This doesn’t look good.
Via, Washington Times:
President Obama’s economic recovery package will actually hurt the economy more in the long run than if he were to do nothing, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office said Wednesday.
CBO, the official scorekeepers for legislation, said the House and Senate bills will help in the short term but result in so much government debt that within a few years they would crowd out private investment, actually leading to a lower Gross Domestic Product over the next 10 years than if the government had done nothing.
and
CBO did project the bill would create jobs, though by 2011 the effects would be minuscule.
Meanwhile, public support for the current stimulus proposal rivals former President Bush’s approval rating. Only 38% support passing the plan as proposed by President Obama. (It was actually proposed by the Pelosi Democrats in the House, wasn’t it?)
President Obama has wagered a lot of political capital on the passage of this stimulus bill. He is out there promoting it aggressively, while more lawmakers are speaking out against it and exposing it for what it is – a spending wish-list that will do little for economic recovery.
Honestly, I never thought that things would go badly for him this soon, but with this, along with all of the ethical issues his cabinet picks are experiencing, it seems as if perhaps running for president isn’t really enough experience for being president.
(I have to note here that I am not saying this with a schadenfreude-induced tone of glee in my voice. I am deeply concerned about the effect a failure of leadership this early on will have on our country.)
February 6th, 2009 at 10:20 am
Yeah, the Moonie Times. Real credible. The stimulus will pass in the next 5 days. You are most certainly an authority on failed leadership, as one must be to embrace the conservative agenda.
February 6th, 2009 at 10:46 am
“Real credible”
Are you claiming that the CBO did not have those findings?
Here’s an article from US News & World Report.
February 9th, 2009 at 7:18 am
Folks who would participate in ANY sort of economic/political discussion these days should be generally aware of a number of basic realities regarding ALTERNATIVE-ENERGY matters — which in reality SURELY enter into any comprehensive (or even casual!) discussion of the Economic “bailout”. I submit that all the political blather notwithstanding, we will not ACTUALLY begin to see the end of this recession / depression unless and until a WHOLE NEW TECHNOLOGY begins to ACTUALLY emerge and to be TAKEN SERIOUSLY by ALL of us, in general — and the now-shrinking industrial sector actually EMBRACES it and begins to RE-TOOL all those plants that are now being shuttered and starts to ACTUALLY BUILD products that GENUINELY IMPLEMENT concepts outlined in the following:
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“Our” ADDICTIVE DEPENDENCY ON OTHER PEOPLES’ OIL?? After all, we in this country NOW KNOW FOR SURE — originally by means of Hubbert-inspired statistical analysis of patterns of past discoveries of the stuff, now CONFIRMED by many years of rather exact EXPLICIT MAPPING OUT of reserves (applying sonographic and other techniques), that we have at this point EXHAUSTED (and rather PROFLIGATELY!) about 70% of our OWN Providential endowment of raw oil — and specifically the “easy” stuff! The remainder (which the “drill, baby, drill” crowd is now so hot to go after), is at this point only to be found in low-capacity “stripper” wells, or under water, or somewhere north of the Arctic Circle, or WAY deep — SO THAT IT IS VERY EXPENSIVE TO “PRODUCE” — which means that it would NOT be possible to shave very much (if anything) off the “price at the pump” by exploiting THOSE resources.
Indeed, THAT is actually what has given rise to the whole currently established pattern of essentially EXPROPRIATING (or very expensively ATTEMPTING to do so) THE ENDOWMENTS OF OTHERS elsewhere in the world, and then transporting the stuff thousands of miles to be refined, distributed, and marketed (with, of course, endless opportunities for “profit” and “taxation” at every step along the way) — all the while PRETENDING to each other and “our”selves (by ARTIFICIALLY EXCLUDING FROM RECOGNITION all of those “ancillary” — e.g. all the “military” — costs that ACTUALLY DO ADD IN to its OVERALL TRUE cost) that the end result is somehow “cheaper” than the alternatives would have been!
And of course, now we are just going to have to pursue those alternatives ANYWAY — AFTER having BLOWN the economic advantage that we not so very long ago had enjoyed! BRILLIANT, PEOPLE!
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So what, then, might those alternatives actually BE??
GM’s Chevy VOLT is an ELECTRIC car with a battery that will carry it about FORTY miles. Thereafter, an internal combustion engine kicks in. But that engine is NOT coupled to the wheels MECHANICALLY; rather, they are powered (only) ELECTRICALLY. Instead it DRIVES A GENERATOR that supplies the wheel motors. And if you erroneously imagine that no “electric” vehicle can get above 30 miles per hour or get out of the back yard — well, be advised! All modern MASSIVE LOCOMOTIVES, and also the VERY LARGEST SHIPS are (and have been for many years!) actually driven by ELECTRIC motors. And the speed record for ELECTRIC-powered cars out at the Bonneville Speedway is somewhere north of 400 Miles per Hour last I heard.
Now statistics show that fully 75% of all auto usage is “short haul” runs that would “fit” within the 40-mile “power budget” of the battery, SO MOST OF THE TIME THE GASOLINE ENGINE WILL NEVER OPERATE! The battery would be charged from the power grid, or (better yet, eventually) YOUR OWN PHOTOVOLTAIC ARRAY or WIND-POWERED-GENERATOR low-voltage auxiliary system, when the vehicle is not in use. Using ELECTRICAL power could render it PRACTICAL to DIRECTLY harness the abundant but intermittent / highly variable FREE energy that rains down on us perpetually from the sun — which we “traditionally” WASTE! (The car battery DOESN’T “CARE” if it is charged intermittently or at a variable rate — AS LONG AS IT GETS CHARGED UP!) Or absent such FREE power, about 80 cents worth of “grid” power would “fill the tank”. Beyond that, fuel consumption would depend on how the car is used — but for ordinary usage the internal combustion engine would be only minimally active.
And one also simply DISPENSES with the whole elaborate TRANSMISSION and DRIVE TRAIN — utilizing simple, relatively UNbreakable MAGNETIC-force (rather than complex, fallible mechanical) drive elements! (There is NO TRANSMISSION on a Diesel Electric locomotive — we could not BEGIN to build a sufficiently heavy-duty clutch. That is why the whole ELECTRIC MOTOR paradigm was developed for very HEAVY loads in the first place!) So now, think of all THOSE savings too!
Above all, though, note that the VOLT is merely an adaptation to a MUCH LIGHTER application of very OLD, WELL-ESTABLISHED technological concepts. The battery-powered car has been around since the EARLIEST days of the automobile, and the Diesel-electric LOCOMOTIVE (and similar systems — for example, in the largest ships) have been around for about 60 YEARS NOW already! There obviously has been no TECHNOLOGICAL reason why the adaptation to the mere AUTOMOBILE could not have been accomplished MUCH SOONER — had “we” but mustered the wisdom and the wit to do so!
I submit that it would now be appropriate for “Government” to fund GM (at BARELY above subsistence levels) to sustain ONLY those “life functions” of the moribund “patient” that truly COMPEL QUICK evolutionary progress AWAY from the currently FAILING “business model”! That support needs to be VERY SPECIFIC, being purposefully directed toward ACTUAL IMPLEMENTATION, BRINGING INTO PRODUCTION, and more generally PUBLIC POPULARIZATION (through EDUCATION, and indirect tax-forbearance SUBSIDIZATION!) of such initiatives as the VOLT (and all its sure-to-soon-follow offspring) — and ALSO, more broadly, such OTHER “outside-the-box” alternatives as the Toyota / Hyundai / Ford pioneering of REGENERATIVE-BRAKING automotive ENERGY CONSERVATION technology.
Moreover, it ALSO needs to begin to dawn on people that it will be advantageous to MARRY THE “REGENERATIVE-BRAKING” AND “ELECTRIC CAR” TECHNOLOGIES: doing so would about DOUBLE the RANGE of any battery-powered system, just as it doubles the efficiency and range of the all-gasoline-powered Toyota Prius (which has a 21.5 miles-per-gallon engine that ends up achieving around 45 mpg!). Maybe THAT initiative is what CHRYSLER should be “funded” to focus upon. (A little good-old-fashioned, “capitalistic” COMPETITION could be a very good thing!)
So: eliminate perhaps FULLY SEVEN-EIGHTHS(!) of all the importation of oil to supply gasoline to run “our” automobiles … now THERE is FOREIGN OIL INDEPENDENCE for you! And it really COULD (and SHOULD!!) have been done MANY YEARS AGO NOW ALREADY!
SUCH are the sorts of initiatives now needed to ACTUALLY IGNITE the “GREEN-COLLAR ECONOMIC REVOLUTION” which, if generally embraced, could INTELLIGENTLY, CONSTRUCTIVELY restore the economic health of this society (and would SURELY be preferable to any cockamamie WAR like the one whereby we “escaped” from the so-called “Great” Depression!).
Now if my ideas come across as “HERETICAL”, then so be it. But you DON’T successfully treat a patient who is DYING OF LUNG CANCER by BUYING HIM OR HER MORE CIGARETTES! I SURE hope the OBAMA crowd is smart enough to “get” that. EVIDENTLY THEIR PREDECESSORS WERE NOT!
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But what more could ultimately be done EVEN BEYOND ALL OF THAT??
First of all, one can generate HYDROGEN (of which we have an INCREDIBLY ABUNDANT supply) quite EASILY — by the ELECTROLYSIS OF ORDINARY WATER (with a little salt dissolved in it to render it electrically conductive — or perhaps even simply using water taken from the ocean!). Merely by DRIVING AN ELECTRIC CURRENT THROUGH IT, the energy thereby delivered BREAKS APART THE H2O MOLECULES, releasing the hydrogen and oxygen which can easily be separately collected.
Better not let them get back together again too rapidly, though, because then the energy that was delivered and stored up GRADUALLY over a period of time in the process of separating them would be re-released INSTANTANEOUSLY — which would constitute an EXPLOSION! Thankfully, though, there ARE materials that can serve as a “fire control system” (of the SAFETY variety)! They are called ANHYDRIDES, and they aDsorb (NOT aBsorb!) hydrogen — meaning that a PHYSICAL bond (not a CHEMICAL one) forms between free hydrogen molecules (H2) and the anhydride material — ON ITS SURFACES (ONLY). But the stuff is PULVERIZED, which INCREASES THE SURFACE AREA TREMENDOUSLY. It is just the principle of the old-fashioned GAS MASK.
METAL anhydrides are alloys of two different metals, one of them being either of the elements LITHIUM (which is prohibitively scarce for MASS applications) or NICKEL (heavier, but much more plentiful — and hence much less susceptible to being MONOPOLIZED by a few nations and/or large multinationals). This material, ground up into a fine powder, is loaded into a canister — so that the total SURFACE AREA within a SMALL VOLUME becomes HUGE. It operates RATHER LIKE A SPONGE to “soak up” free hydrogen, keeping it contained. If the vessel should rupture, only a FRACTION of the “charged” (hydride) material will be immediately exposed to oxygen from the air — so that it would be susceptible to catching fire. THUS IT WILL BURN, BUT IT DOESN’T GO BOOM! (By the way — NOW do you get an inkling of what is actually happening in those faulty flammable Lithium-ion batteries in some laptop computers?) Moreover, research has ALSO been done on CERAMIC anhydrides, which could perhaps turn out to be even BETTER from the standpoint of storage capacity per unit of weight of the material involved. Anyway, one “frees up” H2 from its (an)hydride “storage matrix” at a CONTROLLED rate by simply WARMING the stuff a bit to drive off merely-LOOSELY-bound H2 molecules from their adsorption-effected PHYSICAL bonding!
The system works at a MOLECULAR level rather like the MACROSCOPIC-scale “fire control” system used in Nascar Auto Racing. Ever wonder why when crashes occur during races all that volatile ethanol fuel does not “go off”, immolating drivers and spectators alike?? It is because the fuel tanks are not merely emply vessels carrying liquid bombs! Actually, they are filled with a “stiff-sponge” matrix that “soaks up” the LIQUID fuel in the same sort of manner, keeping it relatively under control if it SHOULD catch fire!
Vehicular FUEL TANKS will need to employ such materials for basic fire safety!
By the way, NONE OF THIS IS “EXOTIC NEW TECHNOLOGY”. It has all been “piloted” by then Daimler-Benz, under a German Government-sponsored research project, being used to SUCCESSFULLY OPERATE AN ENTIRE FLEET OF CITY BUSES IN FRANKFORT, GERMANY FOR A PERIOD OF A YEAR, WAY BACK IN 1979-’80!! (That’s 29 YEARS AGO now already!)
Note too that the anhydride storage matrix material is NOT CONSUMED. It simply operates like a sponge that is used over and over again. It IS, however, necessary to guard against CONTAMINATION by extraneous junk that could interfere with H2 adsorption. And THAT consideration militates in favor of a CLOSED-CYCLE system, IN WHICH THE SAME ACTUAL “RAW” MATERIAL IS USED OVER AND OVER AGAIN IN A 2H2O 2H2 + O2 BACK-AND-FORTH REACTION — with the hydrogen being used NOT to brainlessly BURN in an internal combustion engine (I.C.E.), but rather to SUPPLY FUEL CELLS to RE-generate ELECTRICITY — from which the “byproduct” water would be collected and RECYCLED back over to the ELECTROLYSIS CELL. The hydrogen would be (re-)generated in situ (i.e. IN the car itself) normally, allowing for a system of exchangeable cylinders at stations along roadways in order to provide for long-distance travel.
Now even just BURNING hydrogen extracted via electrolysis in an ICE (as in the German project) would not add any pollution, no CO2, and very little NOx-complex greenhouse gases to the atmosphere. However, the “ASH” of burning hydrogen IS WATER — which, THOUGH CERTAINLY NOT A POLLUTANT, IS ITSELF, TO SOME EXTENT, A GREENHOUSE GAS! It is thus BETTER FOR YET ANOTHER KIND OF REASON AS WELL NOT to directly “combust” it — but, rather, to use it CLOSED-CYCLE to energize fuel cells that then drive electric motors. So: ELECTRICITY IN, ELECTRICITY OUT — with a VERY high-energy-density “synthesized” CHEMICAL fuel serving as a “CARRIER” to TRANSPORT temporarily-STORED energy!
But the ELECTRICAL energy used to PRODUCE the hydrogen NEEDS TO ITSELF BE GENERATED CLEANLY! If the power used to produce it comes from BURNING COAL DOWN AT THE POWER PLANT (in the manner of our existing, “conventional” technology), then the situation becomes even worse than burning GASOLINE as we are now doing! For you ADD to the pollution generated “back at the plant” MORE THAN YOU SAVE IN THE CAR!
The unthinkble (to most people) REALITY is that NOT ONLY DO WE NEED TO WEAN “OUR“SELVES OFF OF “OUR“ ADDICTIVE DEPENDENCY ON OTHER PEOPLES’ OIL — BUT WE ALSO NEED TO GET OFF OF EVEN “OUR OWN“ COAL AND OTHER “FOSSIL“ FUELS AS WELL! And THAT, of course, bespeaks a COMPLETE AND QUITE RADICAL RECONSTITUTION OF “OUR” ENTIRE ECONOMY! — WHICH WILL BE EXTREMELY DISRUPTIVE TO A GREAT MANY “ESTABLISHED INTERESTS”! A lot of “empires” based on the exploitation of “fossil” fuels that have grown up over the last 300 years or so ARE ABOUT TO GO BUST, and the next few decades are NOT going to be a particularly pleasant period during which to be living.
And THAT is about where things now stand.
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So then, what OTHER alternatives to “fossil fuels” exist — besides abjectly renouncing, or at least severely scaling back, our technology and reverting to a mere “subsistence” existence?? Well, contrary to the MISconception that seems to be generally cultivated by “defenders of the status quo”, there are MANY possibilities. But the general “popular” perception of things stands really quite grossly SKEWED AND DISTORTED — a cynic might well suspect DELIBERATELY, by many who have “interests” centered in the OLDER technology — through “selective” encouragement / discouragement of “public awareness” of various technological concepts and initiatives.
At this point everyone pretty well understands, for instance, HYDRO-ELECTRIC power generation, which IS, as virtually everyone knows, actually HEAVY-DUTY SOLAR energy — since it is the SUN that actually generates the RAIN. And that clearly IS, indeed, a very VALUABLE ADJUNCT to “fossil” fuels for the generation of electricity — as is certainly well-understood and accepted. And we have by now indeed ALREADY BUILT just about all the really large-scale hydroelectric projects that our rivers could support!
But there seems to be a rather glaring VACUUM in the “general public consciousness” of OTHER “BIG-MUSCLE” solar technologies — somehow the preponderance of people here seem to be GENERALLY INCOGNIZANT of a number of MAJOR possibilities and projects, and they have evidently been beguiled into supposing that the only alternatives are windmills and photovoltaic panels. Most folks somehow seem to have never even heard, for instance, of the Sandia Labs Solar Towers — which were constructed way back in the seventies and eighties in connection with initiatives to generate LARGE amounts of electrical power — not by means of windmills or solar photovoltaic collectors but rather by the much less “exotic” idea of simply focusing the sun’s rays using MIRRORS to generate the STEAM to drive large turbines!
Evidently (so I hear from some of the engineering people who were involved), one such system, a 25 MW (that’s 25 million watts of power) unit, STILL OPERATES — on the grid out west. But the FUNDING for such alternative energy technology that had been supported way back under Carter was CUT OFF under the MISguided MISmanagement of Ronnie Ray-gun and company — who much preferred to “divert” advanced technology off into “playing Star Wars”! And much work has also been done on developing parabolic-dish energy gathering systems in which the sun’s rays are FOCUSED TO DRIVE STIRLING ENGINES — which convert heat energy efficiently into mechanical motion. (But this concept only works, of course, while the sun shines!)
So today such “big-muscle” solar power (which DWARFS windmills and photovoltaic-panel technology — which are valuable adjuncts in many LIMITED-POWER applications, but hardly the “MAIN DIET”!) — has been left to OTHERS around the world to develop. And others elsewhere in the world HAVE been busy — on SEVERAL different “fronts”. So we now have, for example, the EnviroMission “Solar Hotbox” technology, involving heat from the sun being “bottled up” inside a HUGE “GREENHOUSE” (and in the ground beneath). HEATED AIR then rises inside a PYRAMIDAL structure, turning LARGE FANS as it exits back to the outside — and these fans drive electric generators. This system has the great merit of storing up enough energy DURING THE DAYTIME to KEEP THE FANS RUNNING ALL NIGHT LONG! That is, the ENERGY STORAGE RESERVOIR TO AVERAGE OUT THE DIURNAL INTERMITTENCY AND VARIABILITY OF THE PRIMARY DRIVE POWER (SUNLIGHT) IS IMPLICIT IN THE SYSTEM ITSELF — so no other expensive, lossy “energy storage buffers” (e.g. pumped-hydro installations elsewhere on the grid, etc.) are needed!
I understand that a 50 MW installation of that sort has operated successfully for a NUMBER OF YEARS already in SPAIN, and a 200MW installation is now “in the works” for northern Australia! We, by comparison, have plans on the drawing boards for a number of new COAL-FIRED plants, no doubt with modern POLLUTION-control technology, but evidently NO meaningful CARBON SEQUESTRATION to prevent Carbon Dioxide emissions! Carbon Dioxide is, of course, NOT a POLLUTANT — being, after all, in effect “breathed in” by plants as the “other half” of the “Grand Balance of Nature” Carbon Cycle, whereby plants and animals provide each other with oxygen and carbon dioxide. But a LARGE POWER PLANT is NOT MERELY ANOTHER ANIMAL, and has, by comparison, a HUGE “METABOLISM”.
And when the natural balance of things is MARKEDLY SHIFTED, the excess of CO2, which is a “greenhouse gas”, acts to “trap” more of the sun’s easily-INcoming LIGHT energy as HEAT — to which that gas is OPAQUE, so that the heat cannot re-radiate freely back out into space. And so the Earth gets HOTTER — the infamous GLOBAL WARMING that drives more intense HURRICANES and OTHER STORMS, and MELTS THE POLAR ICECAPS (which by some estimates could perhaps FLOOD OUT UP TO A THIRD OF ALL HUMANITY that tends to concentrate along seacoasts).
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Finally, the OTHER sort of alternative that must now be (re-)considered is NUCLEAR technology, with all of ITS problems. But, thankfully, here too there are some new departures on the horizon.
First of all, we now know how to build Nuclear Fission reactors in ways that are at least INTRINSICALLY IMMUNE TO ANY POSIBILITY OF MELTDOWN a la Chernobyl or (almost) Three Mile Island.
It is AT LEAST possible to fabricate “the pile” in such a way that the density of the fissile material simply is not so high that if there is a loss-of-coolant accident (or maybe attack?) the temperature in the core would “go to the moon”. The most promising-sounding proposals along these lines involve encasing pieces of the fissile material in CARBIDE spheres about the size of billiard balls, instead of in the classic “fuel rod” assemblies. These are then added to a HORIZONTALLY ORIENTED BED. The fissile material density is then much lower, so that the TEMPERATURES that would be attained if the heat-exchange fluid flow were to fail for any reason THE CONSEQUENCES WOULD NOT BE UTTERLY CATASTROPHIC! And such a design ALSO has the advantage that REFUELING can be accomplished on a “DISTRIBUTED” basis, by simply adding NEW “fuel balls” at the top of the bed while pulling out old ones off the bottom — SO THAT IT IS NOT NECESSARY TO SHUT THE SYSTEM DOWN COMPLETELY FOR MONTHS ON END IN ORDER TO GET THE JOB DONE.
Any NEW dinosaurs of the FISSION type that we might build should SURELY, at least, implement THESE concepts!
What is far MORE promising, however, in the SLIGHTLY longer term, is the upcoming THERMONUCLEAR initiative — the ITER (International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor) — which is PRESENTLY UNDERWAY, with construction having begun at Cadarache, in FRANCE, in 2008. (By the way — WHY NOT HERE, do you suppose?) It is being built by a CONSORTIUM of EIGHT MAJOR NATIONS, including France, Germany, China, Russia, India, Japan, Italy, — and oh yes (though most here seem to have never even HEARD of it) the good old USA is ALSO participating. This beast will produce 500 Megawatts of electrical power (and about 150,000 French JOBS!) within about ten years.
This is accomplished NOT by FISSION of a heavy atom like Uranium, which produces all manner of subatomic JUNK pieces in the breakup, some of which remain radioactive for tens of thousands of years as they gradually transmute on down through a series of elements, ending up eventually as LEAD — which results in the need to try to find some way to “safely” “dispose” of them over that (very long) interim. THERMONUCLEAR power is, rather, acccomplished by the FUSION of the very LIGHTEST atoms — HYDROGEN again — to make HELIUM — which is NOT radioactive (and is not even CHEMICALLY active, being in fact an inert gas!).
Now THAT is the NUCLEAR reaction that powers THE SUN ITSELF! It operates (in DEUTERIUM from “heavy water” that has merely been GLEANED FROM THE OCEAN!) at a temperature of about 23 Million degrees! Moreover, with a “fire” THAT hot, it might even be possible to come up with some process to “incinerate” the inventory of junk left over from all those URANIUM FISSION DINOSAURS! That is, this initiative could perhaps lead to a way of “cleaning up” our “legacy” mess!
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Now I hope this overview may help to BROADEN SOME OF THE THINKING that is hopefully BEGINNING to take hold in the minds of at least SOME people nowadays — so that they can perhaps be somewhat less vulnerable to MISconceptions that seem to often be cultivated (wittingly or unwittingly, it makes no difference) by many who would in effect “promote” “AGENDAS” of various sorts that are generally calculated to “advance” their OWN “interests” — rather than those of the actual collective general welfare!
February 9th, 2009 at 11:05 am
Frank Hummel
I agree with most of your analysis. But there are, of course, issues.
The battery would be charged from the power grid, or (better yet, eventually) YOUR OWN PHOTOVOLTAIC ARRAY or WIND-POWERED-GENERATOR low-voltage auxiliary system, when the vehicle is not in use.
To do this would require a massive upgrade and realignment of the power grid. Not an undesirable thing in and of itself. But controversial.
And given what VELCO just went through to upgrade the transmission system through Vermont, and the resistance to it by “environmentalists”, this is not as easy of an undertaking as the hand-waving suggests.
Related: We are having problems not only constructing wind power turbines (because people do not find them aesthetic) but we are having problems connecting what we do build to the existing grid.
Do we see anything in the “Stimulus” package that addresses these issues? No. Is there money allocated to modernizing our distribution grid? No.
First of all, one can generate HYDROGEN (of which we have an INCREDIBLY ABUNDANT supply) quite EASILY — by the ELECTROLYSIS OF ORDINARY WATER
It is a fundamental law of physics that energy can neither be created nor destroyed, only transformed. It takes energy to get energy.
So we still need fossil fuels to produce hydrogen.
There are also a few technical issues to deal with most notably for Vermont
Finally, the OTHER sort of alternative that must now be (re-)considered is NUCLEAR technology, with all of ITS problems. But, thankfully, here too there are some new departures on the horizon.
Clearly. But are there any funds in the “Stimulus” package allocated to building Nuclear power plants?
No.
Most of Western Europe is building more, but not us.
And then there’s the “environmentalists”….
It would be great to have a stimulus package that really does do us some good.
But, unfortunately….
February 9th, 2009 at 7:23 pm
“To do this would require a massive upgrade and realignment of the power grid.”
No, it wouldn’t…generating & using locally-produced energy has been successfully done now for many, many years.
“Do we see anything in the ‘Stimulus’ package that addresses these issues?”
Last time I heard, the Obama administration has dumped the idea that fossil fuels were the “future” of the USA in favor of investing more in alternative energies…finally…
I agree that the hydrogen fuel cell is merely a carrot that’s dangled in front of the public by the auto industry. We never seem to get any closer than 20-30 years away from making this technology feasible…most likely because it would require a huge new distribution network for hydrogen across the USA.
“But are there any funds in the ‘Stimulus’ package allocated to building Nuclear power plants?”
No, nor should there be, since the amount of readily available & usable uranium across the world will be exhausted within 70-80 years or so. Plus, there’s still no truly safe way to store the massive amount of radioactive waste that’s produced by the nuclear industry…it’s a dead end…
February 10th, 2009 at 7:30 am
Mister Guy
“To do this would require a massive upgrade and realignment of the power grid.”
No, it wouldn’t…generating & using locally-produced energy has been successfully done now for many, many years.
Well, it appears that Obama and company disagree with you, because despite my assertion, the is in fact money in the “Stimulus” to upgrade the grid
And clearly I’m not the only one who thinks the grid needs an upgrade: So do “environmentalists”
I agree with such a project. If you’re going to go Keynesian (which I’m not opposed to so long as there are tax cuts on businesses to create jobs on the back end) then this type of thing is a worthy pick in my estimation.
February 11th, 2009 at 6:50 pm
Look, does our aging electrical grid need to be upgraded? Of course it does, that was the lesson from the Northeast blackout from a number of years ago. But what was done as a result of it? Not much as far as I can tell.
My point is that people have been living connected (or disconnected) to the grid for a long time *and* generating plenty of their own power for their own use (like in an electric car). Some changes are needed in the grid in order to allow more alternative energy projects to go ahead. From what I’ve heard, a few wind turbine projects in northern NY state are stalled mostly because the grid out there can’t take much more power moving across it. If people that are generating their own electricity want to sell some of their “excess” power back to their utilities, then there may need to be some changes made to the grid as well, but this is already happening in many areas right now.
There’s no doubt in my mind that the Obama administration will do at least *some* of the work that needs to be done on the electrical grid. There’s a HUGE, new, green economy out there is that is just waiting for investments…