, and that will distract everyone from global warming and anthropogenic CO2. As the ice sheets extend towards New York, people worrying about global warming will seem totally absurd. Ottawa will be gone. A tsunami in the Pacific Ocean from an incoming bolide will make a couple of feet of sea level rise over 100 years look trivial too. Japanese who experienced the tsunami [and those who did not] are far more worried about that sort of tsunami than a gradual 2 feet of sea level rise due to Global Warming theory. Mqurice

To: Eric who wrote (32924)	7/2/2012 4:17:30 PM
From: Maurice Winn	3 Recommendations Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 86352

The video of <Want to see the coal dust blowing off a coal train? Click on this image to see a video of a coal train in British Columbia...you will see HUGE amounts of dust blowing off into a scenic river basin:> showed nothing much in the way of air pollution or scenic river basin pollution. The train was very impressive though. What huge economies of scale people can achieve these days. 100 years ago, it would have taken lifetimes of excavation to get that amount of coal out of the ground, let alone transport it. The coal dust was blowing only on the corner and not particularly much of it. Not enough or regularly enough to put a coating of black even close to the tracks. In Antwerp, my car used to be coated with a fine soot layer due to diesel exhausts and home furnaces. That was annoying. That "scenic river basin" has coal train drivers to enjoy it and not many others. The coal goes to combustion and thereby to providing CO2 for plants. What pollution do you mean? It all looked very clean to me, with a bit of dust blowing off right on that corner where the high winds were obviously particularly compressed and blowing hard. But then, I have worked in actually very dirty conditions doing real work. Maybe you have never done much to see what actual pollution looks like. Take a trip to Beijing or just ask Google for some photos. It's hideously disgusting. That coal dust even looked as though it might have been added by careful pixelation AFTER the video was made. One can't trust Alarmists to be honest with their representations of reality. The "writer" who had "aching lungs" from passing coal trains in Russia would be hard pressed to get a similar problem there. He'd have to risk being run over by the train to get more than a hint of coal dust up his nose. Mqurice

To: Eric who wrote (32924)	7/2/2012 9:02:33 PM
From: Hawkmoon	2 Recommendations Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 86352

There lies the quandary that people like you face Eric.. No matter how many "dirty" energy industries you attempt to eliminate from our domestic economy, other countries will then depend upon it because it provides them an economic advantage. In fact, some have opined that some of the biggest supporters of the US-European environmental movements are the Chinese and other emerging economies.. The more they can pressure us to "clean up our act" and investing in alternative energy that is not cost competitive with current energy sources means our costs of economic production rise, while their's decline. And when the developed economies complain, they will just tell us that "we're still a developing country, so you can't expect us to lead the way toward green tech".. That said, shipping coal to China from the US should require tarps over the carriers, or water spray to keep the dust down. But l have yet to hear anything that should lead us to believe that un-burned coal is more harmful than the number of naturally driven dust storms that occur in this country all the time. Hawk