In article , JoeSpareBedroom wrote:
"Pete C." wrote in message
...
JoeSpareBedroom wrote:

"Pete C." wrote in message
...
JoeSpareBedroom wrote:

wrote in message
...
On Sun, 23 Dec 2007 06:21:12 -0800, Dan_Musicant
wrote:

Fact is you can find CF's that don't take a minute to get usable
light.
Some are nearly instant on. The only filament lamps I use at all are
maybe a couple I haven't bothered to change that I leave on for 5-10
minutes at a time only.

I find it grating to read posts which make fun of federal lawmakers.
I
wouldn't want to spend more than 10 minutes of every year sitting in
the
halls of congress. I know it's a madhouse, but walk a mile in their
shoes before you paint them all with the same brush.

Believe it or not, letting people do what they damn well please
doesn't
work in this country.

Do us all a favor and leave the United States of America. This
country will be a much better place after you leave. You don't
belong
here. You'd do much better in a country such as Iraq. Don't let
the
door slam you in the ass as you leave.

Daryl

Would you agree that we need to reduce our dependence on foreign oil?

It would certainly be a good goal, however it will not in any way solve
or reduce the problems that it helped to create. Indeed if we stop
buying oil from the ME it could make the situation there even worse.
Since China would likely buy whatever we don't that later issue may not
be as significant now.

OK. Now we're getting somewhere. What if a family of four can get a 35%
improvement in gas mileage by owning a certain vehicle, without losing
any
of the REAL (as opposed to imaginary) advantages of an SUV?

Not a valid option as there is no vehicle I'm aware of that gets 35%
better MPG than a typical SUV and still has the same real advantages of
the SUV.

My kid's 4 cylinder 1996 Camry wagon gets 35% better gas mileage than the
typical 6 or 8 cylinder SUV. How about offering the car makers some sort of
incentive for bringing back wagons? There *is* a demand for them. He's found
3 notes stuck under his windshield wiper from people wondering if he wanted
to sell the car. These vehicles satisfy one of the needs fulfilled by SUVs:
Carrying lots of stuff without crowding the passengers.

Carmakers made fewer wagons and made more SUVs because wagons were
subject to the CAFE and crash safety regulations that cars were subject to
and SUVs were not. Our government gave SUVs a break!

- Don Klipstein )

Don Klipstein wrote:
....
Plutonium comes from breeder reactors. Most nuclear power plants are
not breeder reactors.

Plutonium is a result of all fission reactors. "Breeder" reactors
differ only in the relative amounts as compared to "non-breeders".

--

"dpb" wrote in message ...
Don Klipstein wrote:
...
Plutonium comes from breeder reactors. Most nuclear power plants are
not breeder reactors.

Plutonium is a result of all fission reactors. "Breeder" reactors differ
only in the relative amounts as compared to "non-breeders".

--


Thank you.

In ,
Red wrote:
On Dec 23, 3:28*am, Jim Redelfs wrote:

With no apologies to anyone, I believe that switching to CF lamps won't, over
the LONG "haul", provide a bit of "relief" to our ever-increasing energy
consumption. *Although that implies that our ever-increasing energy
consumption needs relief, I am adamantly UNconvinced of that in any case.

I agree, especially in areas where electricity is produced by
hydroelectric plants. It takes just as much water to turn the turbine
whether the generator is producing 1 megawatt or 150 megawatts.

They won't crank down the hydro. Whatever hydropower you don't consume
will get sold over the grid to someplace that will crank down their oil
fired or whatever plants.

Politicians want us, the ones who care, to assume all the guilt and do
something. Yet to you think for a minute that Las Vegas will ever
change out their lights for more efficient ones?

Some of the casinos and other places on "The Strip" have replaced
incandescents with CFLs. Many of the marquees with chasing lights now
have cold cathode CFLs. I was there in early November and I saw the
spiral tubing. And, the upper left corner of my left eyeglass lens is
prismatic enough to see enough spectrum detail to identify light source
types.
Cold cathode ones are somewhat less efficient than hot cathode ones, but
they can be blinked without harm and they are still a lot more efficient
than incandescents.

Or any government
limit each family to only one car? Or the airlines cut back on the
number of flights? No, instead they'll all keep on doing business as
usual and ask us to change out a light bulb or two.

- Don Klipstein )

In article , Pete C. wrote:
Tony Hwang wrote:

Nearby town of Banff installed LED street lights with solar panels.
Very cool looking light and it is cool running, no bugs get attracted
kep them clean. Cost a lot initially but for the long run, it's winner.
LED bulbs now are expensive but with time the price will come down.
I have a few small ones in the house, they use couple Watts per bulb.

I'd have to see those to believe them, unless they are the purely
cosmetic kind. I've yet to see any LED source that can compare to a 400W
HID source.

I would be glad to see HPS lamps go. LED ones appear to me to be very
expensive and maybe not the best deal for the taxpayers paying for them.
However, I would not mind replacing a 400 watt HPS with a 175W or 250W
metal halide.

A 175-250 watt metal halide will illuminate streets close to as well as
a 400 watt HPS does, for 2 reasons:

1. HPS lamps tend to make red, green and blue objects look dark.

2. At typical streetlighting illumination levels, human vision is in
"mesopic" mode. That is when both scotopic vision and photopic vision are
significantly functioning. Scotopic vision adds a senseation of
illumination in this case. A metal halide lamp produces many times more
light that is favorable to scotopic vision than an HPS lamp of same
photometric output.

Then again, a lot of streets are illuminated more brightly than they
need to be. 100 watt metal halides could work just fine!

- Don Klipstein )

In article , Pete C. wrote:
HeyBub wrote:

Tony Hwang wrote:
Hi,
Nearby town of Banff installed LED street lights with solar panels.
Very cool looking light and it is cool running, no bugs get attracted
kep them clean. Cost a lot initially but for the long run, it's
winner. LED bulbs now are expensive but with time the price will come
down. I have a few small ones in the house, they use couple Watts per
bulb.

My city, Houston, is retrofitting its traffic signals with LEDs. They cost
more initially, but since the bulbs won't have to be replaced for, what,
fifty years, they should recoup the expense fairly soon.

I doubt the 50 yr thing since I've see LED signals failing. The good
thing is that they have a "soft" failure mode, losing a few strings of
LEDs rather than the whole thing at once like the old incandescent
signals. The power savings of the LED vs. the 300W incandescents they
replace becomes significant when multiplied by all the active signals in
a city.

300W is awfully high for a traffic signal incandescent. Look in a lamp
catalog by any of the "Big 3" makers and see what wattages "traffic signal
lamps" come in. I somehow think 116 watts is a popular one.

Now, major reasons why LEDs can do the same job with 12 watts or so (for
red and green): Mostly, because an incandescent with a red or green
filter in front of it has the filter remove about 2/3 of the light.
Meanwhile, LEDs normally specialize in producing light of a particular
color. (The usual white ones have blue-emitting chips and a phosphor that
absorbs some of the blue light and fluoresces out a broadband yellowish
light whose sectrum goes from mid-green to mid-red.)

Another reason why incandescent traffic signal lamps are easy to improve
upon in energy efficiency is because they are superlonglife vibration
resistant versions that have about 65% of the efficiency of "standard" 750
hour incandescents. LED units also have more carefully controlled
directivity patterns and less light is wasted by going where it does not
need to go.

- Don Klipstein )

Don Klipstein wrote:

In ,
Red wrote:
On Dec 23, 3:28 am, Jim Redelfs wrote:

With no apologies to anyone, I believe that switching to CF lamps won't, over
the LONG "haul", provide a bit of "relief" to our ever-increasing energy
consumption. Although that implies that our ever-increasing energy
consumption needs relief, I am adamantly UNconvinced of that in any case.

I agree, especially in areas where electricity is produced by
hydroelectric plants. It takes just as much water to turn the turbine
whether the generator is producing 1 megawatt or 150 megawatts.

They won't crank down the hydro. Whatever hydropower you don't consume
will get sold over the grid to someplace that will crank down their oil
fired or whatever plants.

Politicians want us, the ones who care, to assume all the guilt and do
something. Yet to you think for a minute that Las Vegas will ever
change out their lights for more efficient ones?

Some of the casinos and other places on "The Strip" have replaced
incandescents with CFLs. Many of the marquees with chasing lights now
have cold cathode CFLs. I was there in early November and I saw the
spiral tubing. And, the upper left corner of my left eyeglass lens is
prismatic enough to see enough spectrum detail to identify light source
types.
Cold cathode ones are somewhat less efficient than hot cathode ones, but
they can be blinked without harm and they are still a lot more efficient
than incandescents.

Or any government
limit each family to only one car? Or the airlines cut back on the
number of flights? No, instead they'll all keep on doing business as
usual and ask us to change out a light bulb or two.

- Don Klipstein )

I seem to recall reading somewhere that a manufacture of metal halide
type HID lamps developed custom lamps specifically for the Vegas casinos
that provided colored output via the lamps gas chemistry vs. external
color filters with a resulting significant increase in efficiency from
eliminating losses from color filters.

Don Klipstein wrote:

In article , Pete C. wrote:
Tony Hwang wrote:

Nearby town of Banff installed LED street lights with solar panels.
Very cool looking light and it is cool running, no bugs get attracted
kep them clean. Cost a lot initially but for the long run, it's winner.
LED bulbs now are expensive but with time the price will come down.
I have a few small ones in the house, they use couple Watts per bulb.

I'd have to see those to believe them, unless they are the purely
cosmetic kind. I've yet to see any LED source that can compare to a 400W
HID source.

I would be glad to see HPS lamps go. LED ones appear to me to be very
expensive and maybe not the best deal for the taxpayers paying for them.
However, I would not mind replacing a 400 watt HPS with a 175W or 250W
metal halide.

A 175-250 watt metal halide will illuminate streets close to as well as
a 400 watt HPS does, for 2 reasons:

1. HPS lamps tend to make red, green and blue objects look dark.

2. At typical streetlighting illumination levels, human vision is in
"mesopic" mode. That is when both scotopic vision and photopic vision are
significantly functioning. Scotopic vision adds a senseation of
illumination in this case. A metal halide lamp produces many times more
light that is favorable to scotopic vision than an HPS lamp of same
photometric output.

Then again, a lot of streets are illuminated more brightly than they
need to be. 100 watt metal halides could work just fine!

On that last point, many streets would do fine with no streetlights at
all. The only areas that have any real need for street lights are in
urban areas with nighttime pedestrian activity, and in rural areas only
in the immediate vicinity of traffic lights and significant
intersections.

In , wrote:
On Sun, 23 Dec 2007 03:28:42 -0600, Jim Redelfs
wrote:

The Nanny Geniuses in D.C. just passed legislation that, in addition to
putting some serious "hurt" on our domestic car and light truck industry,
kills off those outmoded, wasteful and environmentally DEVASTATING electric
lamps we've all come to know and love.

Say "goodbye" to the venerable 100w and 75w, cheap, light bulb. (Thomas Alva
Edison will surely turn over in his grave).

Stock-up and horde 'em now, folks. They'll be worth a LOT in 10-15 years on
the black market.

I just switched all my exterior entryways and garage "eyebrow" fixtures to CF
lamps. I am considering switching BACK the one beside the front door.

I rarely use exterior lighting. Mostly, I switch-on the front porch light
when there is someone at the door - a rare occurrence.

On those occasions, I want IMMEDIATE light.

However, right now, it is 12F outside and that curly, compact fluorescent lamp
outside, by the front door, doesn't provide usable light worth a damn for a
minute or two.

With no apologies to anyone, I believe that switching to CF lamps won't, over
the LONG "haul", provide a bit of "relief" to our ever-increasing energy
consumption. Although that implies that our ever-increasing energy
consumption needs relief, I am adamantly UNconvinced of that in any case.

The Energy Bill provided for NO new energy.

All the windmills, solar panels, methane plants and CF bulbs in the world
cannot, and never will, provide for our energy needs. Conservation alone is
NOT the answer, even IF there were a problem. We have adequate stores of
fossil fuels to keep our grandchildren's grandchildren's grandchildren cool or
warm and productive. Whether we can overcome all the hand-wringing, crybaby,
do-gooders that think they're saving something by declaring wide swaths of our
land "off limits" to fossil fuel harvesting is another matter.

We learned how to do it cleanly, neatly and with minimal environmental impact
YEARS ago. But that's not good enough now. We simply CAN'T do it because of
some PERCEIVED, detrimental environmental impact. That's B.S.

How about slashing the "red tape" and getting a few, new nuclear power
generating stations on-line within ten years?

We should drill for oil and gas in ANWR (Alaska National Wildlife Refuge)?

Why do you think Seward talked Congress into buying Alaska?

Do you think he would have ever believed that there'd come a day when vast
miles of it would be virtually off-limits to any resource harvesting?

Despite incessant impediments from environmentalists, the Tans-Alaska Pipeline
was finally built. But, Shazam! The devastation to the environment and
wildlife it was predicted to cause never happened. They were WRONG. They're
wrong now.

CF bulbs and set-back thermostats are NOT the final solution, even if there
was a problem. Heck, such measures aren't even a viable stop-gap.

We need more energy. Let's go get it. -Jim Redelfs

Looks like I'll be going back to kerosene lamps and candles for
lighting. I wont allow those compact florescents anywhere near my
home. I almost lost my home last year because of one of these things.
The damn thing caught on fire. Luckily I was able to put it out, but
not without significant damage to my ceiling and destroying the light
fixture.

What brand and model was it? Was it UL listed? Self-ballasted lamps
are normally UL listed. (Ones with pins and requiring external ballasts
don't seem to need this.)

I have seen some CFLs fail in scary ways, and all of them were dollar
store stool specimens. In fact, in my experience most dollar store CFLs
are not UL listed. (And in my experience, most dollar store CFLs have
horrible color, some have color both bad and badly misstated, and none
with light output claims met them.)

The Consumer Product Safety commission can get a CFL recalled if it's
ballast housing is made of non-flame-retardant plastic.

- Don Klipstein )

Don Klipstein wrote:

In article , Pete C. wrote:
HeyBub wrote:

Tony Hwang wrote:
Hi,
Nearby town of Banff installed LED street lights with solar panels.
Very cool looking light and it is cool running, no bugs get attracted
kep them clean. Cost a lot initially but for the long run, it's
winner. LED bulbs now are expensive but with time the price will come
down. I have a few small ones in the house, they use couple Watts per
bulb.

My city, Houston, is retrofitting its traffic signals with LEDs. They cost
more initially, but since the bulbs won't have to be replaced for, what,
fifty years, they should recoup the expense fairly soon.

I doubt the 50 yr thing since I've see LED signals failing. The good
thing is that they have a "soft" failure mode, losing a few strings of
LEDs rather than the whole thing at once like the old incandescent
signals. The power savings of the LED vs. the 300W incandescents they
replace becomes significant when multiplied by all the active signals in
a city.

300W is awfully high for a traffic signal incandescent. Look in a lamp
catalog by any of the "Big 3" makers and see what wattages "traffic signal
lamps" come in. I somehow think 116 watts is a popular one.

It's been a long time since I looked at them.


Now, major reasons why LEDs can do the same job with 12 watts or so (for
red and green): Mostly, because an incandescent with a red or green
filter in front of it has the filter remove about 2/3 of the light.
Meanwhile, LEDs normally specialize in producing light of a particular
color. (The usual white ones have blue-emitting chips and a phosphor that
absorbs some of the blue light and fluoresces out a broadband yellowish
light whose sectrum goes from mid-green to mid-red.)

Another reason why incandescent traffic signal lamps are easy to improve
upon in energy efficiency is because they are superlonglife vibration
resistant versions that have about 65% of the efficiency of "standard" 750
hour incandescents. LED units also have more carefully controlled
directivity patterns and less light is wasted by going where it does not
need to go.

A couple of the features that make LEDs good for signals that you point
out, and which also make them good for other warning type signals -
Tight emissions spectrum and directional output - are the reasons that
current LED technology is not appropriate for residential lighting use.
Residential lighting needs a much broader output spectrum and wide beam
pattern. When they get an LED with a "warm white" equivalent output
spectrum and a wide beam spread then they'll be on the way to
residential lighting applications. Price will still have to be brought
down a lot, but once the units are mass market acceptable production
scale should take care of price.

Pete C. wrote:
Jim Yanik wrote:
....
how do you supply power when the sun goes down,if there are no batteries to
store the excess power generated by the solar panels?
Wind generators typically go quiet at night,too.

BTW, I just looked at the Gray County (KS) wind farm production data.
Since initial startup mid-2001 thru mid-2007, they have averaged only
40% capacity factor w/ a high month of less than 60% and several months
of only 20%. That implies from 2.5X to 5X the required generation even
to get the output which still would be awfully expensive to have such
excess installed capacity. Wind has some benefits, but it can't replace
baseload generation in large quantites w/o very high excess capacity at
other times. This facility is in W KS, one of the highest wind energy
potential areas in the US.

The (continental) US spans a few time zones so that gives some spread,

It's still dark where it's dark when it's dark and those folks need
lights when it's dark, not while the sun's shining...

I understand what you think you would be doing there, but while haven't
done actual calculations, one problem is that you're adding even more
requirements for transmission during those dark times or still require
other generation facilities.



and hydro and tidal should go a long way towards filling in the night.
Add in locally viable items like biomass in big farm / ranch areas,
geothermal in the few areas where that works, some storage such as
pumped hydro and CAS to store surplus production during peak times ...

Certainly hydro, tidal and pumped storage have very limited geographical
constraints. I don't recognize "CAS".

Jim Yanik wrote:
Kurt Ullman wrote in news:kurtullman-
:


I think now is not likely. Even if we magically licensed a nuke
plant tomorrow, it would still take 2-3 years to build it and bring it
online. We would probably be hard pressed to take a current plant off
line because of growth in demand in the interim. And that 2-3 year
thing ain't gonna happen since we aren't going to magically license nuke
plants any time soon. Heck just the enviornmental impact statement can
take a year or so to put together, let alone argue.

there was something in the news recently about the 1st new license being
issued for a new nucelar power plant.

No, it was the first new _application_ filed for a license. The
"streamlined" process of review is expected to take 4 years or so before
the issuing of an actual construction license.

TVA was the filing utility for a unit at the existing Bellefonte site in
AL (where there's a 1000 MWe abandoned unit at greater than 95%
complete, quit work on in the "upgrade mania" after TMI owing to
unconstrained cost growth).

--

dpb wrote:

Pete C. wrote:
Jim Yanik wrote:
...
how do you supply power when the sun goes down,if there are no batteries to
store the excess power generated by the solar panels?
Wind generators typically go quiet at night,too.

BTW, I just looked at the Gray County (KS) wind farm production data.
Since initial startup mid-2001 thru mid-2007, they have averaged only
40% capacity factor w/ a high month of less than 60% and several months
of only 20%. That implies from 2.5X to 5X the required generation even
to get the output which still would be awfully expensive to have such
excess installed capacity. Wind has some benefits, but it can't replace
baseload generation in large quantites w/o very high excess capacity at
other times. This facility is in W KS, one of the highest wind energy
potential areas in the US.

I've driven past some relatively huge wind turbine farms in west TX and
they sure didn't seem to be anywhere near full production either. Wind
certainly isn't the answer by itself, but it can certainly contribute to
the total.


The (continental) US spans a few time zones so that gives some spread,

It's still dark where it's dark when it's dark and those folks need
lights when it's dark, not while the sun's shining...

I understand what you think you would be doing there, but while haven't
done actual calculations, one problem is that you're adding even more
requirements for transmission during those dark times or still require
other generation facilities.

No single solution, a lot of different sources need to be adding power
to the grid in a lot of different places. If we can get better storage
technology than current batteries that will solve a lot of problems,
including EV range or lack thereof.


and hydro and tidal should go a long way towards filling in the night.
Add in locally viable items like biomass in big farm / ranch areas,
geothermal in the few areas where that works, some storage such as
pumped hydro and CAS to store surplus production during peak times ...

Certainly hydro, tidal and pumped storage have very limited geographical
constraints. I don't recognize "CAS".

Hydro and tidal generation are geographically limited, but a have a lot
of energy available and should be significant contributors to the total.
CAS is compressed air storage, same basic idea as pumped hydro storage,
compress air with off peak excess and run back through a turbine on
peak.

JoeSpareBedroom wrote:

Forever. The market is not always right, but it is right far more
often than any other technique.


Bars here are doing MORE business since it became illegal to smoke
in bars. I seriously doubt "the market" would've figured that out
without a kick in the pants. And, Detroit *never* would've dealt
with car emissions issues without the government stepping in.
Automakers had no financial incentive to deal with it.

You should be outraged! MORE drinking! Doesn't that offend your
sensibilities of what's good for people?

There's another concept called the "Tragedy of the Commons" that's an
exception to unfettered personal actions. You're attempting to
expand that concept to all human actions.


Do you think car makers would've dealt with emissions without having
the screws put to them?

We'll never know, will we? But that's a "commons" arena.

Rick Brandt wrote:
HeyBub wrote:
Heh! Adam Smith postulated the concept in the late 18th Century. You,
evidently, are the only person in 230 years to disagree with the
idea.

While sound in theory, two things destroy Adam Smith's main ideas.
Monopolies and collusion. Those are why even he did not advocate an
adoption of the ideas in absolute terms.

I agree on collusion; not so much on monopolies.

Free market monopolies are usually good. The greatest monopoly of all time,
the company held up as the poster child as evil, was Standard Oil. Yet
Standard Oil managed to reduce the price of kerosene from $3.00/gallon to
five cents. In three years. By so doing, they revolutionized society. Of
course the whale-oil people raised a fuss and Standard Oil was broken up.
Make no mistake, the consumer benefited by Standard Oil's monopoly. Oil
drillers, refiners, and transporters suffered, but the consumer came out way
ahead.

The monopolies that harm society are the ones sanctioned or owned by the
government: utilities, mail, transportation, and the like.

In article ,
(Don Klipstein) wrote:

In article , Phisherman wrote:
On Sun, 23 Dec 2007 03:28:42 -0600, Jim Redelfs
wrote:


Say "goodbye" to the venerable 100w and 75w, cheap, light bulb.
(Thomas Alva Edison will surely turn over in his grave).

And say "Hello" to additional mercury compounds (from fluorescent
tubes) seeping into our soils.

About half the USA's electricity comes from coal-fired power plants.
CFLs actually reduce the amount of mercury going into the environment.

I wonder how much of that statement is based on the assumption that
the CFLs are going to be gotten rid of the way they should be, which is
not likely to be the way they are.

JoeSpareBedroom wrote:


OK. Now we're getting somewhere. What if a family of four can get a
35% improvement in gas mileage by owning a certain vehicle, without
losing any of the REAL (as opposed to imaginary) advantages of an
SUV? Is a 35% improvement not worth thinking about, especially if
multiplied by the number of SUVs in this country?

Of course not. Your "imaginary" advantages may be very "real" to the family.
Status in the community or with peers is important, even crucial, to some.
Maybe they can't get the 35% improved vehicle in their alma mater's colors,
or the "better" vehicle doesn't have a cup holder. Whatever.

But it works both ways.

Somebody pointed out that there are two hybrids (Civic and Prius). One LOOKS
like a hybrid, the other doesn't. Aside from looks, the two are equivalent
in gas milage, price, and virtually all other characteristics. The one that
LOOKS like a hybrid (Prius?) outsells the conventional-looking car by
three-to-one! Why? Because the environmental types want others to know they
are environmentalists! That they care, that they are doing something
wonderful. Peer pressure. [Confession: I may have Civic confused with Prius
or vice-versa - I don't know and I don't care.]

It's their money. If a family is willing to put their earnings into a gas
guzzler or a non-disguised hybrid, who has the gall to tell them otherwise?

Kurt Ullman wrote:
I think now is not likely. Even if we magically licensed a nuke
plant tomorrow, it would still take 2-3 years to build it and bring it
online. We would probably be hard pressed to take a current plant off
line because of growth in demand in the interim. And that 2-3 year
thing ain't gonna happen since we aren't going to magically license
nuke plants any time soon. Heck just the enviornmental impact
statement can take a year or so to put together, let alone argue.

A YEAR? Think FIVE YEARS and ten years to build it.

A few years ago a gas-fired plant was proposed in my area. It would have a
3/4 mile long discharge canal connecting the cooling basin to the bay.

The environmentalists went nuts. "THERMAL POLLUTION" they cried. It would
kill all the marine life from Houston south to Mexico and 100 miles into the
Gulf! Four years of to-ing and fro-ing before construction began.

Plant eventually got built. Now the discharge canal is lined shoulder to
shoulder with fishermen. Seems as if the marine critters that like warmer
water (mostly shrimp) head for the canal. The fish who like to eat shrimp
follow. Creatures who don't like warm water move away - to Canada, I guess.

Rick Brandt wrote:

Here's part of the economics of the problem as I see it. Let's
hypothetically assume that gas prices stabilize for the long term at
2.75/g which I think most people would agree is more than reasonable
to live with (thinking long term now).

Given this hypothetical we can reduce the issue of lowering our
dependence on foreign oil to...

a) choosing something greener
b) not sending money to the middle east

Now let's hypothetically assume an alternative is discovered that is
perfect regarding points (a) and (b) but which costs 3.00/g. I think
the vast majority of people would be delighted to pay that difference
(roughly 8%) to accomplish the goals of (a) and (b).

On the contrary. I think about eight people on the planet would go for an 8%
increase in price to achieve these goals. But carry on.


Now of course this is so successful that the cost of foreign oil now
drops to an effective gasoline price of 2.00/g because we are no
longer buying so much of it. Now with a price difference of 50% you
are going to lose a lot of supporters to the alternative fuel. That
is how commodity pricing works in world markets. If you are a
significant consumer of a commodity and you reduce your usage then
the price drops and there will be tremendous pressure as a result of
that drop for consumption to go back up.
The only way I see us reducing our foreign oil consumption is if an
alternative is found that is so dramatically cheaper than FO that it
will still be cheaper when the inevitable price drop in FO occurs.

That's what fungible means.

Jim Yanik wrote:

OTOH,Bush graduated from Yale,passed jet fighter training along with
SERE training,flew F-102 jets,NOT easy tasks,and impossible for
outsiders to influence his passing them. They don't let incompetents
through those schools.

Passing military flight school requires math along with the physical
stuff.

Then he got an MBA from Harvard.

Pity to think of the ranks to which he could have risen had he only applied
himself.

"HeyBub" wrote in message
...
JoeSpareBedroom wrote:

Forever. The market is not always right, but it is right far more
often than any other technique.


Bars here are doing MORE business since it became illegal to smoke
in bars. I seriously doubt "the market" would've figured that out
without a kick in the pants. And, Detroit *never* would've dealt
with car emissions issues without the government stepping in.
Automakers had no financial incentive to deal with it.

You should be outraged! MORE drinking! Doesn't that offend your
sensibilities of what's good for people?

There's another concept called the "Tragedy of the Commons" that's an
exception to unfettered personal actions. You're attempting to
expand that concept to all human actions.


Do you think car makers would've dealt with emissions without having
the screws put to them?

We'll never know, will we? But that's a "commons" arena.


That's pretty funny.

Kurt Ullman wrote:

In article ,
(Don Klipstein) wrote:

In article , Phisherman wrote:
On Sun, 23 Dec 2007 03:28:42 -0600, Jim Redelfs
wrote:


Say "goodbye" to the venerable 100w and 75w, cheap, light bulb.
(Thomas Alva Edison will surely turn over in his grave).

And say "Hello" to additional mercury compounds (from fluorescent
tubes) seeping into our soils.

About half the USA's electricity comes from coal-fired power plants.
CFLs actually reduce the amount of mercury going into the environment.

I wonder how much of that statement is based on the assumption that
the CFLs are going to be gotten rid of the way they should be, which is
not likely to be the way they are.

I'm pretty sure it's based on the CFLs being disposed of improperly,
with the mercury that would be released being less than the amount
released by a coal fired plant for the 75% of electricity the CFL saves
vs. incandescent. I saw some comparison with actual numbers somewhere,
but I don't know where.

In article ,
(Don Klipstein) wrote:
LED's aren't at CFL prices, yet, unless you average in the 10-20 year
life.

White ones mostly have rated life of 50,000 hours.

That's 5.7 years at 24/7, but aren't light bulb lifetimes rated assuming
something like 4 or 6 hours a day or something like that, which would
indeed by around 20 years.



--
--Tim Smith

HeyBub wrote:

Kurt Ullman wrote:
I think now is not likely. Even if we magically licensed a nuke
plant tomorrow, it would still take 2-3 years to build it and bring it
online. We would probably be hard pressed to take a current plant off
line because of growth in demand in the interim. And that 2-3 year
thing ain't gonna happen since we aren't going to magically license
nuke plants any time soon. Heck just the enviornmental impact
statement can take a year or so to put together, let alone argue.

A YEAR? Think FIVE YEARS and ten years to build it.

A few years ago a gas-fired plant was proposed in my area. It would have a
3/4 mile long discharge canal connecting the cooling basin to the bay.

The environmentalists went nuts. "THERMAL POLLUTION" they cried. It would
kill all the marine life from Houston south to Mexico and 100 miles into the
Gulf! Four years of to-ing and fro-ing before construction began.

Plant eventually got built. Now the discharge canal is lined shoulder to
shoulder with fishermen. Seems as if the marine critters that like warmer
water (mostly shrimp) head for the canal. The fish who like to eat shrimp
follow. Creatures who don't like warm water move away - to Canada, I guess.

That points out one of the major issues with our broken legal system -
the fact that the eco-loons making the false claims and filing the
frivolous lawsuits are never held liable for the harm they cause. If
they were held liable for their proven false claims their plague would
soon end and the true sane environmentalists would regain some
credibility.

In article ,
"Pete C." wrote:


I'm pretty sure it's based on the CFLs being disposed of improperly,
with the mercury that would be released being less than the amount
released by a coal fired plant for the 75% of electricity the CFL saves
vs. incandescent. I saw some comparison with actual numbers somewhere,
but I don't know where.

Interesting. Most of the stuff I saw was silent specifically but
usually detailed that they should not be tossed in the garbage, should
be sent somewhere or taken to a hazmat disposal site and all sorts of
stuff that very few people are likely to do in real life (g). I was
wondering if concentrating the mercury at landfills was different than
the spreading out of the mercury over large areas through smoke
dispersal.

Pete C. wrote:
HeyBub wrote:

Kurt Ullman wrote:

I think now is not likely. Even if we magically licensed a nuke
plant tomorrow, it would still take 2-3 years to build it and bring it
online. We would probably be hard pressed to take a current plant off
line because of growth in demand in the interim. And that 2-3 year
thing ain't gonna happen since we aren't going to magically license
nuke plants any time soon. Heck just the enviornmental impact
statement can take a year or so to put together, let alone argue.

A YEAR? Think FIVE YEARS and ten years to build it.

A few years ago a gas-fired plant was proposed in my area. It would have a
3/4 mile long discharge canal connecting the cooling basin to the bay.

The environmentalists went nuts. "THERMAL POLLUTION" they cried. It would
kill all the marine life from Houston south to Mexico and 100 miles into the
Gulf! Four years of to-ing and fro-ing before construction began.

Plant eventually got built. Now the discharge canal is lined shoulder to
shoulder with fishermen. Seems as if the marine critters that like warmer
water (mostly shrimp) head for the canal. The fish who like to eat shrimp
follow. Creatures who don't like warm water move away - to Canada, I guess.


That points out one of the major issues with our broken legal system -
the fact that the eco-loons making the false claims and filing the
frivolous lawsuits are never held liable for the harm they cause. If
they were held liable for their proven false claims their plague would
soon end and the true sane environmentalists would regain some
credibility.

In case you didn't notice, the corporate loons are never held
accountable for damage THEY do based on falsehoods about all
the good and minimal harm their pet projects will do. Just look
at how many SuperFund sites there are. Some of the companies
manage to just walk away. Others go bankrupt (even as the people
in charge start another company to repeat the cycle).

--
The e-mail address in our reply-to line is reversed in an attempt to
minimize spam. Our true address is of the form .

Pete C. wrote:
dpb wrote:
Pete C. wrote:
Jim Yanik wrote:
...
how do you supply power when the sun goes down,if there are no batteries to
store the excess power generated by the solar panels?
Wind generators typically go quiet at night,too.
BTW, I just looked at the Gray County (KS) wind farm production data.
Since initial startup mid-2001 thru mid-2007, they have averaged only
40% capacity factor w/ a high month of less than 60% and several months
of only 20%. That implies from 2.5X to 5X the required generation even
to get the output which still would be awfully expensive to have such
excess installed capacity. Wind has some benefits, but it can't replace
baseload generation in large quantites w/o very high excess capacity at
other times. This facility is in W KS, one of the highest wind energy
potential areas in the US.

I've driven past some relatively huge wind turbine farms in west TX and
they sure didn't seem to be anywhere near full production either. Wind
certainly isn't the answer by itself, but it can certainly contribute to
the total.

The (continental) US spans a few time zones so that gives some spread,
It's still dark where it's dark when it's dark and those folks need
lights when it's dark, not while the sun's shining...

I understand what you think you would be doing there, but while haven't
done actual calculations, one problem is that you're adding even more
requirements for transmission during those dark times or still require
other generation facilities.

No single solution, a lot of different sources need to be adding power
to the grid in a lot of different places. If we can get better storage
technology than current batteries that will solve a lot of problems,
including EV range or lack thereof.

and hydro and tidal should go a long way towards filling in the night.
Add in locally viable items like biomass in big farm / ranch areas,
geothermal in the few areas where that works, some storage such as
pumped hydro and CAS to store surplus production during peak times ...
Certainly hydro, tidal and pumped storage have very limited geographical
constraints. I don't recognize "CAS".

Hydro and tidal generation are geographically limited, but a have a lot
of energy available and should be significant contributors to the total.
CAS is compressed air storage, same basic idea as pumped hydro storage,
compress air with off peak excess and run back through a turbine on
peak.

There are very few significant hydro locations undeveloped in the US.
OK, I know of CAS now that you remind me -- it's small potatoes kind of
solution.

Wind is a "fill-in" but I don't see it ever being practical as a
large-scale replacement as it is simply too costly to build the required
alternate source since it isn't reliable (enough).

The fundamental answer to electrical generation is nuclear.

--

"Pete C." wrote in :

Jim Yanik wrote:

"Pete C." wrote in
:

Kurt Ullman wrote:

In article ,
"JoeSpareBedroom" wrote:

Then they want us to convert to electric autos...
Using nuclear power plants will eliminate even more mercury
emissions.

Not to complicate the issue, but a number of arms control
experts have pointed out that there's only one way we'll stop
"rogue states" from eventually developing nuclear weapons:
Eliminate civilian nuclear power plants.

Every benefit comes with a hidden horror show.

As empty and bogus an argument by the anti-nuke propagandists as
there is. Development of nuclear weapons by a "rogue state" in no
way depends on the presence of civilian nuclear power plants.


No, it doesn't depend on civilian facilities. However, as you are
now well aware, fuel from civilian plants can (and has been) turned
into fuel suitable for nuclear weapons. The presence of a "legal"
civilian facility eliminates the need to shop around for a fuel
source.

Please don't continue to dispute these facts. You are about to look
silly.

Just to mention it in passing, the original suggestion of the use
of
nukes for electricity was in the US. I would doubt that one or two
more legal civilian facilities within those borders woudl have a big
impact on proliferation. The original discussion was supposed to be
about the US using more nuclear power.

Yep, cheap, clean, safe, non polluting, non greenhouse gas releasing
nuclear power - power that could be used to replace a good deal of our
current oil use and bring us a lot closer to energy self sufficiency.
With the additional side benefit of eliminating all the daily
pollution from coal and nat gas fired power plants *now*, instead of
30 years from now when we might have some of the renewable energy
sources improved enough to make a real impact.


I wonder if we could somehow use nuclear power plants to make the coal-
gasoline conversion process more economical and practical?
Then we could employ our vast coal deposits to run our autos.

It would be better if we could utilize the nuclear generated electricity
in a more environmentally friendly way such as providing charging power
for electric cars and plug in hybrids, and producing hydrogen for the
combustion side of the hybrids and for non hybrid vehicles. And of
course eventually transition from nuclear generated electricity and onto
renewable generated electricity once the renewable are viable in large
scale.


That would be great,EXCEPT that battery storage is not good enough to be
really practical yet.
Although I've read Toshiba has come out with a new Li-ion battery that
recharges to 90% in 10 minutes. That could make a difference.

Also,hydrogen storage for autos is in even worse shape.
So far,nothing beats gasoline/diesel for autos,and that's where our
vulnerability is,WRT the Middle East;petroleum.

using nuclear power for our electric generation is a no-brainer.

--
Jim Yanik
jyanik
at
kua.net

"Pete C." wrote in
:

Jim Yanik wrote:

"Pete C." wrote in
:

Kurt Ullman wrote:

In article ,
"Pete C." wrote:

We certainly won't get there with the status quo. Something like
an executive order that we'll be energy independent in 5 years
with the weight to quash all the NIMBY and Eco-Loon attempts to
prevent it.

Good luck. Little of that would be constitutionally valid to
overturn
as an EO since it is based on laws passed by Congress, at the
minimum bringing up sepatation of powers.

Well, since something like that will never happen, the exact
logistics don't really matter.



What I want to see is a comprehensive push starting with new
nukes to allow the shutdown of the coal and NG plants and stop
all that pollution, provide cheap electricity for electric and
plug in hybrid cars and electric commuter rail and busses and
home heating and cooling.
Which brings up the rather creative accounting for "clean"
electric
cars where they look at tailpipe admissions and studiously ignore
the extra electricity that has to be generated.

But I digress (g)

On my various business visits to San Francisco, I've note the
fraudulent claim of "Zero emissions vehicle" on the electric
busses, which are in fact "Remote emissions vehicles".


Use the freed up US NG and US oil to keep other transportation
going without foreign oil. Improve conservation as much as
possible. Get realistic renewable sources, including distributed
solar and wind generation online (again quashing NIBMY and
Eco-Loon nonsense) over a reasonable period of time so that in
30 years when those nukes are reaching retirement they can be
retires and we can by on entirely renewables.

I am not all that sanguine about real life solar and wind
generation
as a viable major contributor. The solar cells have to too big and
wind generation takes too much space and both are fairly polluting
on the making of the cells or turbines. Might be useful at the
margins, but I am not all that sold for large scale applications.
Although even the marginal stuff would keep the growing part
of
the demand at bay, as it were.

This is why I specified "distributed solar" (and wind where
applicable), i.e. panels installed on existing rooftops. Basically
something like a utility supplied and maintained battery less grid
tie system. Trying to do utility scale solar any other way just
isn't practical and has huge environmental impact. Distributed
across customer's rooftops it uses no new space and also greatly
extends the service life of the already overtaxed grid by producing
a good portion of the power locally.

how do you supply power when the sun goes down,if there are no
batteries to store the excess power generated by the solar panels?
Wind generators typically go quiet at night,too.

The (continental) US spans a few time zones so that gives some spread,
and hydro and tidal should go a long way towards filling in the night.
Add in locally viable items like biomass in big farm / ranch areas,

Why bother with biomass when nuclear power works so well?

geothermal in the few areas where that works, some storage such as
pumped hydro and CAS to store surplus production during peak times and
you'll be in better shape. Some time of day rate breaks can also help
encourage utilization during off peak times and local energy storage
as appropriate.


All this adds unneeded complexity to our power generation,while nuclear
power simplifies it greatly.
Use modern,modular reactors,not the old cusotm-built light-water reactors.

--
Jim Yanik
jyanik
at
kua.net

(Don Klipstein) wrote in
:


Plutonium comes from breeder reactors.

Not all of it.

Most nuclear power plants
are
not breeder reactors.

No,but the spent fuel rods still contain usable amounts of PU.


- Don Klipstein )




--
Jim Yanik
jyanik
at
kua.net

In article ,
"JoeSpareBedroom" wrote:

Would you agree that we need to reduce our dependence on foreign oil?

No. In fact, we should use up THEIR oil first.
--
JR

In article ,
"JoeSpareBedroom" wrote:

Oh boy. Mass transportation turned into a racial issue.

Only by you, my color-obsessed "friend".

The "kind of people" referred to in a racial-neutral manner are those that
talk aloud to themselves, have body odor that is offensive from many feet
away, and are generally unpleasant to be around. This fact is NOT racially
biased in any manner.

Public transportation is loved most by those that don't use it but are
determined to foist it on the rest of the gentry because they think it is a
Good Ideatm.
--

JR

In article , "Pete C."
wrote:

Twice a week, I pass by a park & ride lot. It's as empty as
it's been for many years.

An advertising campaign would help that.

I doubt it. Such an advertising campaign would help only those entities
promoting the campaign.

Remind people of the carpooling and mass transit options while they
are receptive due to the increased fuel prices.

....and they would (and do) continue to drive their personal vehicles.

"They" have been beating the "dead horse" of expanded public transportation
forever and it hasn't been effective for decades.

We are a society of PRIVATE transportation. For good or ill, it's a fact that
is unlikely to be substantially overcome, regardless of legislation or fuel
prices - or advertising campaigns.
--

JR

In article ,
"JoeSpareBedroom" wrote:

based on the pristine condition of most of the SUVs I
see, they're not being used off road anywhere.

So what?

What business is it of YOURS what someone else drives or WHERE they drive?

If you want to drive a 35mpg econobox, go for it. I graduated from a
1,000cc, 3-cylinder Geo Metro to a 2500HD Silverado pickup with 8.1L (496cid)
gas-guzzling V8. I'm paying DEARLY for my choice. But it was MY choice.

If you truly advocate having to apply to the Ministry of Transportation prior
to purchasing your next motor vehicle, you can just forget it, comrade. Not
while I have a vote in any case.
--
JR

In article ,
"JoeSpareBedroom" wrote:

You're right, but prepare to be spanked by a few of the delusional here.

No dilusions here. They wanted the SUV they bought. What more reason do they
need?
--

JR

In article ,
Kurt Ullman wrote:

Also, we need pull some of the "Highway taxes" away from highways and
let it go to building other forms of transportation like light rail,
etc.

Why throw good money after bad?

We built it - and they didn't come.

With the exception of the high-density rust belt areas, mass transportation
has been a losing proposition since the mid-to-late '60s.

That, of course, didn't stop those in control of taxation from furthering
their agenda of the Good Ideatm - and they're still at it (Ex: Your words.)

I have long suggested that the Feds zero out their gas and
highway-related taxes (along with the money) and let the individual
states raise theirs to take up the slack and let them spend it as they
see fit.

I agree with that but it's a sure bet that the suits in D.C. will NEVER (ever)
relinquish that control. Sorry.
--

JR

Jim Redelfs wrote:
In article ,
"JoeSpareBedroom" wrote:


based on the pristine condition of most of the SUVs I
see, they're not being used off road anywhere.


So what?

What business is it of YOURS what someone else drives or WHERE they drive?

If you want to drive a 35mpg econobox, go for it. I graduated from a
1,000cc, 3-cylinder Geo Metro to a 2500HD Silverado pickup with 8.1L (496cid)
gas-guzzling V8. I'm paying DEARLY for my choice. But it was MY choice.

Perhaps dearly, but not nearly enough. You're not paying the true cost,
partly due to market distortions caused by government intervention and
partly due to "tragedy of the commons" effects.


If you truly advocate having to apply to the Ministry of Transportation prior
to purchasing your next motor vehicle, you can just forget it, comrade. Not
while I have a vote in any case.


--
The e-mail address in our reply-to line is reversed in an attempt to
minimize spam. Our true address is of the form .

Jim Redelfs wrote:

In article ,
"JoeSpareBedroom" wrote:


Would you agree that we need to reduce our dependence on foreign oil?


No. In fact, we should use up THEIR oil first.

And they should charge us much more for that privilege than they do
currently.

--
The e-mail address in our reply-to line is reversed in an attempt to
minimize spam. Our true address is of the form .

In article ,
"JoeSpareBedroom" wrote:

a number of arms control experts have pointed out that there's only
one way we'll stop "rogue states" from eventually developing nuclear
weapons: Eliminate civilian nuclear power plants.

Given that, I guess we'll just have to live, warm and illuminated, in a more
dangerous world since we'll not be giving-up nuclear power plants.

As TMI (a few cubic yards of irradiated steam do NOT a disaster make) and
Chernobyl fade from memory, we will build more nukes.

Every benefit comes with a hidden horror show.

I disagree.

Most benefits do NOT come with such dire consequences.

However, it is indeed refreshing, and surprising, that you declare nuclear
electric power a "benefit". It is, in many ways.
--

JR

In article ,
"JoeSpareBedroom" wrote:

Too bad your way doesn't involve a brain.

Perhaps not, but it DOES solve the problem of the rogue state. Just ask Libya.
--
JR