Oil Spill

[Skathac]

Interesting study MF. Wish they'd all show the same results, but some may be biased in favor of bio fuels. That particular study you showed did mention if the bio fuels were able to be grown in areas that aren't suited for agricultural cultivation it would greatly increase their benefits. My idea would be expensive, but may very well be necessary at some point anyway to keep up with our food concerns in the future.

In any case combustion is only a bandaid until we settle on an energy source that causes 0 impact on the world.

This friggin oil spill is front page news every day round here, I've been in a perpetual state of pissed off since it happened.

 

[testing]

This friggin oil spill is front page news every day round here, I've been in a perpetual state of pissed off since it happened.

Me too. I'll give up horsepower in a heartbeat, bring on the solar cars!

 

[Reon]

I'm 54 yrs old and back in the '70's the US knew it was running out of oil. In the early '80's before Reagan there was a big push for alternative solutions to carbon fuel (coal, oil and gas). Big corporations were given leeway to do anything they wanted and - well - the result is what we're all experiencing now. War and Greed. I think the 2 go hand in hand. In many ways we are only a small part of the global hegemony and the current government is hamstrung by that fact and the previous administration.
I have been outraged over our government's handling of our energy needs since the 80's. We've had 30 years to mitigate events such as this and the only thing our governments have done is piss off the world and make the rich richer.
I have tried every which way I can think of to enlighten people. But they only stick their heads in the sand.
I hear and feel your outrage.
What can we do?
Write our congressional representatives and tell them we want off of carbon based energy now - or we'll vote you out.
In my policy analysis class last year the professors insisted that congress listens to what is written and/or called in.
My personal opinion is that things will continue to get worse before it all comes down like a house of cards. THEN the right things will get done. Alas - most people are sheep like that.

In the 80s, a lot of people had the understanding that "peak oil" was going to happen and that they should switch to alternatives, but it was just as hard if not harder then than it is now. I'm not condoning the action, but gas is just so useful while being relatively cheap. Until we run out of it.

We're going to end up on a nuclear/electric infrastructure. But only after a few people burn in hell.

+1. I assume when you say "electric" that you include solar, hydro electricity, and the such. iirc, fuel made from algae and such is starting to become a thing of interest.

I remember a story about a guy in the late 1980s who built a 'sail car' and sailed around the highways of the southeast US.

I think rail transport and electric vehicles would solve most of our infrastructure problems for our economy. Supplemental solar power would help decentralize the grid. Nuclear will play a role, and I am still curious to see how well tidal power pans out. I'd like to see a diversity of power systems developed and explores and APPLIED in tandem.

There is a company working on 3-dimensional grids of algae tanks that produce fuel. That would be an interesting alternative to ethanol that could be built in vertical slices near cities and major fuel consumption.

Enty, I think hybrid electric/gas cars, that can fuel on both, will start out as the means ofs transition. Eventually, people with short range needs will give up gas just like people have given up land lines for their cell phones. I think out in rural areas, people will need gas infrastructure longer, but that isn't really a problem (except for price control.) But maybe THAT is where ethanol could fill a niche and kick some butt.

Skathic, I really hope things work out as you plan, I think it would be good for us as a people and a country to advance and leave this stagnant phase behind.

NeverAmI, I have heard the same things about ethanol, and I believe RAND studies have talked about the "Percentage of american farm land" that would be devoted to fuel use. It was a significant fraction of farmable land. I can't remember how much, though.

Hmm. Most people are irrationally scare of Nuclear. Well perhaps not irrationally, but the fear the thought of having a nuclear reactor right next to their town. What do you think would be the best way to educate people on the subject? Also, I've seen many DIY cars that got substantial gas mileage, most people just don't pay attention to them. The only thing in our country that has been improving, mileage wise, is our rail cars and trains so I think that's a good system to use.

Even then, ethanol would not be able to supply the nation with enough energy. A study done by people at the University of Minnesota found that even if every acre of corn was devoted to ethanol, less than 13% of the nation's gasoline demand would be met. Even if roof-tops were included, the nation would face massive shortages http://www.pnas.org/content/103/30/11206.full

The switch over to ethanol would be extremely expensive, especially to lower income families.

Not only that, but the machines that process ethanol run off of gasoline. The harvest uses gasoline, the transportation uses gasoline/diesel, the machines use gasoline. On top of all of that, ethanol still pollutes the environment.

I'm all for alternative energy sources, but I see ethanol as a dead end resource. I feel that time and money are better spent some place else. Interestingly enough, my Calc teacher in high school modified his car to run off of fry oil. Restaurants give him their used oil for free. Normally they'd have to pay for it to be removed, but both the restaurant and the consumer save money. Granted, I have no idea how it is for the environment.

**as for the topic of the oil-spill**
I find is unimaginable how devastating the consequences will be if they can't figure out a way to stop the leak. Six weeks and it's still spewing oil. Hooray humans! My prediction, BP will be out of business.

Also, does anyone find it questionable that oil prices haven't risen noticeably (at least in my area) since the spill, but they sky rocketed before Katrina? Of course, I don't know much about the economics behind it, but it does strike me as odd.

I think the consequences are already devastating, they are using perspirants to hide the damage they've already done. It's a sad thing. This is something we won't see the end of for decades, perhaps. Sadly. I don't think BP will go out of business though. Oil companies have an ability to resist that.

Hmm. I think the reason why prices haven't sky rocketed was because the government is paying more attention to price gouging and even still, they've been doing it for a while on the current prices. They aren't running the refineries at maximum but they still want to make money, so it is rather shocking they haven't turned up the price.

 

[NeverAmI]

Sadly. I don't think BP will go out of business though. Oil companies have an ability to resist that.

Agreed. All hail the corporatocracy!

 

[Skathac]

I remember a story about a guy in the late 1980s who built a 'sail car' and sailed around the highways of the southeast US.

I think rail transport and electric vehicles would solve most of our infrastructure problems for our economy. Supplemental solar power would help decentralize the grid. Nuclear will play a role, and I am still curious to see how well tidal power pans out. I'd like to see a diversity of power systems developed and explores and APPLIED in tandem.

There is a company working on 3-dimensional grids of algae tanks that produce fuel. That would be an interesting alternative to ethanol that could be built in vertical slices near cities and major fuel consumption.

Enty, I think hybrid electric/gas cars, that can fuel on both, will start out as the means ofs transition. Eventually, people with short range needs will give up gas just like people have given up land lines for their cell phones. I think out in rural areas, people will need gas infrastructure longer, but that isn't really a problem (except for price control.) But maybe THAT is where ethanol could fill a niche and kick some butt.

Skathic, I really hope things work out as you plan, I think it would be good for us as a people and a country to advance and leave this stagnant phase behind.

NeverAmI, I have heard the same things about ethanol, and I believe RAND studies have talked about the "Percentage of american farm land" that would be devoted to fuel use. It was a significant fraction of farmable land. I can't remember how much, though.

I'm an idealist, dreams so big I'll reach the sun and my wings'll melt. I think if we had a government think tank filled with dreamers and realists though we could get alot accomplished. You bring up many good points in alternatives, diversification can only help the cause along.

 

[Daeledin]

As far as the oil spill goes I'm also pissed its taking this long to plug it. The public will go ahead and constantly try to pin blame and demand the government take over. The news keeps stating over and over again that the government doesn't have the resources on hand to fix this problem themselves. Makes sense because they aren't in the business of making and maintaining underwater oil pipelines. Best they can do is throw what resources they have into the pot and it's up to the scientists and engineers to come up with the best possible plan to seal it up the first time. What happens if you try, it doesn't work, and you end up making it worse?

Anyway. Since we're talking about alternative energy sources allow me to bamboozle your minds with some energy sources in the wood-works you may not have heard about.

Nuclear power was mentioned so I'll start with that. Amazing potential as an energy source. Problems arise with storage of the energy itself and waste. Our understanding of nuclear reactions is much better right now and is very easy to avoid anything going to critical mass. Plus once all the equipment is set up it ends up being one of the cheapest options; especially on a scale of $100-on-ton tax of carbon for electric power generation. Then of course people are concerned about nuclear radiation. It's not meant to be a secret of the scientific community but it isn't well expressed to many people but you get more radiation exposure throughout your day simply be existing on the planet than you do from living near a plant. Natural radioactivity is somewhere around 240 millirem/year, your body itself produces 40 millirem/year and a 1GW electric nuclear plant will produce 0.004 millirem/year exposure. Guess what, coal plants of 1GW do 0.003 millirem/year too, so it already happens this way and is negligible. The spent fuel averages about 1000 tonnes per 1 year of activity and a typical nuclear power plant with today's technology should last approx. 60 years. Disposal is the only issue, Uranium itself would actually be safe to put right back where it came from. However actinides created by nuclear reaction of uranium would have a minimum of 300,000 years to isolate decay before it actually becomes safe. So what to do? Well the U.S's policy is just chuck it into the Yucca mountains and forget it. If we separated plutonium and other minor actinides out of spent fuel we'll be down to a 1000 year decay. The removed stuff could just be cycled through a fast spectrum reaction to get it to go away. Of course R&D programs haven't really made this a reality yet.

Other options are things like photobiological, photochemical, solar thermal, and PV-electrolysis reactions that chemical engineers have been looking at for around 30 years. As the names suggest they are done by harvesting sun light to convert into fuel. Namely trying to store the energy collected from the UV rays of the sun into chemical bonds that we break later. Nanotechnology research has been a big help in trying to make this a reality. UV activated nano-size amounts of metallorganic absorbers and redox reagents could be used to split water into hydrogen and oxygen, separate out the hydrogen by means of a semi-conductor anode with a metal cathode and we got ourselves a producable source of hydrogen fuel. The main problem stopping this from being a reality is that there isn't a semiconductor that has been discovered that can operate within the band-gap we need that is stable in aqueous solution. Cadmium sulfide almost fits the bill but it'll dissolve apart in a matter of 20 hours in solution making it horribly inefficient. With semiconductors there is a quantum property where you decrease the size of the conductor you increase the band-gap. So a topic of interest lately has been trying to find morphologies (basically encasing the semiconductor in a polymer) that will allow semiconductors to stay below its Bohr exciton radius but still allow the band-gap increase due to quantum confinement.

Or we could photochemically react carbon dioxide and water in the atmosphere to produce oxygen and various liquid fuel alcohol hydrocarbons. I'd prefer the hydrogen route myself because its also the more ecologically safe option. Although with hydrogen we'd need more of it to obtain the same amount of power so cost is the key issue (after getting it to work). Based on the production method it would be the difference between paying 4 dollars a gallon on gas to 20 dollars a gallon for hydrogen.

This is where we always hit a snag with energy alternatives. You need something that can be made that is cost effective, can be embraced by business, and what people will want to buy.

 

[Skathac]

Daeledin that was a very informative post.

As I mentioned before we gotta strive for something that has 0 impact on our planet whenever possible. Cost wise, initial implementation of anything is going to be expensive. While the creators of a technology may not be able to find a way to bring the costs down at first, eventually other people will have a lightbulb spark on this. Also saturation and mass production, but first it has to be proven to the consumer base to be effective and initiative has to be taken to bring it to them.

Nuclear power doesn't bother me. The waste does and from what you mention we're right around the corner from eliminating alot of that.

 

[Betteralone]

Just some thoughts to ponder.....:nod:

Americans used 50 billion plastic water bottles in 2006. Thirty-eight million of those bottles ended up in landfills, the equivalent of 912 million gallons of oil. Laid end to end, that's enough bottles to travel from Earth to the moon and back 10 times.

Bottled water produces up to 1.5 million tons of plastic waste per year. According to Food and Water Watch, that plastic requires up to 47 million gallons of oil per year to produce. And while the plastic used to bottle beverages is of high quality and in demand by recyclers, over 80 percent of plastic bottles are simply thrown away.

 

[Skathac]

I've ranted and raved about that too. Waste is a very major concern that needs to be addressed in this country.

 

[Entyqua]

I rant and rave about it too...I am an avid recycler...(they call me the recycle Nazi here at home) I even found a way to start a business creating things only made from recycled goods. We dont use bottled water either...I buy jugs of it, and refill those. I have one water bottle that I have reused for the better part of three years...

 

[Reon]

I rant and rave about it too...I am an avid recycler...(they call me the recycle Nazi here at home) I even found a way to start a business creating things only made from recycled goods. We dont use bottled water either...I buy jugs of it, and refill those. I have one water bottle that I have reused for the better part of three years...

I'm assume you've already probably looked this up but there are dangers in reusing water bottles http://www.globalhealingcenter.com/...ater-bottles-may-be-risking-their-health.html

 

[Skathac]

I rant and rave about it too...I am an avid recycler...(they call me the recycle Nazi here at home) I even found a way to start a business creating things only made from recycled goods. We dont use bottled water either...I buy jugs of it, and refill those. I have one water bottle that I have reused for the better part of three years...

:tea: Hoorah

Reon brings up a very good point on this too. Might have to start recycling those jugs when they first show signs of needing to be washed, I dunno what effect the compounds leaching out of the plastics could cause but I bet it isn't good.

 

[Daeledin]

The big scare was the use of Bisphenol-A in the creation of plastics, more specifically in PET (#1), polyethylene terephthalate. Although the compound was always suspected of being dangerous (since 1930) the scare didn't really get around to happening until 2008. I believe the FDA has put in regulation that bans the use of BPA in the formation of plastics which are supposed to contain consumables.

The scare is that plastics (or any polymer for that matter) can eventually 'leach' out chemicals from inside their crystal structure. It's a matter of how they are made. Polymers are gigantic chains of the same monomer over and over and form into a crystal. The chains grow in size to gigantic numbers, anywhere from 200 to 1000 monomers per molecule, and a lot of the chain doesn't line up inside the crystalline structure and forms amorphous regions. These amorphous regions are watched and the grade plastics get is based on the presence of them, but this is where leaches exude from the plastic.

Anyway. Bisphenol-A is a bigger concern for developing babies, in animals it drastically alters the states of sex hormones and the hypothalamus. In human babies its believed to produce the same results in doses higher than 50 micrograms/kg/day. For adults it has been linked to mild increases in the risk of heart disease, diabetes, and maybe even lung/breast cancer. Keep in mind you aren't likely to get this high of a dosage from water bottle leaching, at least not at one time.

I wouldn't worry if you recycle water bottles to use over and over again. But 3 years is pushing your luck, especially since that bottle will date to 2007; before the bisphenol-A ban. Not that there aren't other leach agents out there but that is the big one. It's actually a big marketing ploy for the sale of baby bottles now. Most of them will advertise that they don't contain BPA on the box when you buy them.

 

[Grey Wolf]

speaking of which, there was just another oil spill where I stay

http://www.channelnewsasia.com/stories/singaporelocalnews/view/1058824/1/.html

 

[Reon]

speaking of which, there was just another oil spill where I stay

http://www.channelnewsasia.com/stories/singaporelocalnews/view/1058824/1/.html

I don't like being the alarmist, I really hate climate news because it is often so fucking depressing. What the fuck are we trying to do? Kill nearly all marine life on this planet? Jesus Christ. I know accidents happen, I know that but this isn't helping right now. Honestly, the little incident we had in america is probably going to have profound effects on our marine left, and that's the marine life we have left. Now, we have another incident in singapore. Maybe people will start to realize that "Hey, maybe we should get off this tainted ship while we can"

 

[Betteralone]

One more thought to ponder..........

Recycling isn't saving the earth, it's saving man. Earth will survive without us. :nod: ......................just sayin'

(yes, I am an avid recycler, use my brita and even have a gallon jug of water in my toilet tank)

 

[Reon]

One more thought to ponder..........

Recycling isn't saving the earth, it's saving man. Earth will survive without us. :nod: ......................just sayin'

(yes, I am an avid recycler, use my brita and even have a gallon jug of water in my toilet tank)

Hmm. I always found it interesting that saving the environment seems selfish. It's obvious that we are trying to save ourselves, which is one way of selfishness but we also take it upon ourselves to enforce artificial regulations on the environment to decide if we should interfere with it. Example: Some people seem to think that any extinction, of any kind, is a horrible event that is somehow inextricably linked to humanity.

I don't think it's possible for humanity to complete destroy this rock we call Earth. I suppose, though, that you can't destroy anything.

 

[Daeledin]

Tragic that there is another spill in Singapore. Lucky there were no toxins released. Thankfully with a tanker the oil all out at once and there isn't a continuous source to worry about so it can eventually be all cleaned.

Since we've been on the topic of plastics I figured I'd share this C&EN news story on 'upcycling' plastic.

http://pubs.acs.org/cen/news/88/i22/8822news6.html

Really I was less impressed with the 'discovery' of heating a polymer to break it down into components. However polyethylene (typically plastic shopping bags) and polystyrene (styrofoam) can be heated to yield solid carbon. Pretty cool as far as recycling goes. But like many recyclables it isn't useful for things that can't be made using other more cheaper methods. Oh well, still pretty cool.

Also. It isn't selfish for humans to try to save the world. If we want the species to live on then we have to leave them something to have a future in. I do agree though we shouldn't feel responsible for saving every species if it is about to go extinct through natural causes. Unfortunately science has a horrible track record for making things unsafe for life in the environment.

 

[Reon]

Tragic that there is another spill in Singapore. Lucky there were no toxins released. Thankfully with a tanker the oil all out at once and there isn't a continuous source to worry about so it can eventually be all cleaned.

Since we've been on the topic of plastics I figured I'd share this C&EN news story on 'upcycling' plastic.

http://pubs.acs.org/cen/news/88/i22/8822news6.html

Really I was less impressed with the 'discovery' of heating a polymer to break it down into components. However polyethylene (typically plastic shopping bags) and polystyrene (styrofoam) can be heated to yield solid carbon. Pretty cool as far as recycling goes. But like many recyclables it isn't useful for things that can't be made using other more cheaper methods. Oh well, still pretty cool.

Also. It isn't selfish for humans to try to save the world. If we want the species to live on then we have to leave them something to have a future in. I do agree though we shouldn't feel responsible for saving every species if it is about to go extinct through natural causes. Unfortunately science has a horrible track record for making things unsafe for life in the environment.

Perhaps I should be more clear, I think a lot of people who are concerned about the environment are honestly more concerned with their livelihood than the fact that we are destroying the environment, including other people.

 

[Raccoon Love]

I don't like being the alarmist, I really hate climate news because it is often so fucking depressing. What the fuck are we trying to do? Kill nearly all marine life on this planet? Jesus Christ. I know accidents happen, I know that but this isn't helping right now. Honestly, the little incident we had in america is probably going to have profound effects on our marine left, and that's the marine life we have left. Now, we have another incident in singapore. Maybe people will start to realize that "Hey, maybe we should get off this tainted ship while we can"

Exactly my thoughts, how long will it take for humanity to frigging wake up?. We are severely damaging the ecosystems of this planet, its going to take the near extinction of 90% of the world's species for humans to realize the cause of their actions. I was very pissed when I heard this oil spill is happening in the middle of the breeding season of a critically endangered species of sea turtles. Turtles, Dolphins, Pelicans, you name it..innocent creatures are dying from this and yet we seem so ''cool'' about it. It really gets me pissed.