Hydrogen economy looks out of reach

Big Bill wrote:

On Tue, 19 Oct 2004 20:45:06 GMT, Jack Dingler
wrote:


There I have what?
You don't really think that's it as far as searching for alternative
means of energy, do you?
If so, you're more stupid than I thought.


But I'll call you bluff, what energy source is waiting in the wings to
replace the raw BTUs from oil and gas, and can be put into production
now? What fuel is it that can produce more power than all the systems
producing eletricity in the US today?



Ah, moving the goalposts. Did your doom & gloom (D&G for short, as
we'll probably use that term a lot) friends tell you to add that?
Why can't you think for yourself instead of merely repeating what your
D&G friends tell you?
Why does it need to be an exact BTU replacement? Why can't we also
work on conservation & waste reduction?
And why "now"? Aren't you paying attention? Oil isn't running out by
the end of November. Or even next year. There's time to do this right.


Moving the goal posts? What the heck are you talking about. The crux of
my argument hasn't changed. Did you get my posts mixed up with someone
else's? Or are you not reading what I write?

How much time do you think it takes? I think we're in for a fifty year
decline. During the decline, I think it will be impossible to build the
infrastructure required to replace oil. The best I think we can hope for
is small community changes in midst of chaos.

At this time, global oil production might be past it's peak. We may be
in the decline now. The short term numbers are adding up that way. But
only a historical assessment a few years down the road will tell us for
sure.

And in the future, if there's one well, pumping a few pints a day, then
clearly we haven''t run out. There's a great deal of fun in playing with
semantics on the topic. Since some of the oil will always be
unrecoverable, we'll never run out. We won't have any, but the planet
will. Just like the world never ran out of dodo birds or passenger
pigeons. There's still some stuffed ones in museums. See, we never ran
out! Word games in the oil mythos are cool!

Your argument seems to be based on some fantasy that there's some secret
scientific group working on an exotic power source. I don't buy it.



I never even hinted that it's secret.
I will say, though, that it's obviously a surprise to you, because you
haven't been even trying to see if your D&G friends are right.

Here's a start:
http://www.google.com/search?q=alter...en-US:official
Or, because you seem to have trouble actually using the internet:
http://tinyurl.com/53uxc


And of course, I can't prove a negative. I can't prove that something
doesn't exist, doesn't exist.



You just make the claim, though.
You claim that there's no research being done, because *you* don't
know about it.
Have you put yourself in a position where those doing the research
report to you? I seriously doubt that.
Learn. Educate yourself.


Jack Dingler


Dude, those aren't going to keep civilization growing past the oil age.
They can't be scaled to that degree. You're still arguing that a
janitor's pay can give someone a Donald Trump lifestyle.

And no, I never moved the goal posts. My argument has stayed the same.
There is no ready replacement for oil waiting in the wings. There is no
energy source, even the old tried and true wind and solar technologies,
much less some science fiction option, waiting in the wings, that can
replace the BTUs in oil and provide the 2% per annum growth that oil
once enjoyed.

If you think the technologies you've linked above, solar, wind, biomass,
can be scaled to replace oil, then you have no idea what that scale is.
If these people are really reporting to you, if you really employ these
people, then get them to educate you on energy conversion units. I've
never been a mid level manager, I've always been a math, sciences and
engineering guy. Unlike you, I don't need other people to do my homework
for me. I have skills to do the math and conversions myself.

As an experiment, have one of your engineers, draw up the rough
calculations for how much one of these systems would have to be scaled
up to produce that same energy as is consumed in oil and natural gas
everyday.

Jack Dingler

--
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Free software - Baxter Codeworks www.baxcode.com
-------------------------------------------------------------------------


"RJ" wrote in message
m...
Robert Haston wrote:

Solar has yet to be a serious contender, although solar panel plants in
hellaciously windy areas, such as the Aleutians make far better sense
than
hydrogen as an energy carrier.

Yeah, solar power in the Aleutians would be really great. On Shemya,
you can see the sun about 10 days a year.

Think about it - the Eskimos manage quite well without electricity, oil,
gas, furnaces, etc.

RJ wrote:

Robert Haston wrote:

Solar has yet to be a serious contender, although solar panel plants in
hellaciously windy areas, such as the Aleutians make far better sense than
hydrogen as an energy carrier.

Yeah, solar power in the Aleutians would be really great. On Shemya,
you can see the sun about 10 days a year.

I believe he was talking about packaging the energy from wind turbines
into solar panels in order to ship that energy elsewhere. An answer to the
question of where the energy to make solar panels would come from in
a non-petroleum economy. Shipping the panels to Death Valley might be a bit
of a problem in a post-petroleum world.

Mitch.

On Tue, 19 Oct 2004 14:35:44 GMT, "George Conklin"
wrote:

You trash actual history. The whole goal of civilization has been to
protect us from the ravages of nature, with a life expectancy of 28 years
at best. When transporation of food became practical with railroads, the
death rates began their sharp declines. It was the cheap transporation of
food which did it. Nature is not kind to us.

An interesting idea, but somewhat at odds with the Biblical notional
lifespan of three score and ten; average life expectancy is only 10%
above that even now. And (on-topic) regular cyclists have a higher
average life expectancy than those who rely more heavily on
oil-powered transport :-)

You can't claim the benefits without acknowledging the costs here, I
think.

Guy
--
May contain traces of irony. Contents liable to settle after posting.
http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk

88% of helmet statistics are made up, 65% of them at Washington University

In article ,
fbloogyudsr wrote:
"Matthew Russotto" wrote
Just zis Guy, you know? wrote:
That is one of the benefits of electricity: it is amenable to changes
of fuel without having to re-equip vast numbers of homes and
businesses.

Too bad the transmission and distribution losses are so high and the
current technology for storage is so poor.

I'm curious why you make this statement. AFAIK (and I have a BS EE
degree from a college that specializes in Power), the actual *transmission*
of electricity from one place to another is about the most efficient system
man has ever devised and built. For instance, transformers are around
99% efficient, and are the most efficient *machine* that mankind has
ever constructed. Even the conversion of AC to DC (for very long-distance
transmission) and back is pretty efficient: it's done to eliminate the
losses
in transmission lines due to EMF/transmission line losses, which is already
small compared to the power transmitted.

I've seen figures for transmission and distribution losses from 20% to
50%. I'm no power systems engineer, though.

"Matthew Russotto" wrote
I've seen figures for transmission and distribution losses from 20% to
50%. I'm no power systems engineer, though.

http://www.wordiq.com/definition/Ele...r_transmission
and
http://www.caddet.org/technologies/search.php?id=25

characterize transmission losses as well below 10%.
However, IIRC, losses in a pumped-storage facility run in the
40%-60% range... Perhaps that what you remember.

Floyd

On Wed, 20 Oct 2004 09:18:49 -0700, "fbloogyudsr"
wrote:

http://www.wordiq.com/definition/Ele...r_transmission
and
http://www.caddet.org/technologies/search.php?id=25

characterize transmission losses as well below 10%.
However, IIRC, losses in a pumped-storage facility run in the
40%-60% range... Perhaps that what you remember.

Possibly thinking of overall thermal efficiency? That would be
consistent.

Guy
--
May contain traces of irony. Contents liable to settle after posting.
http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk

88% of helmet statistics are made up, 65% of them at Washington University

"Just zis Guy, you know?" wrote
On Wed, 20 Oct 2004 09:18:49 -0700, "fbloogyudsr"
http://www.wordiq.com/definition/Ele...r_transmission
and
http://www.caddet.org/technologies/search.php?id=25

characterize transmission losses as well below 10%.
However, IIRC, losses in a pumped-storage facility run in the
40%-60% range... Perhaps that what you remember.

Possibly thinking of overall thermal efficiency? That would be
consistent.

Only for a thermal (coal, oil, gas, nuclear) plant - hydro, solar,
wind and others have far different efficiencies.

Floyd

"Baxter" wrote:
"RJ" wrote
Robert Haston wrote:

Solar has yet to be a serious contender, although solar panel plants in
hellaciously windy areas, such as the Aleutians make far better sense than
hydrogen as an energy carrier.

Hydrogen is much more efficient to transport.

Yeah, solar power in the Aleutians would be really great. On Shemya,
you can see the sun about 10 days a year.

The point is that wind provides the power...

Think about it - the Eskimos manage quite well without electricity, oil,
gas, furnaces, etc.

Where's that at? You must have a time machine, because nobody I know has
done without all of the above for about 40 years now.

--
FloydL. Davidson http://web.newsguy.com/floyd_davidson
Ukpeagvik (Barrow, Alaska)

On Tue, 19 Oct 2004 22:37:01 GMT, Jack Dingler
wrote:

Big Bill wrote:

On Tue, 19 Oct 2004 20:45:06 GMT, Jack Dingler
wrote:


There I have what?
You don't really think that's it as far as searching for alternative
means of energy, do you?
If so, you're more stupid than I thought.


But I'll call you bluff, what energy source is waiting in the wings to
replace the raw BTUs from oil and gas, and can be put into production
now? What fuel is it that can produce more power than all the systems
producing eletricity in the US today?



Ah, moving the goalposts. Did your doom & gloom (D&G for short, as
we'll probably use that term a lot) friends tell you to add that?
Why can't you think for yourself instead of merely repeating what your
D&G friends tell you?
Why does it need to be an exact BTU replacement? Why can't we also
work on conservation & waste reduction?
And why "now"? Aren't you paying attention? Oil isn't running out by
the end of November. Or even next year. There's time to do this right.


Moving the goal posts? What the heck are you talking about. The crux of
my argument hasn't changed. Did you get my posts mixed up with someone
else's? Or are you not reading what I write?

Yes, moving he goalposts.
You're now demanding something you didn't ask for before.
I'm sure you see it as only better defining you rposition, but you've
changed it into something else.
Calling my bluff? I gave URLs; did you even look at them at all?

How much time do you think it takes? I think we're in for a fifty year
decline. During the decline, I think it will be impossible to build the
infrastructure required to replace oil. The best I think we can hope for
is small community changes in midst of chaos.

What *you* think seems to carry a lot of weight with you.
What credentials do you bring to the conversation to trump the URLs I
gave to show that the research is being done right now?

At this time, global oil production might be past it's peak. We may be
in the decline now. The short term numbers are adding up that way. But
only a historical assessment a few years down the road will tell us for
sure.

And in the future, if there's one well, pumping a few pints a day, then
clearly we haven''t run out. There's a great deal of fun in playing with
semantics on the topic. Since some of the oil will always be
unrecoverable, we'll never run out. We won't have any, but the planet
will. Just like the world never ran out of dodo birds or passenger
pigeons. There's still some stuffed ones in museums. See, we never ran
out! Word games in the oil mythos are cool!

I'm not playing with semantics; nice attempt at a strawman.
Where, specifically, did I suggest that we'd never need an alternative
to oil?

Your argument seems to be based on some fantasy that there's some secret
scientific group working on an exotic power source. I don't buy it.



I never even hinted that it's secret.
I will say, though, that it's obviously a surprise to you, because you
haven't been even trying to see if your D&G friends are right.

Here's a start:
http://www.google.com/search?q=alter...en-US:official
Or, because you seem to have trouble actually using the internet:
http://tinyurl.com/53uxc


And of course, I can't prove a negative. I can't prove that something
doesn't exist, doesn't exist.



You just make the claim, though.
You claim that there's no research being done, because *you* don't
know about it.
Have you put yourself in a position where those doing the research
report to you? I seriously doubt that.
Learn. Educate yourself.


Jack Dingler


Dude, those aren't going to keep civilization growing past the oil age.
They can't be scaled to that degree. You're still arguing that a
janitor's pay can give someone a Donald Trump lifestyle.

Um, I said that?
Instead, I said (and gave a link so that you could do your own
research on the matter) that research is being done now on what will
replace oil.
You are refusing to recognize reality. I'm not sure what you have to
gain from this, except that maybe you feel your investment in G&D is
so large that it must be advanced in the face of reality.

And no, I never moved the goal posts. My argument has stayed the same.
There is no ready replacement for oil waiting in the wings. There is no
energy source, even the old tried and true wind and solar technologies,
much less some science fiction option, waiting in the wings, that can
replace the BTUs in oil and provide the 2% per annum growth that oil
once enjoyed.

If, by "in the wings" you mean ready to go now, yes, you've moved the
goalposts, because that's not the point; the point is, very plainly,
that we have many years of oil production left, and research to find a
replacement energy source in underway as we write. We ar enot going to
suddenly find that we have no energy because of a natural shortage of
oil.

If you think the technologies you've linked above, solar, wind, biomass,
can be scaled to replace oil, then you have no idea what that scale is.
If these people are really reporting to you, if you really employ these
people, then get them to educate you on energy conversion units. I've
never been a mid level manager, I've always been a math, sciences and
engineering guy. Unlike you, I don't need other people to do my homework
for me. I have skills to do the math and conversions myself.

I did no tlimit myself to any technology. That's your bag.
And your self-evidentiary skills are in denial of reality. Withiout
the ability to see beyond your own prejudices, those skills only work
on the data you want to work with, and not that data which falls
outside your own rather limited view.
Sorry, them's the facts.


As an experiment, have one of your engineers, draw up the rough
calculations for how much one of these systems would have to be scaled
up to produce that same energy as is consumed in oil and natural gas
everyday.

What engineers do you claim to be *mine*?
To play your silly game, there is an energy source that's ready to
take a large part of oil's part right now; it's been demonstrated to
be safe in applications around the globe, but has been denied because
of people like you who can't see well because of a rectal-cranial
inversion. You cry that D&G is upon us, and fail to recognize what's
really going on. Look around, and see.

Jack Dingler

Bill Funk
Change "g" to "a"