Republicans Are Determined To Stop Renewable Energy

Keep in mind, because of the overhead of dealing with:
saltwater damage to machinery,
damage and access limits of sea storms,
Transport costs of the fuel to Land,
Difficult Security requirements,
High Initial Infrastructure Costs,

it might be better to use half aluminum, half Lexan Tubes half in and half out of the Arizona, Texas, New Mexico deserts, filled with low water quality tolerant fresh water algae.

The portion of the loop which is underground allows the growth medium to cool, and algae size filtration to continuously skein off mature organisms.

Because the system is sealed, and the ground loop causes condensation of any vapors, evaporation isn't an issue.

Some portion of the derived hydrocarbon energy would be needed to mine and process various nitrate and sulfate minerals for growth medium nutrients.

Also, Air, and its important nutrient of CO2, has to be bubbled through the medium in the cooling side of the loop. Excess oxygen has to be released.

But studies done by NASA for the generation of hydrocarbons for human food production on Mars subsurface colonies show that it is easily within our current technology.

For those obsessed with AGW, it is a completely carbon neutral technology, since any carbon found in the fuels comes from the atmosphere, and just gets cycled back into the fuel next year.

There are perfectly reasonable and current tech assessable solutions for all of our environmental problems, but the Leftie Enviro-NAZIS will attack this and any similar post, with the same vitriol that they go after any Black or Hispanic who DARES to wander from the Liberal Plantation.

The Lefties don't want solutions, they want the Pet Crisis as a justification for their Fascism.

 

More on the ITER energy R&D initiative:

"In fact, a fusion reaction is about four million times more energetic than a chemical reaction such as the burning of coal, oil or gas. While a 1,000 MW coal-fired power plant requires 2.7 million tons of coal per year, a fusion plant of the kind envisioned for the second half of this century will only require 250 kilos of fuel per year, half of it deuterium, half of it tritium." This is from: https://www.iter.org/sci/fusionfuels

Deuterium and Tritium are two most important ingredients in the fusion effort. Deuterium can be distilled from ordinary sea water. If anyone knows why this effort could not eventually result in full-scale energy production, please tell us. I don't want to spend another 35 years believing in hydrogen fusion if it's simply not possible on our planet. But, if it IS, then, like I said, the day will come when we will use oil products only as lubricants....

 

How the hell do you tax something that is the most "free" form of energy in the solar system?

 

That's because most renewable energy is solar and wind, both of which are found in large quantity in the southern (red) and central-south midwest (red) areas of the country.

They will be our only option in a few generations at this rate.

So, we should just rape and pillage our planet until we are FORCED to use renewables to prevent human extinction?

Basically, you all are saying (*)(*)(*)(*) your (great) grandchildren, I only care about what is affordable today.

 

The only practical fuel for the first human built fusion reactors, whether accomplished by Magnetic Confinement, or Inertial Confinement, is Helium3.

We can only get sufficient amounts of He3 from the surface of the Moon.

Obama Killed our NASA program to return to the Moon.

We cannot have Fusion Power until we get Rid of Obama and his Cronnies and follow-on Liberal Radicals.

The thing blocking Fusion Power is not Technology, it is ignorance and Crisis Manipulation Politics!

That said, of far more pragmatic application is a totally new approach to heavy metal reactors using Thorium as the primary fuel, and a magnetically confined plasma, kicked by an external energetic neutron source. Plasma Heavy Metal reactors are currently far more practical and immediately achievable than any type of Fusion, including Helium3.

We could build a prototype Thorium Plasma Reactor with only today's technology and have it operating in two years!

P.S. Plasma Heavy Metal Reactors only have around 20 grams of the fuel in the system at a time, not the Rickover design 10,000 Kg, so they are a very small safety problem. You could scatter the entire contents of the fuel load and only pollute a couple of football fields.

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One thing I'm certain we can agree on is that if we are to do anything useful in the field of energy production, we must get rid of Obama! All he does is march in lock-step with his radical lunatic-fringe in their quest to shut down every affordable means of producing power in this country and shovel more money towards dangerous, ruinous things like light-water fission reactors, made by his buddy, Jeffry Immelt at General Electric.

 

Tell that to the Germans, they get about 25% of their power quota from renewable sources, mostly Solar and Wind. Another source on Germany's move to alternative power

 

Actually, conservative groups were against the bill. Republicans (not all conservatives) and democrats passed the bill.


http://stateimpact.npr.org/oklahoma...-energy-groups-fighting-solar-surcharge-bill/

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All the above don't give a justification of why we should be taxing solar energy.

 

You forget that alcohol needs a lot of energy in order to be distilled. Switch grass hasn't been shown to be economically viable, or they'd be using it today.

 

Their solutions all require a reduced quality of life, e.g. not driving a car, 400 Sq. Ft. house, and so forth.

 

Numbers such as the 25% you mention are only meaningful when the kWh cost of the alternative energy power is provided.

 

Switchgrass isn't being used because the corn lobby has used all of their political influence to ensure that any subsidies go to them as opposed to other plants superior for use with ethanol production.

 

I think if you look more closely, you'll actually find that the American COMMON Citizens would be facing that set of restrictions, with the "Preferred" Liberal Vassal Common Citizens getting a slight reprieve and the demonized and hated "Bubba" Common Citizens getting significantly LESS.

Meanwhile, the Wealthy, Aristocratic, Elite WHITE Liberals would be granted special dispensation for their "Brain Work and Managerial Roles" and be given vastly increased standards of living above what they have right now, and 20X or more what they allot to the "Commons".

All Animals are Created Equal, some are just more EQUAL than others...


P.S. .... And NONE of it is needed to solve our Environmental Problems in the slightest! AGW is just a new way to Justify Fascism.

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Because we've pretty much ruined all available rivers with hydropower dams. Hydropower turns rivers into lakes, not a good trade, IMHO. There is no form of energy production that doesn't have some kind of negative environmental impact. Even fusion will have a negative environmental impact.

I disagree with you about CFBs. I like them, within their limitations. Then again, I live in the Sun belt, and in the summer, they save me doubly--they take less electricity to produce usable light, and they don't produce as much waste heat, which I pay to get out of my house. That said, the market was quickly working to sell CFBs. I started using them years before the bans on manufacturing larger bulbs.

 

Didn't read thread. I'm all for renewable energy, and can't wait for the traditional energy industry to develop it for us, just like they took us from kerosene to diesel to gasoline to methanol. It will happen, but I guarantee you it won't be some green industry government crony graft buyer, and certainly not government itself, that ends up taking us there. Every excess regulation and tax on the traditional energy industry takes us one step back from renewable energy. That's a fact well-proven by history.

 

Taxcutter says:
As always, there's no free lunch, but the problems of dealing with seawater are old hat to US engineers. We've been building metal ships and propulsion systems for nearly two centuries.

Plastic pipe, titanium or Admiralty bronze pump impellors and valve parts. Off-the-shelf items.

What I see is a biofuel plant located in Texas, pumping seawater in. The biofuel plant is paired with a coal-fired power plant. After removal of particulates and sulfur dioxide, the flue gas is rich in carbon dioxide and oxides of nitrogen. Scientists have isolated a species of sea algae that thrives in such an atmosphere. The high concentration of carbon dioxide makes algae grow like crazy. One of the problems with algae is that it grows slowly in 400 ppm CO2 air. But in 280,000 ppm carbon dioxide flue it grows nearly explosively.

The algae is harvested. Oil is pressed then washed out of the algae with an organic solvent. The remains are still sugar and protein rich. So the algae is fermented for ethanol which is needed in the transesterification process. The leftover "mash" is still rich in protein and is tasty to cattle and swine and farmers will fight over the stuff.

Growing (at industrial rates) algae will offgas a lot of oxygen It's either separated and sold commercially of fed back into the coal-fired plant. Fermentation offgasses carbon dioxide which would be bubbled back into the algae growing water.

Inputs:
Coal, seawater, a tiny amount of iron (rust is best), sunlight

Ouputs
Electricity, gasoline, diesel, jet fuel, high-protein animal feed

 

Taxcutter asks:
What do the Germans do at night? Buy nuclear generated power from the French or load up coal-fired plants in Germany.

 

All good ideas and observations, though the very functionality and practicality is why the Enviro-NAZIS and the EPA Radicals will demonize and do everything in their power to STOP any such efforts.

Their goal is to engineer/manufacture a Fascism-Justification-Crisis.

They only allowed Obama's experiments in Solar Voltaic and All-Electric Cars to go ahead, because EVERYONE knew that they would fail hard!

Any Alternative Energy system which might actually work, will be attacked with more Vitriol than that thrown at a Black Conservative.

The First Step in achieving any of these solutions is to boot the Lefties from power.

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energy demand is much less at night, so yes they cut over to their coal fired plants. There is also work on means to store solar energy either as heat or electricity. A lot of the solar is installed on individual homes and most of those use batteries to store power for nighttime use.

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well according to both articles I linked to, the cost for solar in Germany is now the same as conventionally produced power (mostly coal fired plants).

 

If it needs subsidies, it isn't economically viable yet.

 

And we should wait for something to be economically viable before the government invests in it right?

 

No, government shouldn't be investing in it at any point. It's just the 21st century version of Amtrak which proved itself to be a bad investment by continuing to run in the red since the start. Investors don't invest in non viable ideas because they would lose money. Government doesn't care if it loses money because it's not theirs. They stole it from us first. Just in the Obama administration alone, several renewable energy companies went under even with massive subsidizing proving over and over that government is a poor judge of what works and what doesn't. Same goes for ethanol, (Bush can be blamed for that crap) same for solar, same for just about every project that couldn't attract private investors.

 

Some solar is very financially viable and has become the norm in my area. In New Mexico, new houses equipped with rooftop passive solar thermal water heating for showers is the norm. Its just too dam easy to do, and saves a fairly large amount.

I don't want Obama or their ilk to stick their damn noses into my water heater, it saves me money just fine without them!

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I bet you didn't know that homeowners and home builders that install solar panels get a federal tax credit.

I bet you didn't know.