Asymmetrical Information

Well, that's because the electricity production and distrubution (sp) system is huge. Anyone who thinks there's a quick-fix with something this capital intensive hasn't seriously thought about it.

My experience is in the petroleum refining industry. There has not been a world-scale grass-roots refinery completed in the USA since 1978. ("Grassroots" refers to the entire facility being immediately preceeded by a virgin "grass" landscape.) I was in the next-to-last grass-roots refinery(1977 completion) within two years of its completion. My experience had been in the opposite situation: old refineries expanded/modified/rebuilt to no end. Witnessing a grass-roots facility with its efficiency, integration, state-of-the-art hardware can bring envy and near-tears-of-joy in witnessing what is POSSIBLE.

To begin a plan of regular longterm replacement of our refinery infrastructure will seem a herculean task, just as the electric power upgrade is a formidable task. But its payout would be enormous. An alternative is the slippery slope to shoddiness.

This is why the Austrians will tell you that we are not in for a "recovery" any time soon. The capital infrastructure (real wealth) has been consumed by regulation and overtaxation, both apparent and hidden. We have, I'm afraid, eaten our seed.

"My experience is in the petroleum refining industry. There has not been a world-scale grass-roots refinery completed in the USA since 1978."

(And there ain't gonna be more anytime soon.)

But, nowatermelons is *way* too parochial. Little infrastructure might have been built in the US, but there's concrete & steel going up in developing markets. Bechtel, et al. have been doing the bulk of their design work offshore for almost a decade now; almost all C&E and A&E firms are transnational, even the niche firms, like the water & wastewater firms and the structural engineers. The expertise he laments hasn't disappeared; it's been exported.

Engineering is a global commodity (unlike, say, law or medicine). If you don't understand that, you should choose a different discipline.

"To begin a plan"

Planned by whom?

"of regular longterm replacement of our refinery infrastructure will seem a herculean task,"

WTF would we need to do that? Margins on refining are largely shitty:

Crude refining is maybe increasing by ~2% p.a. With better hydrocracking, reforming catalysts, you can increase rating on current capacity at that rate with maybe one or two new facilities in the 25 years.

In the last 10 years environmentalists have blocked forest maintenance so now our forests are burning down at an alarming rate. They have blocked construction of power plants so now we are having blackouts at an alarming rate. They have blocked construction of refineries so now our gas prices are increasing at an alarming rate.

Make sure you hug your local environmentalist and thank him for ruining our lives at an alarming rate.

You can't blame fire on environmentalists, only job loss. Thinning forests brings in sunlight that allows combustible fuels to accumulate. Fires will actually increase. I hate to say it, but the checkerboard pattern of clearcuts and full-growth stands is probably more resistant to fire. Nobody ever mentions why it is so important for these companies to cut public land. Can't they make enough money using their own lands or do the people need to bail them out at a loss? I believe that is called socialism.

Environmentalists (Cape Clod types excepted) have done very little to influence electricity generation or oil production. A monolithic electrical grid was always fragile and, after 9/11, seems foolhardy. We are lucky circumstances provided us a kick in the pants to think about it before terrorists put the big hurt on.

Oil refining is oil refining. The swell in sales of SUVs and trucks has simply created greater demand for fuel. A small number of people own the supply lines and thus price gouging is more common. Once again, don't blame the greenies.

As someone trying to learn to use less energy in preparation for getting "off the grid," I can tell you that it is dang hard to give up the luxuries. Asking people to conserve only provides a drop in the bucket.

There is no easy answer. The Watermelon person mentioned the brain/expertise drain in the nuclear field, but he failed to mention the slick hotshot management types in the 80s and 90s who siphoned off all the investment dollars doing feel-good management studies, hiring efficiency experts, etc. All the hatchet jobs of skilled labor during that era left apprentices jaded and untrusting. There are no guarantees that good skilled work will get you a job for life anymore. As easy as it seems to blame things on liberals, the truth is never that simple.

Good link, Jane.

don.. uh wtf???

thinned out, forests fires don't ladder up.. they burn the new stuff and singe the trunks of older trees, but stay out of the tops and burn out rapidly (not hot enough to grow as much as they do know)

yes checker boards wouldn't burn.. but um.. greenies don't like em and stop them...

as for why log on public land... western states are near or more than 50% public... east of the mississippi there is very little public land, you can log privately and be fine... out west, there's little trees left and you wouldn't get the checkerboard if they didn't log public land...

have you ever tried to build a house on new land? its a pain in the ass.. especially if there are protected species, wetlands, etc...

building a powerplant, transmission lines, or a refinery is nearly (and in the last, is) impossible. Greenies do this by: A) increasing amount of impact studiesperformed and reducing impact that is acceptable B) producing BS science that scares people into thinking that they'll produce 19 headed children if there are power lines within 5 miles of the home or school (or if there's a microwave in the house) C) by agitating for more regulation and consumer "protection" laws that increase the cost of doing business and making facilities less econmoically viable D) by movingfor increased taxes on everything but especially energy and by opposing all economic development everywhere, reducing profit and demand for these facilities and threatening seizure of facilities before they've paid back their investment

but other than that, greenies haven't done anything bad...

in other words.. don you don't know what the hell you're talking about...

"Thinning forests brings in sunlight that allows combustible fuels to accumulate. Fires will actually increase."

That's the idea. More frequent fires sweep through quickly without harming the forest, without developing into crown fires that destroy forests.

Still, the problem is much older than 10 years. Smoky the Bear began his reign of terror mid century and he was continuing an older tradition. The naive environmentalists grew up on those unnatural ideas and don't have a clue what a natural forest is like. Real environmentalists have gotten clued up and understand the role of fire, the neglected state of our forests, and are working to help establish better policies. But, there are no quick fixes for the forests either.

"That's the idea. More frequent fires sweep through quickly without harming the forest, without developing into crown fires that destroy forests."

It only takes a windy day in brushy areas to get the fires to crown during August and September (July this year). I've seen it dry enough for the serviceberries and ocean spray to go up like they were soaked in gas. Loggers don't like to bother with all the dead mid-level limbs on unclaimed trees either. So up it goes. Also, after the forest is thinned, nobody wants the spindly after-growth alders, larch, cascara, and yew etc. that grow in between. 15 years later, poof! you got your crown fires again even earlier in the season. Nobody will clear those out because there is no money in it on public lands. There are ALWAYS going to be fires that damage forests. That's life.

I would rather an arrangement were made to actually sell some land outright rather than these loss-leader USFS sales (even public land has value). That way, the folks growing the wood could, like a farmer, make sure they kept a sustainable yield and took sensible precautions because they have an interest in their own land.

Lands remaining in public domain could burn and regrow on their own. Those on the fringes need to clear a buffer zone and increase their localized fire suppression abilities or accept the accelerated risk.

I worked at a boy scout camp on the dry side of the Oregon cascades. We had our own sharpened shovels, polaskies, and mini-tankers. We had several little fires caused by ignorant or miscreant kids every Summer. We were ready to kick ass; we put them out in short order. The USFS helped us by looking out for "sustained columns of smoke."

Re: Hey

Washington is more private land than public. They don't have nearly the problem with activists because companies there suck less at the public teat. In Oregon, there is more public land, hence more wrangling occurs. Oregon's forests look nicer and Washington's probably yield more trees; I don't know for sure.

The problem with utilities is that they are either afflicted by public malaise or by the private malaise of an unchallenged monopoly. Unfortunately, it wouldn't make money to actually have eletrical competition because 2 or more grid sections per chunk of area would need to be set up. The greenies may have aggravated things, but the reality of an expensive grid is a much greater limiting factor. In a sense I think it is better to have a mixed setup like we do because it forces adherents of private and public electricity to prove they can outdo each other. This meta-competition may be the best we can hope for in electricity.

Just like Bush isn't the anti-Christ (although I don't personally like him), neither is Ralph Nader one (although I don't personally like him). Besides, the Greens haven't, in my experience, shown much ecological knowledge.
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For a little perspective, the eruption of Mt. St. Helens in 1980 destroyed many times more good wood (not necessarily acres) then all the fires in the NW since then. It is an amazing site to behold. And there are a dozen more volcanoes in the region that could pop their cork at any time. I could go on and on and probably not change anyone's mind and burn up Jane's hard-earned paycheck on bandwidth. Any good libertarian or objectivist knows that both conservatives and liberals are turds but I'm not very good at libertarianism/objectivism either so I'll stop it here. I just like you dudes because you remind me of all the Ayn Rand I read in my early 20s.

Don't you fools realize, solar power and windmills are our future!!!

:-P

Don't you fools realize, solar power and windmills are our future!!!

I'd laugh, but unfortunately there are way to many fools who actually believe this.

The problem I see is the centralized power generation model. It was a good idea in the early 1900's but we are in the 2000's now. There are dozens of alternatives (other than solar cells and windmills) that can create a decentralized power system that is not vulnerable to such problems.

Feul Cell technology has reached the point where a device the size of a water heater can power a home by simply being hooked up to the natural gas line. This is a chemical reaction, not a combustion reaction, so it can produce electricity with less polution. Byproducts are carbon dioxide and water. (Pure hydrogen will result in just the water byproduct, but thats not practical yet).

Why are we not working toward this model? A first instinct is to blame regulation I know, but what is the problem and how can we fix it?

Grid fixes will indeed take a significant amount of time; I would bet that a major new transmission line--if the decision to build it were made *right now*--would take 3 years or more to get in place. (Routing decisions, land acquisition, construction, and sourcing for long-leadtime items like HV transformers.)

We need to face this reality and get local power in place for critical infrastructure, such as water treatment plants. And there shouldn't be any 30-story buildings without at least some emergency generator capacity--at least sufficient to get one elevator at a time back to the ground floor.

"There are dozens of alternatives (other than solar cells and windmills) that can create a decentralized power system that is not vulnerable to such problems."

"Feul Cell technology has reached the point where a device the size of a water heater can power a home by simply being hooked up to the natural gas line. "

Where do you think the gas is going to come from? Very few people have gas wells in their back yards. There are also a lot of people who don't even have access to piped gas - they have to make do with bottles that are filled by truck. The infrastructure that is necessary to deliver the amount of gas you are talking about is astonishing.

And, I would say that we already have a "distributed generation system". It includes thousands of generation plants, using nuclear, coal, gas, oil, hydro, and even a few windmills. You still need all of that infrastructure to backup the windmills/solar at nite, when the wind doesn't blow. You are only talking about reducing the "grain size" of the system, and forcing every old person in the country to run their own generating company. I do not think they will be happy about your proposition.

Scott Graves:
"Why are we not working toward [widespread use of small fuell cells]? A first instinct is to blame regulation I know, but what is the problem and how can we fix it?"

Because fuel cells are still too expensive per kilowatt, though they're getting better. Also, increased use of natural gas will drive up its price, which has already gone up a lot.

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