Asymmetrical Information

Oil policy is wrong headed because humans are lazy. We like to keep on doing what we have been doing as long as we can; our neolithic ancestors surely stayed in one camp as long as there was game to be hunted, fruit and other stuff to be found, & so forth. When the pickings got too slim, they packed up and moved on.

100 years ago most work was done with animals or external combustion steam engines. The internal combustion engine was a novelty that wasn't always trustworthy. But tinkerers made it work, and we developed the means to fuel it.

Now we are looking at a long term problem and a short term one. The irony is this: 30 years ago some number of smart people looked at the same problem set, and came up with a number of ways to solve it. To run an industrial civilization, we need electricity and portable chemical fuel. There are multiple ways to make electricity, although splitting atoms is best in many ways, and given enough energy we can make the portable chemical fuels. There are ways to carry H2 around that don't involve huge Dewar flasks, such as the hydrides. In fact, we are all burning hydrogen in cars right now, it just happens to be bound up with carbons to make what we call "hydrocarbons".

We know how to solve the long term problem, but it will cost money and nobody wants to commit their country to such a long term change as a rule, although the Swedes and Germans and French all have made some steps in that direction. The short term problem of gasoline prices is caused by a collection of factors from outside the market (Iran jitters, MTBE-to-ethanol switch, lingering effects of Katrina on Gulf production, etc.) and maybe some market forces as well.

We know how to deal with it. We just ain't gonna start until things are getting ugly, that's all.

I forgot to mention that the proper market solution to high prices is in essence, high prices. People adjust their use of a good that becomes "too expensive" in various ways, including creating alternatives but that doesn't happen if big sibling government steps in to make things all better. The price controls of the 1970's led, as such things always do, to supply shortages. If we are truly going to find alternatives to petroleum, there's got to be some money in it for the people who take the risks and do the hard work on such things. Nobody works for free as a rule...

"infantilization." Hmmm.

Wanting to live in a nice house with lots of space that your kids can play in, where you know your neighbors but don't trip over them, where you can't hear your neighbors fighting - or having sex - is "infantile" to some people.

I believe that most people in flyover country would consider that living in a crackerjack box with thousands of others and never breathing the smell of fresh grass or weeds or trees is - well, not infantile, but just not particularly appealing.

Yeah. That's a polite way of putting it.

There is no oil shortage. Oil is of abiotic origin, I am willing to wager my $0.02. There is plenty of it, but the cost of extraction will rise as the easier deposits are depleted. Same as gold; as the old calculation goes, there is more gold in one cubic mile of sea water than has ever been extracted from the earth in modern times. It is just prohibitively expensive to extract at today's market price and the cost of present extraction techniques.

Until we truly embrace other energy sources, we are on a carbon-based economy. It just became clear to me - reduced carbon (hydrocarbons) are the new gold in our economy - everything depends on the energy obtained from oxidizing ancient deposits of hydrocarbons. Units of oil or coal are what gold used to be 100 years ago, albeit harder to put in one's pocket.

Nukueyuler is a great option. Ethanol and biodiesel are just hippie-dippie and corn-farmer dreams (how long until Dunkin Donuts is charging $3/gallon to haul off their waste?). Wind power has great potential, but as we see now, all the BANANAs like Ted Kennedy don't want to spoil the view. Hydrogen freaks refuse to recognise that you can't fit megawatts of hydrogen in a car without great expense or hazards (3000 PSI tanks? metal hydrides?), and you can't pump the stuff around through existing pipelines due to embrittlement. Oceanic methane clathrates, coupled with methane->methanol conversion have great possibilities for motor fuels.

I am putting most of my pension funds into energy companies - pulling out of pharmaceuticals, which are more likely to be bitch-slapped into price controlls or something. Five years ago I though pharma was the way to go, untill these recent Vioxx lawsuits, and their kin. I think the gov't is more likely to pull a UK on pharmas than they are to pull a Venezuela on oil.

And for all the global-warming-CO2 dooms-day prophets, I just want to say that Gaia, um, I mean the ecosystem has absorbed and ballanced a lot greater impacts, literally, than our burning a bit of hydrocarbons, and has rebounded with amazing resiliency. It is just plant food, afterall, and plants, aquatic or terrestrial, will eat it up gladly.

Me? I vote for methanol as the new carbon gold-unit, but we are still on a reduced-carbon addicted economy, and the details will be rightfully sorted out in the open market.

The price of gasoline, inflation adjusted, is not very high. People that bitch and moan about the price of gasoline cramping their style obviously never had to run a business in the '70s, and have developed a business model based on assuming disproportionately low fuel prices.

How can people who spend $30+ on an SUV bitch about gas prices? I love my 36 MPG jetta...

I agree with the basic thrust of O'Hare's argument that people as a whole tend to want quick easy fixes to problems, but what's new about that? This disease isn't just confined to the peasants. It seems to afflict our "best and brightest" as well. After all, its the actions of government officials that get such stupid ideas passed into law or public policy in the first place. Does anyone remember Smoot-Hawley or Keynesian economics? I doubt that Joe Sixpack had much of anything to do with either of them.

But then O'Hare lapses into the same disease that he is moaning about. He has the ANSWER. Everybody just needs to move into big urban hives where we can all connect as one big caring, sharing community. It may be his idea of the good life but it sounds a lot like a concentration camp to me. No thanks.

Our energy needs can be met by nuclear power. But the development of nuclear power has been stymied by the very same people who claim that our hydrocarbon fueled civilization is unsustainable. Their solution always seems to be the same, that being some variation of the one proposed by Mr. O'Hare. If you are really cynical you might suspect that the solution predated the problems that call for its adoption.

But then again, I have always been described as being a cynical bastard, to which charge I plead no contest.

"Wanting to live in a nice house with lots of space that your kids can play in, where you know your neighbors but don't trip over them, where you can't hear your neighbors fighting - or having sex - is "infantile" to some people."

No, refusing to bear the high costs of that choice is infantile.

I guess we all bring our baggage and expectations to these things, but while I agree that an urban hive sounds more like a concentration camp than a desirable outcome (and I do understand about the cost question) that wasn't what I envisioned when I read that line about things being closer together and access to trains etc.

I imagined suburban/rural small towns with good local services and acceptable transit between them (high mpg cars, decent trains). Most suburbs and rural small towns I'm acquainted with (and I don't pretend to be certain that's representative) *do* have pretty much everything you need within walking/biking distance... with one exception. That exception is employment. More telecommuting and better zoning (less) might help that.

I guess I'm hoping for a future in which the cities fade out into a more distributed suburban/rural population where most people have a higher quality life and better contact with the natural world, and with their neighbors, and with their food supply -- plus more privacy, space, and comfort. At the same time I'm hoping that fuel efficiency will improve and rail travel will become more common.

Having confessed my particular bias, I'm not comfortable with government backed social engineering. I think we're freer and better off reacting to the economic pain signals than allowing the government to interfere with them. In sum, I'd say we all need to face the costs and work out the best world we can from it, not hide behind government price fixing or whine about "gouging".

my 2 cents for what it's worth...

Why would nuclear be any more incremental than coal?

Why would nuclear be any more incremental than coal?

What do you mean by "incremental?"

After re-reading the article linked to by Jane, it seems to me that O'Hare wants live either in Europe, or in some idealized vision of the 1940's urban United States. He's peeved, and annoyed, that the mere plebes don't want to live in his idealized community, and is ready to stamp his foot. I suggest he move to Europe, where he'll fit in better...assuming, of course, he "reverts" to Islam first.

Antoher enviromentalist speaks up. You peasants will have to live like they do in Bangla Desh, and remember to tip your caps to your betters when they walk by.

@#$% him. Let him freeze in the dark.

Hydrogen freaks refuse to recognise that you can't fit megawatts of hydrogen in a car without great expense or hazards (3000 PSI tanks? metal hydrides?)

Please. No more dangerous or difficult than what we do now to maintain fuel stocks and mobility, it just requires different solutions to the problems. Oh, and the average aluminum-alloy scuba tank is filled to between 2000 and 3000 PSI and then safely transported over distances, possibly even banged around just a bit...it's not like this pressure level is something exotic, although it does require safe-handling procedures. Then again, so does gasoline.

The problem is having a sufficiently large, green-friendly energy source for filering and elctrolyzing seawater. Otherwise, we're back to fossil fuels for the energy source, either by burning coal to make the electricity, or using natural gas in a steam reformation process.

And for all the global-warming-CO2 dooms-day prophets, I just want to say that Gaia, um, I mean the ecosystem has absorbed and ballanced a lot greater impacts, literally, than our burning a bit of hydrocarbons, and has rebounded with amazing resiliency. It is just plant food, afterall, and plants, aquatic or terrestrial, will eat it up gladly.

Of course it has, and will continue to do so. The difference is, the natural system doesn't care if a significant greenhouse gas release triggers violent weather or coastal innundation. Humans tend to care, though, so it's not the kind of concern that can just be discarded.

The price of gasoline, inflation adjusted, is not very high. People that bitch and moan about the price of gasoline cramping their style obviously never had to run a business in the '70s, and have developed a business model based on assuming disproportionately low fuel prices.

The 1970s were not exactly a bastion of business (or social) development, either. Witness Europe installing a variation that model as we speak.

Nonetheless...I, for one, welcome our new fuel price overlords. It tends to make people seriously consider whether the Tahoe or the Civic is the better choice for their next trip out of the house (since nothing else seems to trigger that reflex, and I'm not interested in seeing the government bungle their hand at it).

The biggest problem with the post is that it doesn't appear that he believes what he's saying. We are meant to believe that the root problem is that the "stock" of oil is (for all intents..) "over", and (therefore?) we need to start "talking about" the author's preferred end-state of society (small houses packed together, bikes, rollerblades, whatever).

Um, no. Supposing I accept the author's premise of permanently low/depleted oil "stocks", then high/increasing oil prices are/will be the new reality, no matter what. People don't like paying high prices. So, people will switch to alternatives and make the "real behavioral change" of one kind or another that the author claims to be interested in, naturally. No 'social policy' per se is required, not even any 'talking about' it is required. It will simply happen. That is, if it's true that oil is "over". It's as ellipsis said, the proper solution here (if there's a problem..) is high prices.

But someone who laments the lack of "talking about" alternatives/behavioral change on a "social policy" level is saying they don't think these things will happen naturally. Which is, in a sense, an admission that he doesn't completely believe in oil-is-over in the first place.

(Either that, or as tcobb said, the "solution" predated the problem - i.e. it's not oil or energy per se that the author cares about "solving", but rather, that all-important end state of getting everyone (else..) into tiny urban flats & riding metros only.)

I have always been suspicious about people who want to cluster us all together. The truly great thing about America is that when people really didn't like where the direction of their communities were heading, they had the ability and opportunity of voting with their feet and moving on. And they did. And this also had the effect of making oppressive jurisdictions having to temper their policies. That's what happened to the Puritans. Given the choice between being true to your vision of Utopia and the prospect of having most of your citizens moving out of it you will compromise.

But as for the arrogant people who believe that they are wise enough to indulge in social engineering, this in intolerable. After all, the "white flight" to the suburbs came about as a reaction to judicial attempts at social engineering. I can still remember the bitter reactions of the Wise that so many of their lab rats had run away.

And when I hear, that for the good of the planet or whatever or whatever, we must all give up our personal transportation and all cluster together, I just smell a rat trap.

Perhaps its extreme on my part, but I believe that the only good social engineer is a dead social engineer. Or, perhaps, one who has been rehabilitated into a used car salesman. What else could they possibly be good for?

We get those huddle together poop in a bucket powerdown freaks at theoildrum, too. I tell people that long before we abandon our exurb McMansions we'll just buy an electric car with a battery to use nine days out of ten, and reserve the SUV for longer trips. Then we'll stretch out our oil reserves considerably.
I mean, those McMansions cost half a million bucks. An electric battery car that takes us back and forth to work isn't going to cost that much, comparatively.

No doubt O'Hare is an urban elitist who lives in a high-rise condo that is located 2 blocks from his office.
If he can get by without a yard or a car, why the hell can't you?
I'm as impressd by that logic as I am by George Clooney lecturing me to stop wasting energy as he boards his private jet to his 10 bedroom villa in Como, Italy. And don't even ask him about putting windmills ANYWHERE that might spoil his view.

Jane--

Is this post a joke?

Does your formerly libertarian/free markets blog endorse forcing people, against their will, to adopt a lifestyle many do not want "for the good of all (ie, social engineering elitists?)"

Have you lost your mind or started drinking to excess?

We're talking about things like living in smaller houses, close enough together to get people out on their feet and bicycles, and into trains and trams.

Arrgh. Let the prices rise as they will and let people sort it out according to their priorities. But trains and buses are just not particularly fuel efficient on a seat-mile basis compared to, say, hybrid cars (do the math). I would say an increased concern with fuel-efficiency and an increased trend toward car-pooling and ride-sharing (and an increase in telecommuting--the most fuel and time efficient form of commuting by far) are much more attractive to most people (and much more likely) than everybody moving to city apartments near the subway station.

But many advocates of the latter despise suburbia and want people to do re-urbanized anyway and are looking for oil prices to force people to do what the advocates think they should have been doing anyway.

The main point was that our policies do the opposite of what we ostensibly want--reducing the environmental impact of our oil consumption, and our dependance on foriegn oil.

On a broader note, if global warming *is* happening, and is dangerous, then, why, yes, I think we should all cluster in cities no matter how personally distasteful one may find it. It's got nothing to do with elitism (though I also don't care for Mr. O'Hare's tone); it's simply that I'd like to live. My libertarian heart thinks that the way to achieve this is not by mandating where and how people may live, but by running the price of a gallon of gasoline up to $5 or $6 a gallon and letting people make their own choice. But runaway greenhouse effect--if it happens--is a giant negative externality that I'd say definitely calls for government intervention in the market.

On a broader note, if global warming *is* happening, and is dangerous, then, why, yes, I think we should all cluster in cities no matter how personally distasteful one may find it.

And I'd agree that we should reduce our emissions, but that living clustered in cities is hardly the only (or best) way to achieve that. And I further suspect that putting this forward as the vision for the future is likely to alienate a lot of people who might otherwise be allies (see this thread, for example).

Now if you're going to let $6/gallon gas create the incentives and allow people to figure it out by themselves, great. The clustering vision is still a problem for garnering support but it's not coercive. But if you're going to take the revenue from the gas taxes and plow a large chunk of it into, say, useless, heavily subsidized light-rail systems...well, then we have a problem.

I remember hearing about the "Greenhouse Effect" on Carl Sagan's "Cosmos" back in the late 70s, but it never gained much traction.

Is it my imagination, or did fear of global warming really take off in the early 90s? It's almost like those enamored with forced collectivisation shifted to "Plan B" after the fall of communism discreditied the earlier rationale.

I remember hearing about the "Greenhouse Effect" on Carl Sagan's "Cosmos" back in the late 70s, but it never gained much traction.

Is it my imagination, or did fear of global warming really take off in the early 90s? It's almost like those enamored with forced collectivisation shifted to "Plan B" after the fall of communism discreditied the earlier rationale.

Where's snake oil when you need it?

One sees a lot of statements about the energy efficiency of commuter rail, but rarely any actual numbers. Analyses that I've looked at suggest that it's very hard to get the theoretical efficiencies in practice, because of passenger-load fluctuations...you have to maintain a schedule all day long, which for large parts of the day means hauling around heavy cars which are largely empty. Also, the analysis needs to consider the energy cost of manufacturing the steel rails, which is of course an energy-intensive process.

Jane wrote:
On a broader note, if global warming *is* happening...

Suppose that global warming *is* happening, because the sun is a variable star & its energy output changes over millenia, what then?

...and it is dangerous

In that case, dispersing population might make a lot more sense than concentrating it into small areas. But that's a TEOTEAWKI thread, not an energy policy thread...

Clustering people together is dangerous.

Diseases spread more easily. Evacuation is harder. Terrorists can easily kill more people at once.

I'd rather take my chances with climate change. Or better yet, use lots of nuclear power.

Jane,

Why is everyone who's afraid of global warming so hell-bent on fixing it by reducing consumption. Why don't any of you want to add a small gasoline and public transportation tax which pays for planting a few hundred thousand acres of fast growing crops which we then bury every year.

Oil is in the ground because plants took carbon out of the atmosphere and then got buried. Why are you in favor of leaving it there, rather than taking it out and then putting it back?

It's really hard to take global warmers seriously when they completely ignore half of the obvious solutions.

Not that there's any proof that a warmer environment won't stimulate plant growth that reduces the global supply of atmospheric CO2 even if we do nothing.

And, incidentally, since there's no proof that cutting back will stop global warming anyhow, shouldn't we first disperse all of those costal cities now, while it's cheap and not an emergency, since you're all going to be flooded into oblivion soon? It's always struck me that the most obvious first step in response to inevitable global warming and coastal floods is to move all of the coastal people inland.

Or at least start building the dikes and water walls now. So, put your money where your mouth is? Evacuate manhattan, or at least tax manhattaners to build the giant wall to protect manhattan against the inevitable floods. I mean, even Kyoto would only have postponed global warming by a bit. If the world is really ending so soon, why are so many of the people who believe in global warming still on the coasts?

At least my comp sci. professor who, back in my college days, believed that the Y2k problem stood a good chance of delivering the world into near-complete anarchy bought a generator and stockpiled food, fuel, and ammunition.

It's getting increasingly hard to believe that you guys actually worry about global warming. Between living your lives as if there's no danger and never talking about obvious stuff like putting the carbon back, it's a little hard to take all this talk seriously.

Why is oil policy so wrongheaded?

How about most politicians and nearly all members of the news media (delightful hostesses excepted) are economically ignorant.

The very idea that prices serve as signals is foreign to them. Add in the immense predilction that many people have for forcing others to "do the right thing" rather than allowing markets to work and you have a recipe for wrong headed policies.

CAFE standards are a great example. We have a complex calculation with penalties aimed at intermediaries (car companies) instead of just increasing the tax on fuels (or vehicle mileage) and creating an incentive for consumers to purchase more fuel efficient vehicles, etc...

Or *expletive deleted* ethanol subsidies. We simultaneously madate the use of ethanol in fuel, subsidize inefficient domestic ethanol production, slap a 52 cpg tariff on imported ethanol, and give foreign aid to poor countries that could be providing us with cheap, sugar cane based ethanol. There's a sensible energy policy.

We don't need the government to impose solutions. We can allow price signals to work. Human beings do respond to incentives. If there are negative externalities associated with an economic activity, tax it. Make the changes gradually to avoid shocks.

Yes, I'm aware the above is a pipe dream. End of rant.

Regards,
Neil

The main point was that our policies do the opposite of what we ostensibly want--reducing the environmental impact of our oil consumption, and our dependance on foriegn oil.

Speak for yourself regarding what "we" want. Personally I am not sure I care about our "dependence on foreign oil" per se. Besides, I'm not sure you're right even on these terms; policies meant to reduce our oil usage (=artificially suppress our demand) keep the price low(er). That means only the Saudis &c. can afford to extract it. If you want less % of our oil to come from "foreign" (=cheaper to extract) sources, wouldn't you welcome high oil prices?

On a broader note, if global warming *is* happening, and is dangerous, then, why, yes, I think we should all cluster in cities no matter how personally distasteful one may find it.

Seems to me you forgot a third assumption here, which is "If it will help anything". It could be true that global warming is happening and is dangerous but that "clustering in cities" won't do diddly squat. We should still cluster?

it's simply that I'd like to live. [...] But runaway greenhouse effect--if it happens--is a giant negative externality that I'd say definitely calls for government intervention in the market.

Ok, but whatever the bad effects might be, no plausible runaway greenhouse effect scenario actually threatens your life. Right? (And if it did there'd almost certainly exist other ways for you to adjust and survive than to stir up a "cluster in cities" social policy for the entirety of society around you.)

On a broader note, if global warming *is* happening, and is dangerous, then, why, yes, I think we should all cluster in cities no matter how personally distasteful one may find it. It's got nothing to do with elitism (though I also don't care for Mr. O'Hare's tone); it's simply that I'd like to live.

You mean anthropogenic global warming, or any global warming?

What do you mean by "dangerous"?

Regarding H2, someone wrote:

The problem is having a sufficiently large, green-friendly energy source for filering and elctrolyzing seawater. Otherwise, we're back to fossil fuels for the energy source, either by burning coal to make the electricity, or using natural gas in a steam reformation process.

One of the few constructive things I can point to on energy that the current administration has done is fund some pilot projects to make very high temperature steam from the tertiary loop of a nuclear reactor & put that to use in a reformation process to split H2 out of water. It would be useful to have a nuclear power plant that not only provided baseload electricity but chemical fuel in the form of H2 as well. "One-stop shopping" for certain energy needs. A further step would be to see if that H2 can be bound up with carbon into other forms at the same plant; given all that heat energy, oxygen and hydrogen, can we essentially reform it into something else on the spot? I'm not enough of a chemist to have an informed opinion, but it seems to me given enough energy quite a few things could be made, although some might be rather expensive. This is one reason I am in favor of research into possible abiotic sources of oil; if a combination of heat and pressure is what really creates petroleum deep in the crust, or even deeper down, then how much heat and how much pressure are really needed? We should find out. It might be giga-PSI or tera-PSI, and thus economically absurd, but we should find out anyway.

Incidentally, for the H2 skeptics I suggest looking up the H2indenberg Society of some 25 or more years ago. They didn't come up with a solution to hydrogen embrittlement of metals, although there were some promising notions of improved ceramics bandied about, but they did convert a great big Ford sedan to run on hydrogen. The car was fueled by shoveling chips of lithium hydride into a container in the trunk, that was sealed with a very tight lid, and the H2 was routed from there to a rather interestingly rebuilt carburetor on top of that big ol' V8 engine. For a proof-of-concept vehicle it was mighty impressive, because basically the alterations weren't all that complex; a couple of teenagers with an interest in cars, machines and a scrapyard nearby could have done it. From the point of view of driving there was no difference. Sure, a modern version of this would look somewhat different; probably the refueling would consist of removing one or more cassettes containing hydrides depleted of their H2 & replacing them with new, charged up containers. That would be a lot easier than shoveling metal chips out of the trunk & pouring new ones in. But that's what computer folk call "an implementation detail", it's a process issue not a conceptual hurdle. The point is, runing a car off of hydrogen that is toted around in the form of hydrides has already been done, and so to claim "It can't be done!" when some tinkerers did so back when Jimmy Carter was President, is a non-viable objection.
Lastly, but not at all leastly, some of our current political problems are caused by the fact that our dear allies in Saudi Arabia have way, way, way too much money to spend. If we stopped "selling the country to the Arabs on the installment plan", as Jerry Pournelle described it back in 1979 or so, our dear allies the Saudis would have a lot less money to spend on funding hate-filled madrassas around the planet, and that would be a good thing in and of itself. Defunding the mullahs of Iran would be a pleasant side effect as well.

On a broader note, if global warming *is* happening, and is dangerous, then, why, yes, I think we should all cluster in cities no matter how personally distasteful one may find it. It's got nothing to do with elitism (though I also don't care for Mr. O'Hare's tone); it's simply that I'd like to live.

Which assumes that people's lives depend on everyone living in cities.

There's a set of implied assumptions here, all of which are highly dubious. The first is that "global warming" is really happening - yes, average temperatures are creeping up, but climate isn't static. The assumption that the current climate trend will continue onwards forever is scientifically dubious at best. Second is the assumption that mankind is the proximate cause of this warming trend - which again is based on highly dubious climatological models (such as the "hockey stick" graph). I personally think that human activity represents a very small fraction of the total cause for the increase in climate, and the fact that Mars is also warming is a pretty sure sign that there's a cause for the current warming trend that involves solar activity. The argument that there's little doubt that human-caused global warming is a scientific fact is a load of crap - it isn't science, it's guesswork and fear-mongering. You can't extrapolate the behavior of a complex and inherently chaotic system with trillions of variables and start basing policy on a handful of computer models.

Finally, there's the implied assumption that moving into cities would do a damn thing about the problem. There's an assumption that cities are somehow more ecologically beneficial - if you believe that, try visiting LA some time. If we're talking about "survival" being the ultimate goal, city life is not the best way of guaranteeing that. Cities have higher rates of crime, they're much more fertile ground for epidemics, they present larger targets for terrorism, etc.

My libertarian heart thinks that the way to achieve this is not by mandating where and how people may live, but by running the price of a gallon of gasoline up to $5 or $6 a gallon and letting people make their own choice. But runaway greenhouse effect--if it happens--is a giant negative externality that I'd say definitely calls for government intervention in the market.

I couldn't disagree more. Government intervention is about the worst tool we have for making societal change. Running up the price of gasoline artificially would encourage conservation, yes, but at massive cost. Unless you particularly like living in conditions of double-digit unemployment, massive price increases on every single consumer good, and anemic GDP growth, that isn't a viable solution.

The market will find a solution, be it processing the oil sands in Alberta, gas hydrates offshore, de-polymerizing organic waste, hydrogen power, or something else we haven't hit yet. But the argument that anyone has sufficient information to mandate sweeping social changes based on incomplete information isn't an argument that seems to me to be at all consistent with libertarianism or even common sense.

To play the devil's argument, why not do the opposite? Go back to living in an agricultural society? People grow their own foods cutting the need for transport down, telecommute more, and use decentralized power systems like solar cells, wind, and water power. That's probably more economically viable than herding everyone into cities.

If we did impose some very high tax on hydrocarbons which was oppressive enough to cause a radical drop in consumption here in the US, would that really have any impact on the amount of carbon dioxide that goes into the atmosphere? One would expect that since we consume a significant portion of the world's oil output that such a drop in consumption would lead to cheaper oil prices on the world market. And when something gets cheaper, the consumption of that item generally increases does it not? I suspect that all we would be doing is to shift the location of the consumption away from the US to elsewhere.

And in the mean time, the price of virtually everything in the US would rise dramatically. I can't think of anything that is manufactured that does not require energy to be made. And then there is the energy required to transport goods to the ultimate consumer. It would all be reflected in much higher prices for just about everything.

Jay Reding wrote:
To play the devil's argument, why not do the opposite? Go back to living in an agricultural society? People grow their own foods cutting the need for transport down, telecommute more, and use decentralized power systems like solar cells, wind, and water power. That's probably more economically viable than herding everyone into cities.

That is exactly what some of the "Peak Oil" advocates are calling for, along with some other things such as mandatory sterilization to stop population growth dead in its tracks & so forth. How such a society would still be able to support semiconductor plants to manufacture the solar cells is a bit unclear, by the way. Going a bit further one finds the current version of the "Deep Green" types who insist that only by returning to subsistence agriculture, or even hunter-gatherer societies, can humans survive. Since these scenarios imply death for 90+% of the human race, only kooks can take them seriously...but there's no end of kooks out there.

tcobb wrote:
If we did impose some very high tax on hydrocarbons which was oppressive enough to cause a radical drop in consumption here in the US, would that really have any impact on the amount of carbon dioxide that goes into the atmosphere?

The answer at best is "it depends" and at worst is "not really". One of the things about the Kyoto treaty that was a red flag to me was the exemption of China and India. China is in the process of building more megawatts of power generation than all of the UK, for example, and most of it is fired by coal. So let's see, hmm, turn off all the natural gas and coal fired power plants in the UK, with a few possible side effects there, and it makes no difference at all in the global "CO2 budget" because China has built that much and more capacity on the other side of the world...what's the point of this treaty, again?

One would expect that since we consume a significant portion of the world's oil output that such a drop in consumption would lead to cheaper oil prices on the world market. And when something gets cheaper, the consumption of that item generally increases does it not? I suspect that all we would be doing is to shift the location of the consumption away from the US to elsewhere.

I suspect this is correct.

Actually, the more I think about it, the more viable an option it seems. You wouldn't necessarily need to resort to a low-tech society or reducing population, just increase the self-sufficiency of the individual.

For instance, a decentralized power system would reduce the need to build more power plants, and reduce emissions. Genetically modified plants would mean that it would be much easier for people to grow their own food - we're even close to being able to artificially synthesize meat. Telecommuting is already viable.

The problem with centralizing everyone into cities is that Jane lives in NYC, and I live in Minneapolis/St. Paul. Jane's city is designed for mass transportation. MSP is decidedly not. Retrofitting cities for mass transport on a viable scale just doesn't work all that well, which is why most American cities are nowhere near as ecologically sound as European ones.

Personally, given the choice between being herded into a crowded city and living on a self-sufficient plot of land in the country, which one would be the most attractive to the average American?

anony-mouse: Those SCUBA tanks are indeed pretty safe, but even at 3000 PSI, you are only going to fit about 200 grams of hydrogen in a standard 80 cubic foot tank that weighs almost 100 times as much.

ellipsis: Lithium hydride is 7/8 Lithium and 1/8 Hydrogen by weight. You also need water to release the hydrogen from the LiH. So for one kilogram of hydrogen produced, you need 8 kilos of LiH and 9 kilos of water - that's less than 6% fuel by weight, not including all the necessary containment for that nasty chemical.

I like the idea of hydrogen as much as anyone, but there are many severe hurdles to overcome.

Lab Rat wrote:
ellipsis: Lithium hydride is 7/8 Lithium and 1/8 Hydrogen by weight. You also need water to release the hydrogen from the LiH. So for one kilogram of hydrogen produced, you need 8 kilos of LiH and 9 kilos of water - that's less than 6% fuel by weight, not including all the necessary containment for that nasty chemical.

Yup. Hence the ongoing research into other hydrides as well as near-nanotech structures that may offer a better mass ratio for storing H2 with less corrosiveness. Maybe re-forming H2 into something else to make portable chemical fuel is a better idea, or maybe higher density batteries will take over some of the "niche" for portable fuel. The point is, there is a solution to the problem, and likely multiple solutions to the problem, so deciding to go back to a mythical age of small cities with trams and trains driven by electricity generated, er, um, somehow, as O'Hare wishes, is not a solution. Neither is drawing the shades, sitting in a comfy chair and waiting for death, for that matter.

I like the idea of hydrogen as much as anyone, but there are many severe hurdles to overcome.

None of these hurdles are inherently impossible, though. It isn't like inventing a perpetual motion machine, or solving an NP-complete problem with a hand calculator. Furthermore, similar problems have been solved before. Suppose we go back 100 years in time and propose the Interstate highway system to roadbuilders who are just in the process of changing from horse-drawn graders to huge, fragile combustion powered machines. Remember that petroleum distillates like kerosene were delivered a century ago from tanks on wagons, often drawn by horses; the idea of a pipeline to carry tens of thousands of gallons of the stuff thousands of miles was pure fantasy. The idea of setting up thousands of stores across the country to sell petroleum distillates to people traveling 80 MPH all day on four-lane roads 50 feet wide that are smooth and generally free of potholes and ruts...well, those roadbuilders would probably ask what we had been drinking. Yet the Interstate system exists, and much of the work was in the 20 years after World War II. Infrastructure issues are implementation details, not science. Much of what needs to be done to convert away from burning petroleum for transport is infrastructure, not research.

On a broader note, if global warming *is* happening, and is dangerous, then, why, yes, I think we should all cluster in cities no matter how personally distasteful one may find it.

Of course global warming is happening, just as it has before, and just as global cooling happened several times in recorded history. Perhaps you mean global warming of a long-term, monotonically-increasing, anthropogenic nature? Not so sure about that one.

What's the threshold for "dangerous"? Is, say a degree or two increase in average global temperatures dangerous? Economically, it might even be a wash.

But runaway greenhouse effect--if it happens--is a giant negative externality that I'd say definitely calls for government intervention in the market.

What do you mean by "runaway greenhouse effect?" The only one I'm aware of is the kind that happens when you move about 28% closer to the Sun, and isn't something I worry about.

Those SCUBA tanks are indeed pretty safe, but even at 3000 PSI, you are only going to fit about 200 grams of hydrogen in a standard 80 cubic foot tank that weighs almost 100 times as much.

Yes, the density presents volumetric issues, but on the other hand, gasoline weighs in at about six pounds per gallon, and is toted around by the vehicle as mere excess cargo, until consumed. A very large portion of that mass is wasted carbon; and various other compounds present (e.g. sulfur) react to form pollutants that then have to be tackled by at least one catalytic converter. Again, mere implementation issues.

For general commuter purposes at least, hydrogen is a doable technology with similar types of implementation issues; what is wholly lacking at present is an efficient means of obtaining hydrogen from non-fossil materials.

When I visited Mike O'Hare's home ten years ago he lived in a detached house with a yard, but not terribly big, and was within bicycle range of his office. I don't know whether he's still there. So, not a condo hive, but not a 40-mile-commute-in-SUV McMansion, either.

I don't think he has to live in a hive condo, though, to have pox-on-both-their-houses opinions about current fuel foolishness.

"The oil system is very big, and poking at it with tiny instruments like deposits to the strategic oil reserve, or rushing to slurp out the two years' worth of oil imports in ANWR, are not going to make any important difference."

This isn't true. Demand for Oil is inelastic, so small changes in supply can have big impacts in price. Stopping the filling or a petroleum reserve or drilling a bit of extra oil could bring down the price of a barrel by many dollars even though it is a small percentage of total oil.

On a broader note, if global warming *is* happening, and is dangerous, then, why, yes, I think we should all cluster in cities no matter how personally distasteful one may find it. It's got nothing to do with elitism (though I also don't care for Mr. O'Hare's tone); it's simply that I'd like to live.

Roughly speaking, 25% of the US lives in urban areas, 25% in rural, and 50% in suburbia. When you say that we should all cluster in cities, a very sizeable portion of the population has to be relocated. Unless you are planning on taking some of us into your apartment, you have to build an enormous amount of new urban housing (at tremendous cost in materials and energy). If you are offering me the choice of (a) throwing away my modest suburban house and buying a new $100,000 apartment in the city, or (b) investing $100,000 at my house in improved efficiency, an electric vehicle, wind and PV power generation to run that vehicle, and a covered garden to grow local produce, I'll take (b) in a New York minute. Most people on the urban side of argument don't want to offer me that choice; they simply insist that I have to invest in urban infrastructure.

If there's time to relocate the suburban population back into cities, there's time to make the suburbs efficient and energy-sufficient. Well, at least out here in the West that's true; wind and solar are viable here. I'm not sure that the NJ suburbs can make the same adjustments.

i agree with all the skeptics (the market will handle it, the earth's warming is likely cyclical or the candle getting hotter, global warming of the type we're expecting wouldn't seriously threaten anyone's lives, even on the coasts, etc.), and think that cutting back on driving would seriously damage our economy. one of the reasons the US does so well compared to other countries' economies is that, e.g., if you lose your job in denver, you can drive to aurora or boulder or CO springs. if you lose your job in madrid, you have nowhere near the same flexibility. similarly, without pickup trucks/SUVs/cars, it's hard to start your own business as a carpenter or doing yard work or whatever. so you have the french local handyman who can get around the neighborhood, but no chance to build a real business (anyone with a car and a mop can start a maid service in the US, not so easy if you have to drag stuff around on the metro, etc.). put simply, cars have many, many benefits over public transport, but are almost always portrayed as a simple negative, the assumption being that big cars are only used by soccer moms to drive the kids around, that we could all live our lives as productively by riding the bus or the train, etc. and do all those who complain about cars forego flying? if so, they've got some splaining to do (or need to shut up). silly.

anony-mouse: The carbon in gasoline is not "wasted" - the majority of the energy from gasoline comes from the carbon-carbon bonds, not the carbon-hydrogen bonds. The catalytic converter is to finish oxidizing the tiny portion of carbon monoxide that is produced from incomplete combustion; it does not remove any sulfur in the exhaust (there is very little sulfur in gasoline anyway). There is no way, barring the development of some material for tanks orders of manitude lighter and stronger than conventinal metals, that one can fit enough tanks of hydrogen in a vehicle to rival the energy capacity of a 15 gallon gas tank.

ellipsis: I am not saying I support O'Hare's notions, and I am not opposed to hydrogen. It is just my honest opinion that hydrogen is one of the most difficult fuels to use in vehicles, but unfortunately the "coolness" of the idea draws people to hydrogen, away from more practical solutions.

Are there any organic chemists in the audience who can answer a very fundamental question:

Is it possible **in theory** to design some sort of reasonably efficient "factory" that would take in cabon dioxide and water; and spit out hydrocarbons (or at least carbohydrates) using nuclear energy (or solar or geothermal) as the prime energy source?

At this point, I'm not asking about practical implementation details. I'm asking if there are any fundamental Laws of Physics or Chemistry that say whether it can or can't be done.

In other words: Is there any hope of building something artificial that would do what Green Plants do -- but much more efficiently and more rapidly??

"reducing consumption..."

Reducing consumption means being poorer, living poorer. That's what all those ideologues have been promoting all along, and I don't get what's so great about it, and why they are so obsessed with it.

Maybe, given high oil prices, we'll end up being poorer anyhow, but I don't want to be socially-engineered (forced by the state) into poverty.

If global warming is real and is harmful - then we'll be harmed by it - no getting around that. But there is no need to harm us up front, beforehand, by force.

"Reduced consumption..." which is a codeword for poverty - kills people - poverty kills people. So the good green souls promote killing people - why exactly ? So that people don't get killed in the future ? Or do they beleive (as they apparently do indeed) that there are too many people around, and some need to be killed ?
I'd rather be killed by natural causes than by man-dreamed-up ones.

I have a solution which would let us keep our SUVs. I would let us keep our dependence on foreign oil, domestic oil, and even baby oil. Most importantly, it would let the people who already live in cities continue to live there and dictate our tastes and politics, while those of us who live in the burbs and the countryside could continue doing that. We simply would not be allowed to have friends who live more than 2/10 mile away from our home. At just two blocks away, this would remove any time savings from driving to go over to visit. I am sure that a bipartisan committee in Congress could draft a 354 page bill to put this policy into effect, thus saving us all from high gas prices and imminent world destruction.

"a lot if it will be used up (for example) keeping Europeans warm in a subarctic climate when the Gulf Stream stops"

This statement renders everything else he says deeply suspect. How can you take this guy seriously after he drops a stink-bomb like that?

Paging Algore... Commander Algore... your intergalactic universe-saving armada is ready, sir!

I think a combination of carbon taxes and anti-carbon subsidies (growing those forests and carbon-eating crops, carbon sequestration underground, etc) is probably prudent.

Even so, it is an article of faith among most environmentalists that the ONLY strategy to deal with human-caused global warming is prevention, rather than reaction or adaptation. To even suggest adaptation is the best response is to be treated as a lunatic. We need to systematically explore the costs/benefits of adaption as compared to prevention.

To some extent, Peak Oil types should be blase about CO2-driven global warming. If the oil is going to run out and the economy is going to collapse anyway, why worry about cutting back on greenhouse gas emissions now? But they aren't. Why? Because they are catastrophists by personality, just like some people (like yours truly) are Pollyannaish by personality.

For a post on oil prices, the elasticity of GDP supply with respect to oil prices, and the Organization of Petroleum Importing Countries, check out my blog:
http://foolwise.blogspot.com/

Reducing consumption means being poorer, living poorer.

Not necessarily. We get a lot more units of GDP from every unit of energy than we did 30 years ago (and we've done that during a time when oil was mostly cheap). There is no reason, in principle, why we cannot continue to enjoy improvements in our standard of living while, at the same time, increasing our efficiency and reducing our energy consumption. Which is why the 'back to the peasant village' or 'back to the urban tenement' ideas are so misguided.

For instance, a decentralized power system would reduce the need to build more power plants, and reduce emissions.

Um, no, it wouldn't. A decentralised power system would mean building more power plants. That's why it's decentralised. Rather than one big power plant in a remote location, you have lots of little power plants (windmills, solar cells, thermal stations on waste heat) all over the place. A decentralised power system means building more power plants and less transmission lines. Whether that reduces emissions overall is an open question. (If you have windmills and solar cells, what do you do when it's a very cold still night? - well, run off battery power of course - how many emissions are produced by making the batteries?)

" There is no reason, in principle, why we cannot continue to enjoy improvements in our standard of living while..."

Of course.

The reason the greenies want us to "reduce consumption" is - they hate consumption and prosperity and improved standards of living. That was my point.

John W.: "Is it possible **in theory** to design some sort of reasonably efficient "factory" that would take in cabon dioxide and water; and spit out hydrocarbons (or at least carbohydrates) using nuclear energy (or solar or geothermal) as the prime energy source?"

While we wait for the chemists to weigh in, we can conduct mental experiments. Thermodynamics says that the energy that goes into your conversion can't be less than we can extract by converting the hydrogen-carbon compounds back to CO2 and water. If the return conversion is by internal combustion, it's only about 20% efficient so even if your factory is perfectly efficient, the overall efficiency from nuclear electricity to miles traveled is not very good.

We are frustratingly close to battery and ultracapacitor technology that is good enough to make all-electric cars practical for most people most of the time. The overall efficiency of nuclear electricity (or any other form of electricity) to miles traveled in such vehicles would be much better than the electricity to hydrocarbon method. Of course, your factory has the advantage that no one has to buy a new car.

Bristlecone:

This: "I remember hearing about the "Greenhouse Effect" on Carl Sagan's "Cosmos" back in the late 70s, but it never gained much traction.

Is it my imagination, or did fear of global warming really take off in the early 90s? It's almost like those enamored with forced collectivisation shifted to "Plan B" after the fall of communism discreditied the earlier rationale."

Should be well remembered. The threat of "Peak Oil" is, to me, a political one much more than a financial one. As the "all-seeing font", in the post, aptly shows, this field is a potential gold-mine for Top-Down-ers, the world over.

Lab Rat wrote:
ellipsis: I am not saying I support O'Hare's notions, and I am not opposed to hydrogen. It is just my honest opinion that hydrogen is one of the most difficult fuels to use in vehicles, but unfortunately the "coolness" of the idea draws people to hydrogen, away from more practical solutions.

No sweat, I am not wedded to H2, it's one of multiple options. Note that no one so far has proposed fuel cells as a solution, that's progress of a sort, isn't it? Usually the "cool factor" of fuel cells brings someone out of the woodwork by now, but so far, so good. BTW I assumed you were merely pointing out difficulties, not cheerleading for O'Hare and his magic kingdom, so no worries there.

I used to find methyl alcohol to be interesting, but after reading up on the effects of it on eyes/skin/organs became less enamored of it; anything that is going to be used as portable chemical fuel is going to get spilled from time to time by accident, and it would be a good thing if a few drops of it in the eyes didn't lead to blindness. Again, it's an implementation detail, the problem has multiple solutions, as does the "baseload electricity" problem.

Anyway, I confess that after years, decades, of reading/hearing/seeing various doomsaying from the "Club of Rome" and "Population Bomb" onward, I no longer have much patience with it, especially in cases where the solution(s) already exist and have even been demonstrated outside of a laboratory. I especially am coming to lack patience with that breed of Socialist who have the same prescription for every problem: more power in the hands of a centralized, self-perpetuating, unelected elite. Ice age coming? Better move everyone to the cities so the arable land not under a glacier can be used to grow food. Fuel price crisis? Better move everyone into cities so that we can cut commute time. Global warming? Terrorism? Dandruff? Ingrown toenails? Not to worry, any problem can be met by reducing individual freedom and giving more power to coercive utopians.

"A subtle pattern begins to emerge"...

Smoov wrote:
"a lot if it will be used up (for example) keeping Europeans warm in a subarctic climate when the Gulf Stream stops"

This statement renders everything else he says deeply suspect. How can you take this guy seriously after he drops a stink-bomb like that?

I just realized what annoyed me the whole time I was reading O'Hare's article is the not very subtle passive-aggressive style, whereby such "stink bombs" as the above are intermingled with otherwise not too unreasonable observations. It strikes me as a rather adolescent way of communicating and, as Smoov noted, sets off my "BS Detector" as well.

As an example of adaptation, consider orbital sun shades, for example. I like this quote:

A few years ago, Dr Caldeira set out to disprove an idea put forward by Livermore physicists Lowell Wood and Edward Teller to cool the Earth with a sheet of superfine reflective mesh - similar in concept to orbiting mirrors.

In a computer model, Dr Caldeira and colleague Bala Govindasamy simulated the effects of diminished solar radiation.

"We were originally trying to show that this is a bad idea, that there would be residual regional and global climate effects," explains Dr Caldeira.

"Much to our chagrin, it worked really well." Their chagrin was well placed, since they were unable to work out what the negative side effects would be, and how to combat them. Of course most of our solutions have that problem.

How about some tax policy to increase capital expenditures on telecommuting? The Savings and Loan Crisis was occasioned by office space overbuilding encouraged by the Federal tax code. How about some telecommuting overbuilding instead? My butt, in a char, at home, on the PC, doesn't use nearly as much carbon as hauling my butt to work.

Yours,
Wince

The block quote should have ended after the words "really well." Sorry.

Current reserves of crude oil are presently higher than they have ever been.

As for the ANWR reserves only lasting a couple years, that assumes that the US would get its oil only from ANWR and nowhere else for that period of time. That's simply not the case; what would actually happen is that ANWR would supplement the existing supply for decades.

"Is it my imagination, or did fear of global warming really take off in the early 90s?"

In the early 1980s, we were worried about global cooling (the new ice age), which of course was caused by human pollution - smog blocking out the sun. The evidence was that we'd had several decades in a row of cooling. If one took the trend of the last 3 decades and projected it off for several hundred more years, it was clear that, like the dinosaurs, we had met our match.

It was only after several hot years that we all moved from fear of freezing to fear of frying. And, when people want to report dramatic evidence of how much hotter it has gotten, it's usually relative to the coldest year of the 1970s rather than from, say, 1940 before the cooling began.

"The Savings and Loan Crisis was occasioned by office space overbuilding encouraged by the Federal tax code."

I hadn't heard this before, and it certainly might have had an effect. But I think the main cause was the shift up in the yield curve (thanks largely to OPEC), when almost all of the S&L's loans were 30 year fixed rate at very low rates. And then regulators, rather than closing down banks that didn't meet the capital requirements, just kept lowering the requirements. And finally Reagan told them all to go out and gamble if they wanted. I liked Reagan and deregulation in general, but it made no sense to deregulate their investments while still insuring the deposits. The whole mess became much bigger in the end because regulators and politicians ignored the whole thing rather than dealing with it early on.

"Is it possible **in theory** to design some sort of reasonably efficient "factory" that would take in cabon dioxide and water; and spit out hydrocarbons (or at least carbohydrates) using nuclear energy (or solar or geothermal) as the prime energy source?"

Plants and some bacteria do a reasonable job of converting carbon dioxide and water into carbohydrates and fats using visible light. Unfortunately, photosynthesis isn't entirely worked out yet.

A good comparison of the best man-made method and the best nature-made method for doing a particular reaction is the fixation of gaseous nitrogen.

N2+3H2 ->2NH3

This reaction is used to capture nitrogen gas in the atmosphere and convert it into something plants can use. 500 million tons of artificial fertilizer are generated this way each year.

The man-made reaction requires pressures of ~3000 psi and temperatures around 500 celsius. Nature fixes nitrogen at room temperature and atmospheric pressure.

Right now we are nowhere near the efficiency of nature at catalyzing chemical reactions. The nitrogen fixation reaction is actually thermodynamically spontaneous, whereas the conversion of CO2 to hydrocarbons is very unfavorable thermodynamically.

Even if (anthropogenic) global warming is a problem we must "do something about," there's no reason to force people into high-density urban life. We could "do something" much cheaper and more effective (and no, it doesn't involve hydrogen-fueled automobiles):

The best way we could reduce our greenhouse gas emissions would be to substitute nuclear-power electric generation for coal-fired generation.

ALL energy-related US greenhouse emissions, expressed in equivalent million- metric- tonnes (MMT) of CO2, total to 5,868 MMT CO2/year (2004 numbers, trend is slowly upward). Electric power generation produced on the order of 2,293 million metric tonnes (MMT) of CO2 in 2004. About 82% of that came from burning coal (see a DOE report called Emissions of Greenhouse Gasses in the US 2004 in file 057304.pdf). We could replace virtually all coal-fired generation with nuclear (no new tech or distribution infrastructure [see hydrogen, problems with!] needed) to save about 1,880 MMT of CO2 yearly. (That would be a third of all energy-related emissions, 5,868 MMT CO2/year.)

No feasible reduction of motor fuel consumption could compare. The entire transportation sector emits only 1,876 MMT/year, so if we gave up all mechanical transportation--if everyone walked everywhere and we had NO supermarkets (all those fresh veggies gotta travel from the farm to the produce department, remember)--that would reduce emissions less than just substituting nuclear for coal.

(Of course giving up transportation would be insane, no one is willing to starve to death now in order to prevent global warming years in the future. It would require a disaster of unprecedented magnitude to persuade people to reduce transportation fuel consumption/greenhouse emissions even by 10%.)

If you really wish to reduce greenhouse emissions, go after electric generation. Proposals to save motor fuel by completely changing peoples' living circumstances cannot gain popular support. Yet you could replace far-away coal-fired generation with nuclear and people wouldn't even notice! The coal miners you'd put out of work (fewer than 100,000 according to DOE) would be easier to placate than all the people you want to force into urban brownstones.

What about cost, you ask? Well, suppose you have to increase electric rates 50% (likely an overestimate) to pay for the coal-to-nuclear transition. The total amount paid yearly in the US for retail electricity (i.e., not counting the small fraction of power which users generate for themselves) is around $270 billion (see a DOE report called Revenue from Retail Sales of Electricity to Ultimate Customers by Sector, by Provider, 2005). So for, say, $135 billion more annually, we could stop burning coal. The Federal government collects somewhere over $2 trillion in taxes of all kinds every year. So replacing all coal-fired generation might feel like rasing federal taxes 7% (that is, increase every $14 you pay now to $15). That would be stiff, but at least higher electric bills would be spread evenly across the economy. If you want to do something dramatic about global warming, that would clearly give you the most bang for the buck.

It wouldn't even affect our trade statistics much, since we trade little coal internationally.

If you really want to reorder people's lives for aesthetic reasons (rather than to prevent global warming), then sure, try to restrict their mobility. I hope you fail. If you're serious about the global-warming thing, though, then take my advice--look to coal, not gasoline.

anony-mouse: The carbon in gasoline is not "wasted" - the majority of the energy from gasoline comes from the carbon-carbon bonds, not the carbon-hydrogen bonds.

I am aware of this, and phrased my statement poorly. Specifically, carbon content in the fuel becomes carbon dioxide. If the goal is to reduce carbon emissions, then it helps to start with a fuel that has less or no carbon in the first place.

The catalytic converter is to finish oxidizing the tiny portion of carbon monoxide that is produced from incomplete combustion; it does not remove any sulfur in the exhaust (there is very little sulfur in gasoline anyway).

Hasty example is as hasty example does, my error. However, the catalyst is designed to also breakdown oxides of nitrogen, which are somewhat more plentiful.

There is no way, barring the development of some material for tanks orders of manitude lighter and stronger than conventinal metals, that one can fit enough tanks of hydrogen in a vehicle to rival the energy capacity of a 15 gallon gas tank.

Now we're talking past each other. I don't believe I ever indicated that hydrogen technology was a drop-in replacement for every type of automotive use. I don't see it having much promise for long-haul trucking, for example, or most any other application where a high-power diesel engine is currently required or advantageous.

On the other hand, one doesn't always need a 300+ mile fuel store on board for the types of commuting that many vehicles see; and enough hydrogen fuel capacity could be installed to make such a vehicle practical. Note the current stock of hybrids successfully carrying around a hefty tray full of double-insulated Li-ion cells in addition to a gas tank, for example. If 'x' is needed, 'x' can be accommodated even if it requires necessary tradeoffs, or a bit of thinking outside the box.

I still say that we are talking about implementation issues, not an outright technology deficit. Note that, like ellipses, I am not a hydrogen fanboy; however I am not too fond of naysayers who come down on a potentially promising options with unnecessarily large hammers, because that is a proven method for imparting SIDS on emerging technologies. We just had a thread about that here a couple weeks ago.

Nor am I particularly worried about hydrogen 'buzz' detracting from alternatives; there are many alternatives actively in research, and anything that keeps the public in view of options other than extracted petroleum is fine with me. Better to be 'buzzing' about the wrong option, if such be the case, than to blissfully ignore the situation entirely.

Anony: The hydrogen buzz *does* detract from alternatives. Putting hydrogen in a tank is the toughest of all the alternatives I've seen discussed, but on this thread, no one except Mark Seecof has even mentioned the one alternative that is attainable with *current* technology, even though getting rid of the coal power plants would make a bigger difference than anything we could do with motor cars. (And if we could bottle hydrogen, we'd need all those nuke plants to make it, anyhow.)

Instead of looking at what we *can* start doing *now* (replacing coal power plants with nukes, more efficient electric usage, more telecommuting and less real commuting), or in the near future (more and better diesel engines in cars, converting organic waste materials to biodiesel or methanol, more renewable power), the hydrogen buzz has people dreaming about what might be possible in decades - while not much actually gets done.

Indeed, replacing coal-fired plants with nuclear ones is eminently feasible, as that is precisely what France has done. The decision to shut down the burning of coal had some bad effects on those parts of France dependent upon coal-mining, but for the most part it as been rather straight forward. The French government took a US design for a light water reactor (Westinghouse, I believe) and updated it with the then-latest in control & safety. Then it was adopted as the standard unit of power generation. One design, in one standard size, means that all operators can be trained in one central facility & then sent anywhere in the system. If more baseload power is needed in a region, then they plop down another identical nuclear unit right next to the previous one. Waste is handled by vitrification at a central facility. This centralized system is very French, and it has good points & bad points, but by taking this approach and electrifying as much of the railway system as possible, France has managed to do away with coal-fired plants, reduced its vulnerability to oil price shocks about as much as it can in electricity & public transit, and done so with an enviable safety record.

Mark Seecof is absolutely right that this approach does more, far more, to reduce CO2 emissions than any fiddling around with cars. It makes one wonder exactly what the intent of certain greenies is...

Indeed, replacing coal-fired plants with nuclear ones is eminently feasible, as that is precisely what France has done. The decision to shut down the burning of coal had some bad effects on those parts of France dependent upon coal-mining, but for the most part it as been rather straight forward. The French government took a US design for a light water reactor (Westinghouse, I believe) and updated it with the then-latest in control & safety. Then it was adopted as the standard unit of power generation. One design, in one standard size, means that all operators can be trained in one central facility & then sent anywhere in the system. If more baseload power is needed in a region, then they plop down another identical nuclear unit right next to the previous one. Waste is handled by vitrification at a central facility. This centralized system is very French, and it has good points & bad points, but by taking this approach and electrifying as much of the railway system as possible, France has managed to do away with coal-fired plants, reduced its vulnerability to oil price shocks about as much as it can in electricity & public transit, and done so with an enviable safety record.

Mark Seecof is absolutely right that this approach does more, far more, to reduce CO2 emissions than any fiddling around with cars. It makes one wonder exactly what the intent of certain greenies is...

Well, as much as I think nuclear power is good, I also consider the risks...which is 100,000 years of radioactivity.

You put that on the whiteboard as a "potential negative" and almost any alternative looks better by comparison!

Onnthis Bush is all over thr place did you see this yet

Gas Price Gouging Vote Passes As Bush Voices Opposition to Tax Cuts

Instead of looking at what we *can* start doing *now* (replacing coal power plants with nukes, more efficient electric usage, more telecommuting and less real commuting)

More efficient electrical use is already happening -- for example, compact fluorescent bulbs have been proliferating and getting cheaper, and high intesity LEDs-as-an-ambient-lighting-source are still in a largely exploratory stage but progress is being made. Telecommuting? Already there for many people.

And the irony of pushing for more nuclear plants is...if we go that direction (and it would be nice), they could be designed from the very beginning to incorporate water molecule splitting for hydrogen production.

Exactly what realistic alternative energy methods do you see that are being given short-shrift because of "hydrogen buzz"? I'm noticing an increasing number of Civic hybrids on the highway, and according to a relation who is a parts manager at a Toytota store, the Prius continues to sell for $3-4k over sticker.

notagreenie wrote: "...Well, as much as I think nuclear power is good, I also consider the risks...which is 100,000 years of radioactivity...."

A few thoughts/questions on that (and I emphasize that I am not an expert) >>

1.) It seems to me that a properly designed nuclear program ought not produce very much high level waste -- at least not in terms of volume. They produced huge amounts of waste during the 1940's and 1950's because (a) they were fighting a War and (b) they didn't really understand the long-term ramifications of what they were doing.

2.) Whatever happened to the idea of burying waste in the deep ocean subduction zones? If that were done properly, it wouldn't re-enter the biosphere for tens of millions of years, right? And by that time, all the hot stuff would have decayed.

Again, I look at the risk (maybe it's a small one so it's ok?)

Ruin the environment. Ruin the ocean. Save us from big bad C02 and global warming. At want point did Carbon Dioxide become a "pollutant"?

It's a natural by product of combustion. We're not talking about all sorts of chemicals and compounds be pumped into the air, but C02! The stuff you breath in every day. Sheesh...if the "greenies" have managed to control the debate so much that we're worried about C02, the cause is already lost.

That being said, I like nuclear power for a few reasons, but I think risking all of civilization and humanity just because we think it might help with some global warming issues that we never heard of until 20 years ago seems to be overreacting.

notagreenie: Look up how much radioactivity goes up the stack or is trapped with the fly-ash in a coal-burning power plant. With reasonably careful handling, a nuke plant will emit less radioactivity overall. And of course, remember that nuke plants actually burn up radioactive isotopes that were in the ground to begin with...

notagreenie:

Seriously, do you think that replacing coal-burning plants with nuclear reactor will significantly endanger "all of civilization and humanity"? For someone with your handle, you talk an awful lot *like* a greenie.

ellipsis:

"It makes one wonder exactly what the intent of certain greenies is..."

Since this blog is run by someone with a Randian pseudonym, I guess it's all right to point out that Rand viewed the environmental movement as socialism in new clothes.

It's a natural by product of combustion. We're not talking about all sorts of chemicals and compounds be pumped into the air, but C02! The stuff you breath in every day. Sheesh...if the "greenies" have managed to control the debate so much that we're worried about C02, the cause is already lost.

You don't quite see it. We are mining a vast quantity of carbon that was deposited into the ground over an extended period of time, and releasing it back into the atmosphere at far accellerated rate.

Whether this is, or is not, a signficant release in the grand scheme of things and/or a crisis depends on which cadre of politicized scientists you want to hold to, but the idea that it is a "natural byproduct of combustion" doesn't begin to scratch the surface. By that logic, lead and mercury are "natural components of the earth's crust" -- but try introducing them rapidly into a water supply without causing some sort of significant shock to the existing ecosystem in and around that supply.

" ... And of course, remember that nuke plants actually burn up radioactive isotopes that were in the ground to begin with..."

That may be somewhat oversimplified. Plutonium does not occur naturally.

And U-235 has a half-life of more than 700 million years which means that it is releasing its radioactivity very very slowly under natural conditions. But once the U-235 is put into a reactor, you start getting all these non-natural nasties with half-lives in the range of hundreds or thousands of years. And the shorter half-life implies much more intense radiation levels.

Equally to the point, Uranium is relatively abundant in earth's crust but typically at low concentrations; the best ores are about 0.2% or less by mass. And it normally occurs in oxide form, often mingled in other deposits (including, ironically, some of the soft coals used for steam electric power generation).

The kind of isotopes and concentrations that are dropped into the core of a nuclear reactor are the result of a refining and enriching process.

Ann: "It was only after several hot years that we all moved from fear of freezing to fear of frying."

So true. I recall hearing Colorado Senator Tim Wirth bragging on NPR's Fresh Air program about how he put one over on the public by, after having his US Senate committee's hearings on global warming ignored for years, asking the Weather Service to identify the likeliest hottest day of the year in Washington DC and then holding hearings during that week the following year. (There happened, unsurprisingly, to conveniently be a heat wave in progress that year as Sen. Wirth pounded the gavel to open his hearings. Hardly surprising for August -- except to the mouth-breathers who read the TV news, eh?)

On energy policy, I'm mostly in agreement with the sentiments of several others here that were usefully summarized here by markm. Let's get going on a mix of short and long lead time alternatives to today's fuel supply instead of piddling around waiting for a Utopian future technology. A 20 year lead time for the technology to mature enough for a mass market and 20 more years to finance and build the necessary infrastructure sounds like a plan for my grandchildren yet-to-be -- hardly realistic.

Likely, action now using technology available today would hasten the day a wonderful technological fix arrives -- just as the Human Genome Project spurred productive-sector development of technologies that brought that project to completion years (decades?) sooner than expected by that project's early proponents. Plus, greater diversification of fuels would make demand for any particular fuel at least a wee bit more elastic, reducing disruptions caused by any future supply shock. What's not to like?

Jane Galt: "[O]ur policies do the opposite of what we ostensibly want--reducing the environmental impact of our oil consumption, and our dependance on foriegn oil."

So true. And I'm surprised that none of the chest-beating libertarians who've been bashing Jane haven't yet asked "What about the roads?" Among the of the many self-sabotaging statist policies that promote oil consumption are the silly ways wealth is transferred between urban and rural dwellers -- on net, from the former to the latter. Doing away with the Utopian nonsense of so-called universal access schemes for building roads, utilities, and you-name-it everywhere close to the most backwoods-dwelling escapee from the city (who can't bear to do without the city's amenities) would get the US away from those social engineering schemes* the more-libertarian-than-thou sorts so vocally deplore and go a long way toward restoring incentives for people to pursue economically honest efficiencies (like living in denser communities).

*such as this one offered earlier (presumably tongue in cheek) by Brad Hutchings.

Ann: "It was only after several hot years that we all moved from fear of freezing to fear of frying."

So true. I recall hearing Colorado Senator Tim Wirth bragging on NPR's Fresh Air program about how he put one over on the public by, after having his US Senate committee's hearings on global warming ignored for years, asking the Weather Service to identify the likeliest hottest day of the year in Washington DC and then holding hearings during that week the following year. (There happened, unsurprisingly, to conveniently be a heat wave in progress that year as Sen. Wirth pounded the gavel to open his hearings. Hardly surprising for August -- except to the mouth-breathers who read the TV news, eh?)

On energy policy, I'm mostly in agreement with the sentiments of several others here that were usefully summarized here by markm. Let's get going on a mix of short and long lead time alternatives to today's fuel supply instead of piddling around waiting for a Utopian future technology. A 20 year lead time for the technology to mature enough for a mass market and 20 more years to finance and build the necessary infrastructure sounds like a plan for my grandchildren yet-to-be -- hardly realistic.

Likely, action now using technology available today would hasten the day a wonderful technological fix arrives -- just as the Human Genome Project spurred productive-sector development of technologies that brought that project to completion years (decades?) sooner than expected by that project's early proponents. Plus, greater diversification of fuels would make demand for any particular fuel at least a wee bit more elastic, reducing disruptions caused by any future supply shock. What's not to like?

Jane Galt: "[O]ur policies do the opposite of what we ostensibly want--reducing the environmental impact of our oil consumption, and our dependance on foriegn oil."

So true. And I'm surprised that none of the chest-beating libertarians who've been bashing Jane haven't yet asked "What about the roads?" Among the of the many self-sabotaging statist policies that promote oil consumption are the silly ways wealth is transferred between urban and rural dwellers -- on net, from the former to the latter. Doing away with the Utopian nonsense of so-called universal access schemes for building roads, utilities, and you-name-it everywhere close to the most backwoods-dwelling escapee from the city (who can't bear to do without the city's amenities) would get the US away from those social engineering schemes* the more-libertarian-than-thou sorts so vocally deplore and go a long way toward restoring incentives for people to pursue economically honest efficiencies (like living in denser communities).

*such as this one offered earlier (certainly tongue in cheek) by Brad Hutchings.

"Well, as much as I think nuclear power is good, I also consider the risks...which is 100,000 years of radioactivity.

You put that on the whiteboard as a "potential negative" and almost any alternative looks better by comparison!"

Sez who?

Over the next 100,000 years, we either go off-planet and harvest the abundant energy found elsewhere, or we run out of fuel on Earth and revert to savagery.

If we make it off-planet, then a bit of radioactive junk left on Earth is completely irrelevant. If we don't, and we revert to savagery, then a bit of radioactive junk is the least of their problems, as their lives are already nasty, brutish, and short until the next asteroid wipes them out.

Why is it that abortion is the only big business in the United States that liberals don't want regulated?

I don't see the debate being about regulating abortion so much as it's about restricting it, partially or entirely.

Abortion is "regulated". You can't just open an "Abortions 'R Us" in your garage. You have to have certain government licenses (be a doctor or a pharmacist).

Besides, you seem to assume that "liberals love regulation for its own sake."

I think it'd be more accurate to say that some liberals see regulation as a means to a particular ends. For example, they favor emissions regulations because they don't want to breathe noxious fumes. But they don't outlaw driving cars, even though driving creates some polution. They try to see that the freedom to perform the action is balanced against the harm caused to others by it.

Abortion is "regulated". You can't just open an "Abortions 'R Us" in your garage. You have to have certain government licenses (be a doctor or a pharmacist).

Of course it is regulated. But it is also perhaps one of the least-regulated forms of invasive surgery available, at least when performed anywhere outside of a hospital.

Ah.I know.Lets build bigger SUV's.That ought to do it.

New taxes and tax increases will never improve anything but the lifestyles of the unproductive government and NGO employees whose incomes are provided by them. Some pretty reasonable people here have been snowed by that idea. It must be an effect of public schooling.

Well, I see that the usual calls for a Congressional investigation of the oil companies are showing up. Didn't we just have such an investigation 3 or so years ago, and wasn't the conclusion that market forces drive the price of oil? How many such investigations have there been since, oh, 1973 or so? Ten? Fifteen? It seems like every 3 to 5 years some Congresscritter gets a burr under the saddle and goes after the "seven sisters" (ok, the "five sisters"?). The other day I happened to hear O'Reilly on the radio ranting about "obscene profits"; the way I see it, any profit he makes on his written-for-the-8th-grade books is obscene...and should be taxed away for the good of the country. I'm sure he'd disagree, but his yammering reminded me of some old recording from the 1930's, it was so trite and predictable.

So by all means, investigate the oil companies yet again. Then get out of the way of the people working on improved photovoltaics, pebble-bed fission reactors, ocean thermal, improved methods for storing H2, and other possible partial solutions.

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