No, not THAT kind of grass........

A small but renewable energy source.

http://www.newsday.com/ap/national/ap691.htm

-- Anonymous, January 14, 2001

Answers

It's a trap Pam.

"Alternative" energy sources as presently defined are a dead end. Biomass (rather old stuff) is exactly what we're burning now but it takes less work (joules) to extract, haul and burn than it produces. That's the key. Its always been that way. A pioneer cutting down a tree got less energy out of the resulting firewood than it took the tree to grow.

Subsidies as described in the article may make a 5% insertion of grasses worth it to the grass growers but the result is still a negative in terms of "work". (Consider the work needed to provide the various subsidies.)

Solar & wind have the same problem. The only things that makes either attractive are subsidies and that both systems are produced using cheap energy from good old fossil fuel or nukes. Neither can produce enough "work" to replace themselves within their productive lifetimes let alone leave leftover engergy for our use.

I worry Pam. I worry about may grandkids grandkids. But then, I worry alot.

Aside from Davis' reference to a website talking stuff undecipherable, nuclear fusion is my greatgreatgreatgrandkids best hope.

-- Anonymous, January 14, 2001

That's a peculiar argument. All energy generation procedures produce less energy than required to generate the stored energy in the first place; second law of thermodynamics guarantees that.

-- Anonymous, January 14, 2001

Carlos, I know people who have wind generators annd they sell their excess to the local utilities. Wind is a viable resource.

-- Anonymous, January 14, 2001

True mpc. Read Pam's article and you'll see the negative "work" involved.

John: The point was how much "work" does it take to create a windmill vs what it will give back over its lifetime. If energy substitutes for "work" for you OK.

-- Anonymous, January 14, 2001

Carlos:

Most of the present alternative energy schemes require more energy to produce than they will generate over their usable lifetime. This includes solar, wind, biomass, etc. I have posted links to the analyses in the past. I have now given up on actual data making any difference.

Best Wishes,,,,

Z

-- Anonymous, January 14, 2001

Si. Wish I'd read your stuff Z. Probably would have saved me a lot of time.

-- Anonymous, January 14, 2001

Carlos:

You are obviously more conservative than I am; but don't get me going on the lack of environmental damage caused by wind production of power. I was given a tour of a wind farm in northern California [I'm sure that you know the one] a few years back. I was wading, knee-deep, in migrating birds that had met their end in the blades. Not too environmentally safe in my view.

Best Wishes,,,,

Z

-- Anonymous, January 14, 2001

Carlos--

So how long do we have to enjoy this excellent style of life: posting on the internet with the coffee maker going in the background; a Bond movie coming up on TV and microwave popcorn with it?

Z--

Please post the links again.

-- Anonymous, January 14, 2001

Pam:

I would love to do that, but it isn't possible in this fast moving world [we are talking about 1999; a millineum ago]. Links were to Harvard edu, UTex edu and Cal SD edu.

They are gone now; but you can find the same information with a google search.

Best Wishes,,,

Z

-- Anonymous, January 14, 2001

Z,

I might just do a search on that myself, but what you say "sounds" right, anyway. It's the part that alternative energy advocates apparently don't consider.

Unless that source will last an exceedingly long time (maybe some forms of solar panel?), it's a net loss, anyway you cut it. The "cost" in energy to design, build and ship the thing will probably exceed whatever you'll get from the machine, unless it DOES produce for many, many years.

Related topic: electric cars. Environmentalists wax eloquent about how they'll help protect the environment. Where do they think the electricity comes from to charge the batteries? To make the tires, the seats, the body, the motors, etc., etc.?

We need sources of energy that have much higher yield than at present, and better ways of storing energy to meet peak demands.

-- Anonymous, January 14, 2001

Solar's a viable option in the forwseeable future. Wave power's preferable. I have a deep fondness for OTECs, but that's a personal thing, and they haven't been profitable up until this point. Nuclear would be the easiest "direct" alternative, but my suspicion is that any long-term process would involve a combination of all three.

I must also voice my skepticism to Carlos' claim about the viability of solar power. I've personally built a small power tower, and can vouch that it cost me less energy to build than it turned out in its lifetime (seeing as the energy cost was the production of some sticks and mirrors), and that the lifetime terminated when I got bored with the experiment. At some level, all energy production costs energy in a closed system, but a closed solar system involves the sun.

-- Anonymous, January 14, 2001

(Permission to reprint expressly granted.)

THE GRAND CONSPIRACY

by Jay Hanson -- www.dieoff.org

"Beware of greeks bearing gifts."-- Anonymous

______________________
LAISSEZ-FAIRE POLITICS

The great thinkers of the 18th century discovered that "laissez- faire" economics and free trade led to peace and social justice (we now know it's because laissez-faire allows individuals to maximize "inclusive fitness"). In short, laissez-faire compels both peasants and tyrants to "unwittingly" lay down their weapons for beads and trinkets!

In his Wealth of Nations, Adam Smith made elaborate economic arguments for laissez-faire, but the attentive reader can find the hidden political arguments here as well:

"the king was ... incapable of restraining the violence of the great lords... They [made] war according to their own discretion, almost continually upon one another, and very frequently upon the king; and in the open country ... [was] a sense of violence, rapine, and disorder... [but] for the gratification of the most childish, the meanest and the most sordid of all vanities they gradually bartered their whole power and authority [and] became as insignificant as any substantial burgher or tradesman in a city."

"... commerce and manufactures gradually introduced order and good government, and with them, the liberty and security of individuals, among the inhabitants of the country, who had before lived in almost in a continual state of war with their neighbors, and of servile dependency upon their superiors."

___________________________
THE TROJAN HORSE: DEMOCRACY

In order for Smith's laissez-faire to do its work, its true purpose had to remain hidden from view. To that end, James Madison and others (mostly unknown by me), but certainly the most-influential Framers of the American Constitution, invented a political model that was nothing but a hoax -- a "Trojan Horse" designed to propagate a laissez-faire economic system around the world.

As part of the ongoing deception, an economic theory was invented that 1) made no sense; and 2) could not be disproved (was unscientific). In short, the ostensible political system (so- called "democracy") did nothing, while the true political system -- the economic system -- was obscured by circular arguments and nonsense. Neoclassical economics really was, as Hazel Henderson wrote, "nothing but politics in disguise".

__________
CONCLUSION

We have seen WHY America's political system is hopelessly corrupt and incompetent. It's because it was DESIGNED that way. We have seen WHY economics is a nonsensical social science instead of a true science. It's because it was DESIGNED that way! We have seen WHY laissez- faire brings peace and social justice. It's because it allows individuals to maximize inclusive fitness.

The fatal error is that our economics was invented before thermodynamics was incorporated into physics. The first law of thermodynamics: "no creation". In other words, the world is a "fixed pie" with respect to energy -- fixed stocks and fixed flows. The second law: every economic activity wastes energy.

We now know that the faster society pisses-away what's left of its energy, the faster it will collapse into anarchy and chaos [ Joseph Tainter; http://dieoff.com/page134.htm ]. The question then becomes: "How should society spend what remains of its fixed pie of energy?" My answer is the same as Smith's: as "a means of control."

Jay -- www.dieoff.org

(Was it just a coincidence that Wealth of Nations was published in 1776? I wonder...)

-- Anonymous, January 15, 2001

Um, Jay Hanson is an extremist who's already passed judgement on the human race. Bringing him into power discussions is akin to bringing Gary North into Y2K discussions: he's already reached a conclusion (in fact, he reached a very y2k-esque conclusion in the last page of his site), and everything will fit into his theory, whether or not its relevant. Kinda like the guy who invented Olduvai theory.

<Shrug>. in the long run, everything is doomed to an inevitable entropic decay anyway. The accumulation of disorder in closed systems guarantees that every effort is futile. Mortality is the only thing that makes it tolerable, even beautiful.

-- Anonymous, January 15, 2001

(Gee, y'think Mike doesn't want to focus on JDBC at the moment? Naaaaaaaah.)

Also, just to point out a flaw in Hanson's argument: he's correct that any closed system will, by the first law, never generate new energy. HOWEVER, our system includes the sun; ultimately, all of the power we use on this planet is solar, just run through a complicated set of chemical filters. Until the sun runs out, we have power.

A good example of this principle would be the "life globes" that you can buy in some shops. These globes consist of a small aquatic animal and a couple of plants. As long as the globe gets light, life will continue. If the globe is covered, everything dies.

Incidentally, did you know that you can temporarily violate the 1st law of thermodynamics? In any vacuum, particles will be generated for brief periods of time; as long as their momentum and duration falls under the limits of the uncertainty principle, they can exist without bothering the rest of the world. This leads to interesting experiments involving Casimir forces.

-- Anonymous, January 15, 2001