Perhaps having linked to Dot Earth it will be possible to discuss sustainability here. I'm new to blogging so please bear with me.
In addition to the questions in my 30 Oct post at Dot Earth I'd like to discuss how we can get our recommendations on sustainability to presidental and congressional candidates and to sitting legislators. These 'representatives' only rarely speak on this issue, and that has to change.
Also, what can we do to get our government to begin addressing the question of planning for the future and advising all citizens in how to extend the chance of a reasonable degree of 'prosperity' to future generations?
4 comments:
Here are a few excerpts from Representative Roscoe Bartlett's talk:
"The problem with solar and wind is the sun doesn't shine all the time, and the wind doesn't blow all the time. But we have a pretty constant demand for energy, so you've got to store it. And this is a huge challenge. And if you're talking about running your car on batteries, then you have to think, but, do we have the raw materials necessary for making enough batteries to run all the millions of cars in the world with batteries? I think we could produce enough electricity to do that. I'm not at all sure that there is enough raw materials out there to make the batteries necessary for these cars.
Earlier this evening you heard quite a discussion of ethanol and its potential. And I don't want to quote ROSCOE BARTLETT here; I want to quote the National Academy of Sciences here. They did a study, and they concluded, and this was an article that appeared, I think, was it The Washington Post, and they said that if we took all of our corn for ethanol and discounted it for the fossil fuel input, which they said was 80 percent, by the way, some people think that we use more energy producing corn than we get out of the ethanol from corn; but even if it's 80 percent, and that's a realistic number, I think, if we used all of our corn for ethanol, no tortillas, no fattening of pigs and chickens from corn, used it all for ethanol, it would displace only 2.4 percent of our gasoline.
They wisely noted that if you tuned up your car and put air in the tires, you would save as much oil as using all of our corn to produce ethanol.
They then noted if we use all of our soybeans for diesel fuel, soy diesel, all of it, no soybeans exported to China, which was, a few years ago, our largest dollar export, by the way, because tofu, bean curd, as they call it, is the energy staple of the Orient, none of that, if we used all of our soybeans for soy diesel, it would displace 2.9 percent of our diesel.
Now, there are, I think, 70 million acres of corn, 60 million acres of soybeans planted on our best soil, pampered with fertilizers and pesticides and insecticides. And we would get, if we used it all for energy, 2.4 percent of gasoline and 2.9 percent of our diesel would be displaced.
The Department of Agriculture came to me and they were hyping cellulosic ethanol. And I asked them, are our topsoils increasing in quantity and quality? And the answer is no. Then I said, Pray tell, how are we going to get these enormous amounts of energy? Because topsoil is topsoil. Because of humus, humus is the material from plants that grew yesterday and are rotting today. It holds nutrients; it holds water. For every bushel of corn we grow in Iowa, three bushels of topsoil go down the Mississippi River. In spite of our best practices, three bushels still go down the river.
We will certainly get something. What if we got four times as much, which is unlikely, from our wasteland and woods and so forth, as we can get from all of our corn and all of our soybeans? That would be roughly 20 percent. Exploiting. Now, this would not be sustainable. You might, for a few years, mine the topsoil and take off this biomass, but by and by you will pay for that because you will no longer have the same quality or quantity of topsoil."
WLH,
Thanks for leaving the comment. The blog is really quite old. I see that Part 1 was posted on December 14, 2005. I almost never look at it. My website http://dematerialism.net/ is the place to look. I think I referenced in http://dematerialism.net/CwC.html someone who is storing hydrogen in surprisingly lightweight metal hydrides or see http://tinyurl.com/2q8m5q . There is a discussion of the hydrogen economy at http://dematerialism.net/CwC.html, which means nuclear if it means anything. I don’t like it, but there it is. Liquid hydrogen can be used to surround super-conductive electrical conduits. They are referred to as “high-temperature”, but that means far from absolute zero only. The temperature of liquid nitrogen will do, I think. My wife is an administrator at U. of Houston working closely with the super-conduction people.
Tom Wayburn, Houston, Texas
http://dematerialism.net/
I think that tinyurl in my earlier comment is wrong. Just google "hydrogen storage in metal hydrates" with no quotes.
Tom
Thanks Tom. I'm not checking this blog often enough. Over here we've just switched to B25 oil for our boiler for baseboard heat. Just signed a bid for solar to boost our shower/laundry needs. Should go in next month at $8.9K; but the IRS will let us deduct 30% and state of Utah 20%.
Have tossed out the H2 storage question in a couple directions, but may not live long enough to benefit personally --..
Was impressed hearing Joe Biden mention all the right things at an Iowa caucus a couple days back. Am trying to get his campaign committee to interact w/me to the extent that I could give them some technical input re. peer-reviewed pubs that would help put politics closer to reality. The Obama people stonewalled me, which is why I left them. So far nothing from the Biden people. Have you had any luck that way?
Well, let's at least keep trying.
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