Comments on: Americans on Energy: New UT Study

By: Jim Thomerson

Jim Thomerson — Wed, 18 Apr 2012 22:25:32 +0000

I saw,on TV in passing, that the Feds have OKed construction of a very large facility, on the Gulf Coast, to export natural gas. I think this is it.
http://www.brownsvilleherald.com/articles/gas-136220-export-natural.html

By: jdmeth

jdmeth — Wed, 18 Apr 2012 16:40:59 +0000

By definition half of the population has a below average I.Q. About ten percent of the rest are just stupid. These people are easily fooled, or lead, but they are not always right. Even if they are right about a problem they may demand the wrong solution to said problem. Reducing the worlds use of fossil fuels by the amount needed to reverse global warming will cost tens of trillions of dollars and billions, yes billions, of lives. You can’t take away an energy source without having a replacement in place. It could be done with current technology if we put forth a global war like effort and reduce ninety percent of the population to a third world existence.

Most of the growth in fossil fuel usage is in China and India. You and what army are going to tell two and a half billion people to stop doing what they want to do? Stalin, Mao, and Pol Pot found out that you have to kill most of them. I’m willing if you are.

By: Jim Thomerson

Jim Thomerson — Sat, 14 Apr 2012 17:30:04 +0000

Looking at Science Daily, I see a fair amount of research on how the take water apart into hydrogen and oxygen. I haven’t seen any mention of study of the dark reaction; making CO2 into carbohydrate. One would think that would be the ideal way to sequester CO2; make it into cellulose and build houses out of it.

By: Nemo

Nemo — Fri, 13 Apr 2012 18:27:07 +0000

Tlazolteotl: Hydrogen isn’t an energy source, unless you have a working fusion reactor. It’s merely an energy transport.

Water + energy -> hydrogen + oxygen
Hydrogen + oxygen -> water + slightly less energy

I’m sure you know this, but were perhaps not realizing that water would be (is) the primary source of hydrogen. It’s not like we mine it. Or, you can get it out of hydrocarbons, but that doesn’t really help.

By: Nemo

Nemo — Fri, 13 Apr 2012 18:17:27 +0000

We need to rebrand “natural gas”, which is a really stupid term anyway. Let’s just call it what it is: methane. Nothing difficult about that word. Oh, but wait, “natural gas” isn’t pure methane. So: “dirty methane”.

By: Tlazolteotl

Tlazolteotl — Thu, 12 Apr 2012 22:19:17 +0000

*harrumph*!

That should have been “I’m disheartened that there _isn’t_ aggressive funding…”

I even previewed and everything.

By: Tlazolteotl

Tlazolteotl — Thu, 12 Apr 2012 22:16:36 +0000

MadScientist:

Plus, fracking!

I’d love for there to be a huge investment in energy that did not depend on carbon. Even natural gas use releases warming gasses into the atmosphere, and I don’t think natural gas is a long term solution to the problem.

I’ve spent my entire life distrustful of nuclear energy, but I think it might be worthwhile to build some plants with technology newer than the 1970s as a stopgap until we can get to something preferable. I don’t know what that looks like (maybe hydrogen?), but I’m very disheartened that aggressive funding to DOE or anyone else for the research required to move humans off of dependence on the carbon-hydrogen bond.

By: Jim Thomerson

Jim Thomerson — Thu, 12 Apr 2012 20:45:00 +0000

I see in today’s newspaper that there is an oversupply of natural gas. Price is very low, and storage space is running out.

By: MadScientist

MadScientist — Thu, 12 Apr 2012 07:43:47 +0000

The “natural gas” gambit goes like this: (a) It’s not as dirty as that filthy coal stuff and (b) if you burn natural gas rather than coal, you emit 30% less CO2 for each unit of energy produced. LNG was marketed as a means of meeting Kyoto Protocol obligations with minimal effort; unfortunately the reality is that it’s simply not a good enough solution. One problem is that a monstrous amount of coal is used to produce energy and switching to natural gas as the fuel will jack up gas prices and cause gas shortages. Like oil, gas is getting harder to get at (though the industry still believes gas supplies will outlast oil).

By: Mark Hadfield

Mark Hadfield — Wed, 11 Apr 2012 22:58:30 +0000

Greg, your footnote links to a collection of posts on the naturalistic fallacy. Do you mean that people are well disposed to natural gas because of the word “natural” in the name? What a jaw-dropping thought!