Reply To: The recent "discovery" of Dark Matter

[Frenetic]

Transmute wrote: Corn to ethanol, yes I agree that is a joke, but cellulose to ethanol (or butanol) has much greater promise, all agricultural waste could become fuel without harming food production.

Yes and no. That “waste” would be put to better and far more cost effective use if it were used to rebuild the soils. Also remember that ethanol is only about two-thirds as efficient as gasoline in an internal combustion engine.

Everyone always brags about how Brazil got by using ethanol. What they invariably overlook or fail to mention is that Brazil bought out the plants that made the old Volkswagon Beetle. Why? Because that type of engine can be pulled and overhauled in a day. Ethanol tears internal combustion engines to pieces in fairly short order.

Transmute wrote: 1. If we retire the gasoline engine what do we replace it with? Hydrogen has major limitations in storage and fuel cell prices have got to drop a full 10 fold! Batteries could replace short range transport, Metal-air fuel cells have potential, but lets be honest all of this requires massive infrastructure change.

We replace the gasoline engine with diesel engines driving hybrid vehicles. The savings in fuel consumption would be huge. First and foremost, the diesel engine is vastly more efficient than the gasoline engine. The modern diesels actually pollute less than gasoline engines, provided they are fed a clean fuel. Additionally, bio-diesel is about 89% as efficient as diesel fuel distilled from crude oil.

This one conservation measure alone would let us put an enemy like Hugo Chavez-Friaz out of business without ever having to fire a single shot.

Transmute wrote: 2. I would love to replace coal with fission: pebble bed reactors, maybe even thorium cycle, but the general public will never go for it, their too afraid of the N word (no not the personified N word, the N word erroneously associated with giant mushroom clouds.)

Granted, there are a number of die-hards still flapping about nuclear power plants and/or anything having to do with anything “atomic”. They are losing credibility as this is being written. Our so-called “news media” are doing an excellent job of self-destructing. This latter point has its good and bad points.

Transmute wrote: 3. Ethanol does not present the same ground water contamination problems, ethanol is very biodegradable.

I don’t disagree here, but point out that ethanol creates a whole other set of pollution issues its advocates neglect to mention. Ask anyone who ever visited Brazil while the Brazilians were still burning ethanol as fuel and you will realize that I am not pulling your leg on this one. Brazil, by the way, no longer burns large quantities of ethanol. They are burning gasoline. American oil companies helped them find their own oil and built refineries there since the 1970’s.