Energy Secretary Chu Wimps Out Again [View article]
The appointment of Chu was a mistake. Chu is intelligent as proven by his earning a PhD Degree and being awarded a Nobel Prize. However, his intelligence does not include the ability to see the big picture (earned his PhD on a narrow subject) nor make him a good leader or administrator. What he has done so far proves this.
Chu has yet to understand that there is no such thing as clean coal. Assuming coal can be cleaned (which researchers know can't be done economically), how much of the CO2 generated by burning coal can be captured, pumped and sequestered underground and for how long? When the underground storage is filled up in a few years, what then? He is pursuing and spending our limited resources and time on somthing that has no future.
Instead of pursuing clean coal he should be spending money on completing the research in the nuclear field. He should start a Manhattan type projects to complete a prototype on fast breeder reactor, pebble bed reactor and thorium fueled reactors which can supply us with electric power for centuries or more to come. Nuclear can replace not only coal power plants but indirectly, a good part of the energy we use for transportation. More cars will be electric, most deisel/electric trains can be converted to full electric, electric light rail can be returned for city transport, etc. Oil and gas will still play a big role in transportation (airplanes and big ships specially) but will be a much smaller percentage of the total world enery consumption. It is the answer to reversing climate change. It also is a great opportunity to make us less energy dependent. This is the big picture not only Chu is missing but also Obama and Congress.
As to natural gas, no matter how much you sugar coat it, it still procues CO2 as it's end product when burned as fuel. Hence, it is not a good answer. Natural gas is really best used as feedstock for the chemical industry for making medicine, plastics, fabricks, etc.
People, you are wasting your time on coal! Here is why technically CS does not work... in layman terms. To product electric power using coal as fuel, coal is burned to generate heat which is used to turn water in boilers into high pressure steam which is used to turn huge steam turbines that turns electric generators that produce the power we use. In burning, the carbon molecules in coal is combined with oxygen in the air to produce heat and CO2. This CO2 gas is very very high in volume.
To sequester CO2, first it must be captured from the high velocity gas stream going out the boiler and into the chimney and out into the atmosphere. If you have observed a power plant chimney in full operation you will see this very high volume of hot CO2 gas flowing out of the large diameter chimney stack. This gas flow has to be captured and then compressed with very large compressors, run the compressed gas into pipes that sends the gas into the ground..... into some cavern deep into the earth.
Two big problems. First is, to compress the gas, 30-50% of the output power generated by the coal powered power plant is needed. This CO2 capturing plant itself will cost more than the power plant. Second, let us assume somehow that the capturing plant is economically feasible (which it is not) so we can continue the discussioon. The captured and complressed CO2 is now sent to some deep storage spaces below the earth. How long (assuming it exists in the right locations) will it take to get filled up with enormous daily volume of CO2 gas from the power plant? Not very long! Can't store anymore CO2. Then what? We are back where we started.... meaning the CO2 is then again released straight into the atmosphere...and consequent addition to global warming.
Anyone who have taken College Chemistry will understand my logic. [Why Steven Chu who has won a Nobel Prize cannot understand this and does not shoot down CS ideas is beyond me.]
The only significant solution to global warming is building more nuclear power plants. Phasing out coal and phasing in nuclearpower will take 30 years plus. People can adjust over this time period. We need to start with the nuclear power plant design we know followed by more advanced designs that are inherently safer and cannot be used to produce atomic bombs. We need to start building prototypes of various designs of nuclear palnts (which includes plants that use safer and more abundant thorium instead of uranium) as we build new one to replace coal plants and the old nuclear plants built in the 60's and 70's.
AT&T: Does Sirius XM Have a New Competitor? [View article]
Look back a few years ... remember the Motorola satellite phones? They died due the high cost and became BK. AT&T CruiseAast will go in the same direction for the same reason (not the parent company of course!).
Why Is Canadian Housing and Banking Stronger than the U.S.? [View article]
I lived in Canada in the 60's. No surprise they have much less foreclosure problems.
The differences I found then were (I do not know if this is still true today):
1) Universities throughout Canada were almost equal in quality. I worked with graduates from differnt universities and the quality were the same -- all good. I did not encounter a single engineer from a diploma mill like here in the US.
2) People were considerate and polite regardless of whether they finished high school only or college. I attribute this to the quality of home training and good elementary and high schools. Boistrous behavior did not exist among Canadians. The few times I witnessed it usually was of an American who came over to Canada for a short visit. [Americans and other foreigners who lived there long enough changed their ways soon enough....I did, as well as all my other friends.]
Just these two differences alone explains much of the differences between how business behave in the US and Canada. One of the first engineering assignments I was given was to eliminate the polution and waste being generated by the plant I worked at. This was long before the EPA was formed in the US. This is just one example of good corporate behavior practiced there.
Here is my two cents worth of observation that may help explain the deminishing return being observed here. I am in the engineering/construction business and I have seen over the last 20+ years how we are forced to do more and more of things that do not contribute to a good end product. We spend so much resources - material as well as manpower - to avoid exposing ourselves to the risk of being sued should something bad happen. Cost benefit analysis are not done nor required for taking those extra measures that "avoids" a lawsuit. [This by the way can be clearly seen in the medical field when unecessary tests are ordered to protect the medical service provider.... at the expense of the consumer.]
This is also done in the name of "better safety". Extra and expensive steps are taken to make an action that has a probability of being 99.95% safe already --- so it will be 99.99995% safer -- based usually in the 'judgement' of an unqualified person who has no idea on the subject of risk analysis. This happens daily in industry and in business.... millions of times. We are spending an ever increasing amount of money in the US on activities that bring negligible or zero returns. Billions are wasted every year on these kinds of activities!
On the other hand, an activity that will increase the usefulness of debt to very large scales is building of nuclear power plants and retirement of coal power plants. Nukes built 30 - 40 years ago are still giving us solid returns. In fact some of them have been upgraded to bring even more returns for the next 20 years. We need more of them to both replace the ones nearing their end-of-life, to provide power to the rising demand of our increasing population and to ---- this is the big one --- replace coal fired power plants.
Coal fired power plants are a very expensive losing proposition. They produce the highest volume of CO2 that causes our climate to change that in turn, causes destruction all over the US. Destruction by wild fires, tornadoes, hurricane, floods, extreme drought --- are all hugely negative returns! We should stop building new coal plants and start building new Nuclear Plants. The Asians and Europeans have realized this and are starting to build nuke plants. Clean coal is a myth. Anyone who has taken basic chemistry understand that when air and carbon in coal are burned, CO2 is produced and -- in very high volumes. To think that these high volumes of CO2 gas emitted by coal fired power plants all over the US can be captured and stored underground is absurd. To capture it, highly compresse it and send it to underground storage takes more than half of the useful energy produced in burning it. And then the big question is, how much compressed gas can be stored and for how long? A few years? At what cost?
The US economy grew larger and faster than most countries in large part, because of cheap energy. Investing in nuclear energy is undoubtedly, one of the best way to bring up the usefulness of debt.
Using Anti-Trust Law to Break Up 'Too-Big-to-Fail' Banks [View article]
How about reinstituting the Glass-Steagall Act? Prior to repeal in 1998, that Act prevented the banks from growing too big and from putting depositor's money at great risk (it also protects FDIC). Without big funds, the banks could not have bought the toxic assets and expecting investors to buy it from them....which in the end the invosetors did not. AIG issued the CDS' thniking it was a safe bet based on historic data on mortgages from pre-repeal of Glass-Steagall. With the Glass-Steagall in place, no bank, commercial or investment could have grown to too-big-to-fail.
Wind Power: What We Can Learn from Denmark [View article]
In response to Heissman's question --
Denmark is a relatively flat country, hence they do not have significant hydro generation power plants. natural earthen basins which have low head of water will not do. We do in the US but there needs to be transmission lines that connect windpower to hydro dams before this can happen. Again, the limitation is very apparent in the Texas to Canada Boone Pickens wind corridor. This area is far away from areas that can be dammed or already has hydrodams. High capacity transmission line infrastructures have to be built.
This is one government project that Obama can invest on to generate US jobs in the next two years. He just has to make sure the power lines, steel towers, etc. (materials) should be made in the USA. Obama need to rein in the environmentalists who are sure to block projects like these because it "ruins" open space poeple's views and might impede the flights of migratory birds.
3 Scenarios for The Future of the Auto Industry [View article]
In addition, parts manufacturers supply not just one car manufacturer but several. So, GM going down does not mean all its parts suppliers go down with it. Example: Borg Warner supply brake parts to about 20 manufacturers and autoparts stores and will survive easily. Also, when GM or Ford declare Chapter 11, they will still produce cars, this time, models people want, and in volumes the market wants.
On Nov 11 03:58 PM Tony C wrote:
> The "1 job in 10" number assumes there would be no auto industry > left in the US. False assumption. Americans will need as many cars > as they ever have. It's just a question of who would build them, > and where. Chrysler already builds most of its cars (not trucks) > outside the US.
Obama's Green Obsession: More Harm Than Good? [View article]
Intermitent power. Can a factory or plant run on intermitent power? No. Can Chemical Plants that involves controlled chemical reactions run on intermitent power...and not have an accident? No. Can a regular office run on intermitent power? No. Have you ever lived in a place where because of adverse weather, the power got knocked out for a few days? Human activities just about shut down and stopped during those powerless days. Well, this is what it will be if we rely on wind and solar power. We can't; not possible in this modern world of ours. That is why we don't. We need reliable base power from coal, oil, gas and yes..... that polution free nuclear plant.
On Nov 11 09:22 PM Evanoff wrote:
> Interestingly, I love your argument about labor intensivity with > the wheelbarrows and outlawed bulldozers because it illustrates the > environmental point so clearly. > Let's take another example: There are a limited number of trees. > Arbitrarily, let's say there are 10,000 trees left in the forest > and we are willing to cut down 1000 of them. If one man with a chainsaw > can cut down 1000 trees by himself, that is one employed logger. > If a law goes into effect banning the use of chainsaws (not so strange > really: think about rules on net fishing intended to limit catch), > and a man with an axe or handsaw can cut only 100 trees, then that > is 10 logging jobs. > > The point you are missing completely is the constraint of limited > resources. Having the economies of scale, lower unit costs, more > efficient (and fewer) employees all make sense only in an environment > of unlimited potential growth of a whole industry and competition > between companies for share of that growing market. > > The world's fisheries are the first place where we have seen the > need to reduce total catch and therefore limit maximum possible efficiency > (an even BIGGER net could catch ALL the fish at once! why not?). > With forestry, the maximum limit is drawing into focus. The question > of peak oil production has been asked, if not yet answered. > > And coal? How exactly do you put a mountain back together? It is > one of the single most destructive sources of energy to extract. > Have you ever been to an Appalachian strip mine? Personally, I'd > rather have fluctuating electricity in my home on windless days, > and a nice mountainside nearby for recreation, than a million watts > of power in my house and nothing of beauty left to enjoy outside > it. > Inefficient sources of energy are worth it for reasons that trump > efficiency. I'll take the wind power, thanks.
Sirius Finally Provides Wall Street the Clarity It Demanded [View article]
The best idea I have read is Sell/Lease of channels. Brilliant!
SIRI-XM can afford to lease a few channels without affecting its normal programming. Surely there are some companies/entities there that want to broadcast on satellite but don't have the financial capability.
Don't Blame Deregulation For This Crisis, It's All About Lack of Regulation [View article]
Until the Community Reinvestment Act was passed by the Democratic Congress, signed by Carter 1977 and given more teeth by Clinton in 1999, the decades old banking practice of requiring proof of ability and reliability to pay a morgage back worked very well. The was no need for regulations. The Democrats desire to bring their poor constituents started all this mess that we are now all paying for.
Which Candidate Will Get to Spend the $700 Billion? [View article]
I disagree with you. Obama if elected President will be a disaster. If you look back at the records, the root of this 3 Trillion Dollar economic fiasco is the passage of the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) of 1977. It was created by a Democratic controlled Congress and passed by a Democratic President, Jimmy Carter. It was made more potent by Bill Clinton in 1999. Even today, Barney Frank and his cohorts in Congress is still unapologetically defending his blocking of moves by Republicans to straighten our Freddie and Fannie Mae in 2003. It looks like Congress will remain under Democratic control. Obama has never ever gone against his party and will never veto any legislation passed by a Democratic congress. That will be so disastrous it will make the present fiasco tame by comparison. And, like the fiasco of today, may not show up until a few years later when it will be so enourmous it is too hard to imagine.
Without the CRA passage in 1977, this economic distaster of today would not have been possible.
Google's effort to address our energy problem is applaudable. I am sure this proposal was generated by a group of highly competent people. However, their competency does not reach the levels required to address a national problem for what they outlined here has a basic flaw.
Alternative energy such as solar and wind are unreliable, meaning, it is not available all the time when consumers demand power. Wind and sun are erratic in nature and hence unreliable. Geothermal is limited to a few locations around the country.
We need basepower that will supply power whenever there is demand, 24/7, no rests. Wind and Solar can only be used as a complementary power source.
Base power can only be supplied by clean and reliable conventional nuclear power. Further into the future, fast breeder reactors will need to be developed to supply endless power. We need to restart the research that was stopped by the Clinton administration in 1998 because they could not understand its importance and so now, we have to catch up to China, Russia and India who do.
These alternative sources of clean power require time to build and place into our energy structure. In the meantime we have to rely on gas, oil and coal to tide us over. And, we need to plan their replacement in an orderly manner.
helplessobse, the efficiency of gas engines is about 25%, meaning 72% of the BTU's in the fuel is lost to heat and friction. If you redo your cals, you will find out why the Tesla works. Electric motors eff gets up to the 95+% range.
Energy Secretary Chu Wimps Out Again [View article]
Chu has yet to understand that there is no such thing as clean coal. Assuming coal can be cleaned (which researchers know can't be done economically), how much of the CO2 generated by burning coal can be captured, pumped and sequestered underground and for how long? When the underground storage is filled up in a few years, what then? He is pursuing and spending our limited resources and time on somthing that has no future.
Instead of pursuing clean coal he should be spending money on completing the research in the nuclear field. He should start a Manhattan type projects to complete a prototype on fast breeder reactor, pebble bed reactor and thorium fueled reactors which can supply us with electric power for centuries or more to come. Nuclear can replace not only coal power plants but indirectly, a good part of the energy we use for transportation. More cars will be electric, most deisel/electric trains can be converted to full electric, electric light rail can be returned for city transport, etc. Oil and gas will still play a big role in transportation (airplanes and big ships specially) but will be a much smaller percentage of the total world enery consumption. It is the answer to reversing climate change. It also is a great opportunity to make us less energy dependent. This is the big picture not only Chu is missing but also Obama and Congress.
As to natural gas, no matter how much you sugar coat it, it still procues CO2 as it's end product when burned as fuel. Hence, it is not a good answer. Natural gas is really best used as feedstock for the chemical industry for making medicine, plastics, fabricks, etc.
Why Coal Is Inevitable [View article]
To sequester CO2, first it must be captured from the high velocity gas stream going out the boiler and into the chimney and out into the atmosphere. If you have observed a power plant chimney in full operation you will see this very high volume of hot CO2 gas flowing out of the large diameter chimney stack. This gas flow has to be captured and then compressed with very large compressors, run the compressed gas into pipes that sends the gas into the ground..... into some cavern deep into the earth.
Two big problems. First is, to compress the gas, 30-50% of the output power generated by the coal powered power plant is needed. This CO2 capturing plant itself will cost more than the power plant. Second, let us assume somehow that the capturing plant is economically feasible (which it is not) so we can continue the discussioon. The captured and complressed CO2 is now sent to some deep storage spaces below the earth. How long (assuming it exists in the right locations) will it take to get filled up with enormous daily volume of CO2 gas from the power plant? Not very long! Can't store anymore CO2. Then what? We are back where we started.... meaning the CO2 is then again released straight into the atmosphere...and consequent addition to global warming.
Anyone who have taken College Chemistry will understand my logic. [Why Steven Chu who has won a Nobel Prize cannot understand this and does not shoot down CS ideas is beyond me.]
The only significant solution to global warming is building more nuclear power plants. Phasing out coal and phasing in nuclearpower will take 30 years plus. People can adjust over this time period. We need to start with the nuclear power plant design we know followed by more advanced designs that are inherently safer and cannot be used to produce atomic bombs. We need to start building prototypes of various designs of nuclear palnts (which includes plants that use safer and more abundant thorium instead of uranium) as we build new one to replace coal plants and the old nuclear plants built in the 60's and 70's.
AT&T: Does Sirius XM Have a New Competitor? [View article]
Why Is Canadian Housing and Banking Stronger than the U.S.? [View article]
The differences I found then were (I do not know if this is still true today):
1) Universities throughout Canada were almost equal in quality. I worked with graduates from differnt universities and the quality were the same -- all good. I did not encounter a single engineer from a diploma mill like here in the US.
2) People were considerate and polite regardless of whether they finished high school only or college. I attribute this to the quality of home training and good elementary and high schools. Boistrous behavior did not exist among Canadians. The few times I witnessed it usually was of an American who came over to Canada for a short visit. [Americans and other foreigners who lived there long enough changed their ways soon enough....I did, as well as all my other friends.]
Just these two differences alone explains much of the differences between how business behave in the US and Canada. One of the first engineering assignments I was given was to eliminate the polution and waste being generated by the plant I worked at. This was long before the EPA was formed in the US. This is just one example of good corporate behavior practiced there.
The Declining Usefulness of Debt [View article]
This is also done in the name of "better safety". Extra and expensive steps are taken to make an action that has a probability of being 99.95% safe already --- so it will be 99.99995% safer -- based usually in the 'judgement' of an unqualified person who has no idea on the subject of risk analysis. This happens daily in industry and in business.... millions of times. We are spending an ever increasing amount of money in the US on activities that bring negligible or zero returns. Billions are wasted every year on these kinds of activities!
On the other hand, an activity that will increase the usefulness of debt to very large scales is building of nuclear power plants and retirement of coal power plants. Nukes built 30 - 40 years ago are still giving us solid returns. In fact some of them have been upgraded to bring even more returns for the next 20 years. We need more of them to both replace the ones nearing their end-of-life, to provide power to the rising demand of our increasing population and to ---- this is the big one --- replace coal fired power plants.
Coal fired power plants are a very expensive losing proposition. They produce the highest volume of CO2 that causes our climate to change that in turn, causes destruction all over the US. Destruction by wild fires, tornadoes, hurricane, floods, extreme drought --- are all hugely negative returns! We should stop building new coal plants and start building new Nuclear Plants. The Asians and Europeans have realized this and are starting to build nuke plants. Clean coal is a myth. Anyone who has taken basic chemistry understand that when air and carbon in coal are burned, CO2 is produced and -- in very high volumes. To think that these high volumes of CO2 gas emitted by coal fired power plants all over the US can be captured and stored underground is absurd. To capture it, highly compresse it and send it to underground storage takes more than half of the useful energy produced in burning it. And then the big question is, how much compressed gas can be stored and for how long? A few years? At what cost?
The US economy grew larger and faster than most countries in large part, because of cheap energy. Investing in nuclear energy is undoubtedly, one of the best way to bring up the usefulness of debt.
Using Anti-Trust Law to Break Up 'Too-Big-to-Fail' Banks [View article]
Wind Power: What We Can Learn from Denmark [View article]
Denmark is a relatively flat country, hence they do not have significant hydro generation power plants. natural earthen basins which have low head of water will not do. We do in the US but there needs to be transmission lines that connect windpower to hydro dams before this can happen. Again, the limitation is very apparent in the Texas to Canada Boone Pickens wind corridor. This area is far away from areas that can be dammed or already has hydrodams. High capacity transmission line infrastructures have to be built.
This is one government project that Obama can invest on to generate US jobs in the next two years. He just has to make sure the power lines, steel towers, etc. (materials) should be made in the USA. Obama need to rein in the environmentalists who are sure to block projects like these because it "ruins" open space poeple's views and might impede the flights of migratory birds.
3 Scenarios for The Future of the Auto Industry [View article]
On Nov 11 03:58 PM Tony C wrote:
> The "1 job in 10" number assumes there would be no auto industry
> left in the US. False assumption. Americans will need as many cars
> as they ever have. It's just a question of who would build them,
> and where. Chrysler already builds most of its cars (not trucks)
> outside the US.
Obama's Green Obsession: More Harm Than Good? [View article]
On Nov 11 09:22 PM Evanoff wrote:
> Interestingly, I love your argument about labor intensivity with
> the wheelbarrows and outlawed bulldozers because it illustrates the
> environmental point so clearly.
> Let's take another example: There are a limited number of trees.
> Arbitrarily, let's say there are 10,000 trees left in the forest
> and we are willing to cut down 1000 of them. If one man with a chainsaw
> can cut down 1000 trees by himself, that is one employed logger.
> If a law goes into effect banning the use of chainsaws (not so strange
> really: think about rules on net fishing intended to limit catch),
> and a man with an axe or handsaw can cut only 100 trees, then that
> is 10 logging jobs.
>
> The point you are missing completely is the constraint of limited
> resources. Having the economies of scale, lower unit costs, more
> efficient (and fewer) employees all make sense only in an environment
> of unlimited potential growth of a whole industry and competition
> between companies for share of that growing market.
>
> The world's fisheries are the first place where we have seen the
> need to reduce total catch and therefore limit maximum possible efficiency
> (an even BIGGER net could catch ALL the fish at once! why not?).
> With forestry, the maximum limit is drawing into focus. The question
> of peak oil production has been asked, if not yet answered.
>
> And coal? How exactly do you put a mountain back together? It is
> one of the single most destructive sources of energy to extract.
> Have you ever been to an Appalachian strip mine? Personally, I'd
> rather have fluctuating electricity in my home on windless days,
> and a nice mountainside nearby for recreation, than a million watts
> of power in my house and nothing of beauty left to enjoy outside
> it.
> Inefficient sources of energy are worth it for reasons that trump
> efficiency. I'll take the wind power, thanks.
Sirius Finally Provides Wall Street the Clarity It Demanded [View article]
SIRI-XM can afford to lease a few channels without affecting its normal programming. Surely there are some companies/entities there that want to broadcast on satellite but don't have the financial capability.
Winning ETFs under Obama [View article]
Don't Blame Deregulation For This Crisis, It's All About Lack of Regulation [View article]
Which Candidate Will Get to Spend the $700 Billion? [View article]
Without the CRA passage in 1977, this economic distaster of today would not have been possible.
Google Outlines Clean Energy Plan [View article]
Alternative energy such as solar and wind are unreliable, meaning, it is not available all the time when consumers demand power. Wind and sun are erratic in nature and hence unreliable. Geothermal is limited to a few locations around the country.
We need basepower that will supply power whenever there is demand, 24/7, no rests. Wind and Solar can only be used as a complementary power source.
Base power can only be supplied by clean and reliable conventional nuclear power. Further into the future, fast breeder reactors will need to be developed to supply endless power. We need to restart the research that was stopped by the Clinton administration in 1998 because they could not understand its importance and so now, we have to catch up to China, Russia and India who do.
These alternative sources of clean power require time to build and place into our energy structure. In the meantime we have to rely on gas, oil and coal to tide us over. And, we need to plan their replacement in an orderly manner.
Buffett's Battery Buy [View article]