Obama!!!

The mighty UN:

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“The gladdest moment in human life, methinks, is a departure into unknown lands.” – Sir Richard Burton

There also were scams involving combustion engine vehicles in their early days. New technology often brings unscrupulous con-men and gullible investors together. But I see the inevitable doom of the electrobus in other details of the story, particularly the part that points out, "All battery buses have a limited range because of the weight of their batteries." Which is still true today. Even worse, however, it acknowledges the early electrobus "needed 1.5 tonnes of lead-acid batteries to carry its 34 passengers." A 1.5 metric ton of lead-acid batteries is a lot of battery, a lot of lead, a lot of acid, and a lot of pollution in mining the lead, making the acid, building the battery, and eventually disposing of it in a time before people realized even lead-based paint can be deadly. The cost of building and maintaining batteries is what eventually put electric cars out of the running in favor of the cheaper, more effective internal combustion in the early days of car manufacture, and it likely will be a factor in what eventually dooms battery cars today, especially the shortage of lithium for lithium batteries that are already in great demand for laptops and other portable electric devices such as ipods and all those other modern miriacles. Demand for lithium is already outstripping supplies and driving up the costs of batteries. Now imagine what happens to the market when they start making hundreds of thousands of autos, each requiring hundreds of pounds of batteries.

The article goes on to say, "It could travel 60km (38 miles) on one charge. So at lunchtime the buses went to a garage in Victoria and drove up a ramp. The batteries, slung under the electrobus, were lowered onto a trolley and replaced with fresh ones. It all took three minutes."

I suspect that's 3 minutes replacement time per vehicle, not 3 minutes for the whole fleet. Even per vehicle, that sounds faster than an Indy 500 pit crew. In April 1906, the London Electrobus Co. wanted to put 300 electrobuses on London streets, which means each noon it would take 900 minutes or 15 hours to replace 300 batteries--if all the workers and all the batteries were available as needed and there was nothing to disrupt the replacement flow (like maybe the last 100 buses having to be pushed up the ramp because their batteries were dead after inching forward in line bus after bus. Assuming noon was also a period of maximum demand for transportation if people left their offices for lunch, that means a major inconvenience for would-be riders as many of the electrobuses would be out of circulation from noon until 3 a.m. in the morning while their batteries were being replaced.

What did work starting in that period and extending for many, many years into the late 20th century were the electric street cars powered by overhead electric lines or by underground mechanical hookups powered by electric power like the San Francisco street cars that are still running or the subways that now transport people efficiently in London, New York, Paris, and other great cities today.

As then, most electric cars available today take hours to recharge their batteries, with most of the recharge occurring overnight, which puts the vehicles effectively out of use for a good portion of the 24-hour day. Question now is when hundreds of thousands, maybe millions of electric cars start being plugged in at night to recharge, is that going to create another peak in power demand triggering as high or higher rate for night time electrical production than for day-time production for industrial and manufacturing use? It would appear it would also run up nighttime costs of doing the wash, playing videos, going online, watching TV, going out for a meal and a movie, or turning on a lamp to read.

I don't have much faith in a democracy that feels it must "force" any of its citizens to do the best thing for the country. If you look back over our history, you'll see we at as a people are at our best when we are rewarded for our actions. It was the incentive of free or at least cheap land that caused our early population to move west and settle the continent. The government didn't tell the railroads, "We're gonna tax hell out of you if you don't build an intercontinental railroad." Instead, it gave the railroad entrepreneurs free land on which they not only built railroads but were then able to sell to settlers who build towns and factories and farms that provided the railroads steady income. That's why during the Civil War when demand and prices for steel were at their peak and more than a million men were in the Union army, private companies were able to start building the Transcontinental Railroad from two opposite directions, eventually meeting in the middle shortly after the war.

It's like my ol granny used to say, you can catch more flies with honey than with vinegar every time.

I just thought I'd post this, I hope it hasnt been posted before:





I thought it was pretty funny.

Is there someplace I can get a translation of this????

All fair points there ruf (& i doff my history hat to you naturally, and my logistics cap too ). Think the scam-appeal of 'miracle tech' investment is bound to rear its head again with all the new energy rush and that. Just found it interesting the 1906 electrobus had so many parallels (& problems) with today's versions . But yeah, i figured as soon as combustion-engine buses with a better shelf life came on-line the electro was done and dusted anyway . [Do have a lot of affection for some of the alternatives you mention, trams etc, but also 'the Tube' going electric around 1890 while London was still pretty horse-drawn above ground ]

Talking of retro-tech again, there's a move back to DC electricity being mooted, wouldya believe, because its long range transmission advantages help 'supergrid' shuttling of electricity around the country That may solve some of the issues above if elec cars were to take off (and deals with some of the intermittency issues of many renewable sources). I'm more in favour of some form of cellulose or algal based ethanol in terms of 'green' propulsion (IE non food-competitive, either from grasses on non-arable land or 'algal farms' etc). Would be nice anyway , although seems unlikely they'd be able to meet even current demand that way.

Yeah i agree with the principle (& think that 'government prizes' for achieving generic ends, without specifying exact technique/technology, would be a welcome approach, for example). In some ways i guess carbon emission is being seen as 'bad behaviour that needs punishing' (plus with the pressure for swift-ish action, i suspect that the 'stick' will have quicker initial results in terms of industry applying more of the pre-existing technologies etc). Obviously if any positive tech (& therefore behaviour) shift could be achieved with carrot alone, that'd be cool

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We're basically in agreement over the broad picture. There is an element that maintains fossil fuels are the result of "bad behavior that needs punishing." Many people today see only the harmful emissions from gasoline or diesel powered internal combustion engines, without putting it in context of what the car and gasoline and distillate fuels replaced, notably tons of coal that used to be burned to heat homes and run factories to the point that major cities around the globe were covered with dirty soot, particles of which were breathed in causing respiratory diseases and killing the very young and old and creating the first killer smogs in London. Before that, demand for wood for heat and cooking stripped away forests in Africa and Asia creating some of the arid areas that still exist today. Even worse than coal in the big cities of the 18th oand 19th centuries was the tons of horse manure that literally piled up daily in major cities, attracting flies and rodents that spread disease. In big cities like New York, hundreds of horses literally died in the streets each day, and their rotting bodies had to be hauled away and disposed off--sometimes simply by dumping in rivers or ocean fronts. Development of gasoline and automobiles in the late 19th century went a long way in making the air cleaner, even with the stench of the internal combustion engine. Things that have been done to eliminate some of the emissions has made the air much cleaner today than it was in my youth. And there are rules in place that will make it cleaner yet. In time, other things will replace oil and gas as major fuel sources, but it would be a mistake to give up on those fuels today when there are still huge resources to be developed. For instance, back in the 1970s, the oil companies were investing millions of dollars into the development of oil from shale and tar sands; today shale is a major source of natural gas to the point that it's driving down natural gas prices, is competing for markets with imported LNG, and is resulting in more gas production after years of US gas production being in decline. Tar sands are now competitive resources for more oil, and gas nitrates, which in the 1970s was primarily a negative factor in blocking natural gas pipelines in deep cold waters, are now the next major resource for natural gas in deep ocean waters all around the world. The oil and gas industry does not rule out any possible sustainable source of energy including ethanol, hydrogen or anything else you can think of. I've been reporting for years of the major oil companies investing in these and other forms of research, including making oil and natural gas from coal. The oil and gas industry for decades has been using wind and sun to power unmanned offshore platforms in the Gulf of Mexico. Back in 1977, I went on a junket sponsored by Chevron to look at projects they and the other major oil companies were investing in to develop solar and wind (both are actually solar) power.

Ah, i suspect there's one key area where we differ. I do buy into the principle that CO2 emissions are a problem (i suspect from your posts that you don't). Despite gasoline, natural gas etc being superior to older fossil/biomass sources in terms of propulsion pollution, my understanding is that using every last drop available would certainly push us over the type of CO2 air concentrations considered hazardous/'irreversible' for the future climate (& the people living in it).

And on the smog issue i also have to add this highly ironic rider. The burgeoning science of 'global dimming' (yes, you read that right ) suggests that particulate pollution tends to have a temporary cooling effect on the climate, and as such masks but doesn't remove some of the warming potential of greenhouse gases. It's an intriguing wrinkle, and provides us with a neat example of how tricky this issue is: We know a lot of the downsides of air pollution - the health issues & deaths it has the potential to cause. Modelling the downsides of an 'accelerated' climate change is far more esoteric (with posited loss of life & social-debilitation riding on many variables).

Now i'm not suggesting holding off on clean air approaches (IE leaving pollution around as a time-saving buffer to heat-prompted climate 'feedback loops'). Just flagging it up as an example of how complex the issue is in terms of ascertaining change (& human influence), and deciding on best action. (NB i also hear a lot of people say: let's at least 'clean up the air', thinking that includes greenhouse gases, &/or not caring if it does or it doesn't. I'm struck more by the potential global dimming irony on those occasions).

My understanding was that oil from tar sands was very energy-intensive to extract and process. From a C02 emission perspective that makes it worse than standard oil (& can't be a great commercial boon either).

The 'natural gas' extraction approach does look promising (altho it seems the hydrogen-conversion mooted at the end of that article is pie in the sky). Certainly it's an example of how a carbon company could shift its infrastructure towards providing a slightly carbon-friendlier resource.

Sure, but they're also going to want to use every last fossil fuel resource they're capable of capitalising on, so any renewable R&D is potentially nothing more than window-dressing (in CO2 terms).

No, I'm not advocating unfettered CO2 emissions. And I've never heard anyone in the oil industry say anything of the sort. But CO2 is a natural element that has existed in our atmosphere long before fossil fuels and will continue to exist long afterward--if we're lucky. CO2 can be harmful to animal life in excess amounts, but plants thrive on it. Moreover, CO2 emissions from automobiles and factories have already been reduced much more than most people are aware. Air in the US is much cleaner than it was even 20 years ago, much less 40-50 years back. But pollution is removed at a cost. And removing the last 10% is much more difficult and therefore much more expensive than removing the first 90%. So at some point, it makes sense to ask if the benefits of removing that last 10% is worth what it will cost. Ask anyone if they would like cleaner air and cleaner water, and everyone will say emphatically yes. But are you willing to pay $5/gal for gasoline and set your home thermostats on 55 degrees in the winter and 75 degrees in the summer for say a 5% improvement in air and water quality?

I simply think people should know what they're getting vs. what they're giving up so they can make a knowledgeable decision as to what they want to do.

There's the rub--it's an extremely complicated subject that a few people on each side want to reduce to simple terms and simplistic solutions.

It's hard for me to believe that man is the main cause of pollution when a single volcano on any given day can puff more ash and chemicals so much higher in our atmosphere, keeping it airborne longer and with greater physical results than the operation of a million automobiles. It's hard for me to believe that man knows enough about the earth and its environment to make sweeping judgements one way or another when Ben Franklin was the first to take scientic measurements of ocean temperatures, leading to the discovery of the Gulf Stream in the mid-18th century on his trips back and forth to Britain and France as representative of the United Colonies.

Yeah, tar sands are energy-intensive but not nearly as expensive to do today than it was 30 years when it was still in a pioneering stage. Moreover, our very good neighbor Canada has greater recoverable reserves of oil sands than Saudi Arabia has of conventional oil. Oil sands and oil shales and lots of other unconventional fossil fuels such as coal-to-oil and coal-to-gas are competitive at prices of $65-70/bbl for conventional oil. For that matter, there are those who say it costs more in fertilizer, tractor fuel, planting, watering, harvesting, processing, manufacturing, and transporting crops into ethanol than the resulting amount of energy is worth. The difference is that the oil companies for 30 years have been putting their research dollars into oil sands because of the huge resource out there while the government at the urging of the farm lobby and representatives from farm states has been putting your tax money into subsidies for turning corn into ethanol only to find out it drove up the cost of food in the process.

Well, that's one way to look at it. Another way is to say we'd be a fool to turn our backs on massive amounts of readily available fossil fuels that can be put to use carefully at relatively cheap costs in a safe manner. I also find it odd that outsiders assume that the millions of people working for oil and gas companies don't give a flying fig about the environment of the world we all live in. To me, that's like assuming that the crew on an airliner don't give a damn if the plane crashes or not because it's just a job to them and they're not having to pay to fly. You really think the crew on an offshore rig in the Gulf of Mexico, who likely live somewhere on the Gulf Coast and take their families swimming and fishing in gulf waters, are just gonna dump valuable oil overboard willy nilly because they just don't give a damn about the environment???

Reminds me of that silly film some years back with that silly Kung Fu Caucasian in which Michael Caine played this evil oilman in Alaska who purposely buys inferior equiptment that results in a massive blowout, spilling barrels of oil that he otherwise could have sold at market for a good price. The good guy retaliates by blowing up a refinery to save the earth--a real smart environmental solution. After that film came out, there was a running joke in the oil industry about where can I go to buy some inferior equipment. The joke being that the metal used in pipe and blowout preventers and valves and all sort of equipment is tested and tracked from the moment the steel is first rolled up through manufacture, delivery, and installation to the degree that if a piece of equipment fails, there is a record of who made and sold the steel, who bought it and made it into pipe or valves or other equipment, who tested and certified it at each and every step, who installed and the complete record of all specified maintenance and repair procedures. And there are major fines compiled on a daily basis for any violations. So shoddy equipment and spilled oil is not the way one makes money in the oil industry. (Unfortunately, it wasn't all that uncommon in planned economies like the USSR, who had probably the worst safety record ever. Give me a greedy capitalist for safety every time.)

I wasn't saying you were advocating unfettered CO2 emissions, but the motivation for reduction may be key. Your focus seems to be on health-related air pollution, but as far as I'm aware, CO2 itself has never played a major role in damaging health (other than perhaps some isolated cases where large quantities escaped from naturally sequestered sources and gathered in low lying concentrations strong enough to asphyxiate. Such incidents are an added worry for ongoing attempts at artificial sequesteration for 'clean coal' and the like).

As such i don't think the focus on pollution reduction has aimed at C02 until now, but rather emissions like carbon monoxide & particulate 'black soot' style components. No?

(Incidentally, although plantlife of course thrives in a C02 rich environment, in a warming world there are questions over the extent to which farming & biodiversity would benefit, given that reductions of arable land etc are expected via desertification & raised sea levels).

Agreed, but your former wish becomes tricky to achieve if we include the latter in the equation. You could tell people, to pick one 'simple' strand, that excessive fossil fuel use could lead to a large drop in fish diversity (via temperature sensitive fish being out-competed by the likes of squid, & coral community collapse reducing foodstock for other species). Basically, you could say: Use too much gas, and you'll have to eat squid instead of fish. And that would be a simplification, but also one open to many variables. (Fish may actually adopt new breeding patterns &/or bounce back in ways we cannot predict outside the lab & historical records. Corals may share the heat-resistant symbiotes they need to survive such change faster in increasingly pressing conditions, or we could aid them in doing so. Etc.). So, the best we could say in this predictive field is: Use too much gas, and your descendants may have to eat a lot more squid (and put up with generally biodiversity-impoverished seas).

Just another example of the trickiness involved, if you buy into some of the greenhouse gas arguments. Which i do, but with a certain tentativeness.

No one is claiming man is the 'main' cause of greenhouse gas pollution etc. The argument is more that we're adding additional emissions, which although minimal in comparison, seem liable to take us over certain climate-behaviour thresholds. It helps to bear in mind here that some C02 released hangs around for nigh on centuries, and it's this long-term cumulative effect that is a particular worry. (Unless we find methods for 'scrubbing' the 'excess' back out of the air, which is currently considered too energy-intensive to ever be viable).

But didn't Franklin also give us the lightening rod, which mitigated a natural threat and has been saving untold lives ever since (once his personal publicity machine had overcome public & religious objection to messing with 'God's Wrath' that is )

I'm certainly with you on the uncertainties thing, although i should point out that records do now extend back beyond the 18thC etc. To take the Gulf Stream example mentioned, this study extends it back a 1000yrs or so for one region, thanks to animal remains in sediment. I don't provide it as cast iron proof, but more as one example of the scientific ingenuity that has given us a broad picture of past climate change etc (especially when multiple techniques are combined to try and remove erroneous results and technical shortcomings)

The area i'm more worried about is modelling of the future. On the plus side, current models, despite a variety of techniques employed, are now matching up with the strong records of the past 100yrs and unified in a prediction of 0.4C temperature rise over the next 20yrs. What worries me if anything is the unified results - not that a bit of certainty isn't welcome, but such unity in such a complex field leaves open the possibility that they've shared some techniques or assumptions that have brought their results together. If said issues are accurate, cool. But if they're not, we don't want a small subset of academic thought dictating our actions. (It happened to all the risk assessors in the financial field recently when they all started using the ''Gaussian copula" risk assessment technique, & hence introduced a new, unifying, unnoticed risk. The 'what if the model is wrong' risk ).

On these grounds, i take much of what they suggest seriously, but hold back reservation on any Herculean 'mitigation' suggestions, preferring instead to think of what are the least costly ways we could reduce greenhouse gases (& our potential risk here), & what aspects of change could we adapt to (IE issues that will be with us regardless, to varying degrees: the benefit of robust, drought-tolerant food sources, for example. Flood prevention etc).

Heh, you've just described the worst nightmare of a climate change 'advocate' with coal-to-oil . Rising oil prices certainly do make it viable, but on a C02 emission level it's a bitch (and all the more worrying because plenty of us non-Saudis have plenty of it lying around).

As for corn-ethanol, hell, i've always assumed it could only have been lobbying & pork-barrel scratching that got that off the ground. Most sci-journalism i read prior to its adoption was saying it's a foolish idea for all the obvious reasons. (Of course high oil prices also played a role in the food shortages that followed, and most other biofuels will be at the mercy of similar concerns, given the energy-intensive nature of modern farming). Brazil's cane-ethanol seems to be slightly more economical than corn (in terms of energy-extraction levels for a start), but is somewhat of a specialist case. Not everyone has the right environment to produce that particular fast-growing grass, for a start.

That is a marvellously silly film. But Steven Seagal is surely a strawman ecologist in this case. His gassy conflagrations are not where the argument is at. (Though lord knows, if any sides of the debate ever do descend to podgy acts of kung fu, all reasoned discourse will truly have abated )

This administration sure is good for America.

The whole point of cap and trade is to hike the price of electricity and gas so that Americans will use less. These higher prices will show up not just in electricity bills or at the gas station but in every manufactured good, from food to cars. Consumers will cut back on spending, which in turn will cut back on production, which results in fewer jobs created or higher unemployment. Some companies will instead move their operations overseas, with the same result.

Even as Democrats have promised that this cap-and-trade legislation won't pinch wallets, behind the scenes they've acknowledged the energy price tsunami that is coming.

The hard working American will again be 'rewarded' for their efforts under this administration.

The whole thing makes me sick.

I think I owe Gol a reply above, but I've gotta say, the cap-and-trade stuff is a breeding ground for political favors. By putting a total cap on all emissions, they have to allocate these out. And we all know what that means: energy lobbyists in Washington all vying like mad for their industry to get a greater allocation. For all Obama's talk about ridding the world of the scourge of lobbyists (which was always silly and predicated on people's ignorance of the lobbying process, anyway), he's just created a massive new regulatory layer for them to lobby in.

Worse, even if and when they go with more of a "carrot" approach, that could easily have a crowding-out effect on other emerging technologies. If the government is sinking billions in tax credits into companies that produce electric cars, what happens if someone comes up with something that rivals it? Suddenly they don't have to compete merely with electric cars, but electric cars + billions of dollars in government backing, not to mention the sheer competition for talent and capital.

Somebody, please save us from these apparently well-meaning people.

... and they're applying cap and trade to the power plants that generate the electricity to charge the cars. You end up with pretty new cars that can't go anywhere because no one can afford to 'fuel' them.

The above scenario applies to healthcare as well. The government 'option' is for them to make the rules and then compete with private companies. Sounds like a stacked deck to me.... just like most things emanating from this administration. By the by, with regard to healthcare, Obama says "if you like what you have, you can keep it" because he doesn't want to lose his own cushy plan that we pay for.

Yeah, the healthcare stuff is blatantly obvious; he says it's a competing system, but it has government backing and the alternatives won't be able to compete, tax-wise. Telling people they can choose and then making the private option more expensive isn't really giving them a choice. It's just a way to make it seem like he's not forcing the system on people, but the result is as inevitable as it is predictable.

If they decide to link the dividend to the cap levies then at least public payouts will rise as the cap starts to squeeze. (That might pad your wallet a touch Toosey. Oh alright, i'm a dreamer ).

Not to worry though, if we all adopt a similar GDP-hitting course EU-side, we can outsource jobs to each other

And just think, they could've gone further 'left', with a fast-acting, poor-friendly (economy smiting) ration

There's a big gov semi-defence & some US dereg stuff back there, but whenever's good for you

Ultimately both of the 'popular' approaches (Cap or Tax) are open to lobby influence, whether it be in the allocation stage for the former or the industry application/exemption aspect for the latter. It's certainly been said that Caps come with a big political opportunity for favouritism during allocation, but the admin seems to have opted for an auction approach, which would reduce the odds of this markedly, depending on its format. (NB the Kyoto Cap&Trade notably failed to start with an auction, and i believe they're now considering one to reinvigorate their approach).

Taxes do seem to have the advantage of 'reversibility' in the face of changing information, it seems, but i'm guessing Cap has partially been chosen simply because it doesn't have the frightening 'tax' word attached

Yep, this 8bil looks like a giant eggs-in-one-basket affair. I can see the issue for the government: In a normal economic cycle they could place efficiency standards on the car industry and get a market-driven spread of responses. With things as they are they can't exactly dangle a prize for anyone meeting or exceeding standards, as the auto industry is cash poor & is going to struggle with R&D. That said fixation on one tech seems silly, no matter how close to market. What's the betting they'll invest in biofuels next?

(One caveat i would add is that there may be room in the market for multiple approaches, and the elec cars spawned won't necessarily crowd out other approaches. Not everyone's going to buy one, and next-gen biofuels [which aim to dodge all the downsides of 'crude corn'] have the advantage of working in existing car technology, with a few tweaks.)

On a personal level like him.Seems to know where he's heading..

On a universal level..hope he does a good job.

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Am I the only one hearig the sound of duelling banjos reading some posts in this thread?

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The novelist does not long to see the lion eat grass. He realizes that one and the same God created the wolf and the lamb, then smiled, "seeing that his work was good".

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They had temporarily escaped the factories, the warehouses, the slaughterhouses, the car washes - they'd be back in captivity the next day but now they were out - they were wild with freedom. They weren't thinking about the slavery of poverty. Or the slavery of welfare and food stamps. The rest of us would be all right until the poor learned how to make atom bombs in their basements.

Who you calling a hick?

(And who's going to get buggered? )

Where is "our" plan b, or plan c, or even plan d? Obama's socialistic tunnel vision might help unemployment hit 13%. There is talk about another stim' package? WTH!!! It is alright to have a plan, but it might be healthy to have a backup when plan A is up shiza creek w/o a boat or a paddle.

Still nothing from the diehard Obama supporters, as far as I can see. Nobody has an explanation or reconciliation for the ways he's blatantly gone back on his campaign promises, or the things he's done that they one eviscerated the Bush administration for? Not a single person is willing to defend a single one of the things I've been mentioning?

I realize that I can be quite fervent, so if someone decides they don't have the time and energy or get into a long, drawn-out debate, I certainly understand. That said, not wanting to dedicate the time for an argument and not having an argument are two different things, and I think it's easy to pretend that the latter is really the former. It's easy to let ourselves believe that we don't like confrontation, and that's is why we don't reply. I don't think this is generally the case, though, and the fact that many were willing to disagree openly and often during the campaign--but have vanished now--supports this.

I know some of you are at least reading, so here's a more modest request: if you don't want to get into an argument, that's reasonable, but I'd like it if you would note what I'm saying, and ask yourself how you would respond if you were going to. If no response comes to mind, then shouldn't that change your opinion of the man and his policies? Shouldn't that force a reexamination of some kind? Don't reasonable people adapt their opinions to the facts, if they find they have no way to reconcile the two? Honest questions.

Talk about supporting a losing team. Reminds me of Clipper's fans - and this team has just started their epic failness. It is fine to support your team, but when the season has just begun and you lose pretty much every game thus far, then you will probably not make the playoffs, much less have a winning record.