Dave N wrote:
On 14/04/2012 22:19, Dave Liquorice wrote:
On Sat, 14 Apr 2012 19:47:29 +0100, Dave N wrote:

If you would only pause for one moment to consider his paper on its
merits for its potential for converting *some* CO2 into alcohol using an
electromicrobial mechanism (his description), as a means both of
disposal of *some* CO2 ...

Er I assumed that the idea of this conversion was to produce a liquid
fuel that would then be burnt. How does that "dispose" of the orginal
C02? The carbon is still fossil in orgin.

Obviously it doesn't but wouldn't burning recycled carbon be preferable
to mining and extracting new sources of carbon?


Not if you have to extract ten times as much carbon and burn it, to
make it in the first place.


... and at the same time storage of *some* electrical energy in a
chemical form,

Seems my assumption is correct.

I think you are missing the point that this potentially offers a means
of storing energy, not locking it up permanently. Re-use of stored
energy is arguably better than burning more and more new sources of
carbon energy, which would add to the total of free carbon dioxide? You
might disagree, but I am only posing the question because I don't know
the answers.


Oh FFS you are missing the point: there are thousands - literally
thousands of ways of storing energy. The problem is that not one single
one is large enough, efficient enough, or cheap enough, to make it
possible for 'civilised urban life' to continue to live on this planet.


Do you REALLY think that competent honest capable engineers and
scientists haven't been evaluating them all?

What ahhpend to the 'hydrogen ecomnomy' Biofuel? Huge spinning
flywheels? Synthetic hydrocarbons? Fuel cells?

The same thing that would have happened to 'renewable energy' if it
hadn't been subsidised to a level that is quite simply scandalous. And
will happen to it when there simply is no money left.


Except one. Its just about possible that nuclear energy storage in the
way of both mined uranium and recycled plutonium and a few other
options, fits the bill. For about 1,000 years, in which the population
doesn't get any bigger and we radically change the way we do things. To
build a new technology infrastructure where (conventional) fuel
efficiency is everything. And base currencies on not gold, or wet
economists' dreams, but kilowatt hours.

Obviously a technology that works and whose problems are in fact soluble
is a technology that must be suppressed.

1000 years should be long enough to create a viable fusion reactor,
which buys us another 10,000 years.

Since fossil fuel itself has only been a major feature in the last 200,
and has allowed a 50 times increase in (UK) population, the other
alternative is to go back to 1-2 million people, horse drawn ploughs and
a feudal society. This seems to be broadly what the Left/Greens are
aiming for.

It would certainly solve unemployment - it takes around 500 people to
harvest a potato field in a day, weed it and hoe it and plant it and
spread dung on it..compared to one man on a tractor every month, for 4
hours..

Now I happen to think that a chance at 10,000 years of civilisation is
better than a *guarantee* of a return to Mediaeval technologies,
population levels, life expectancies and lifestyles.

And less than 0.1% increase in background radiation that probably does
no harm at all to anyone, is actually a really *cheap* price to pay
compared with et death of 90% of the existing population and a 70%
reduction in average life expectancy.

Because that is what you are voting for every time ou vote for
'renewable energy'.

Don't be in denial: greenwash is hogwash.




--
To people who know nothing, anything is possible.
To people who know too much, it is a sad fact
that they know how little is really possible -
and how hard it is to achieve it.