Voting closed TODAY Jan 13 at 5PM Eastern, 2PM Pacific time.
Preliminary ending numbers are available here
Thanks to everyone who participated. The results won’t be final until reviewed by the judges/operators. Now back to our regularly scheduled programming. – Anthony
hotrod (03:30:52)
Thank you for references to what is an extremely interesting process. I would if I may caution against such statements as “all the synthetic oil you need very easily” as I’m sure you will agree that many aspects of the project need careful assessment and modification.
Having said that, IMHO it is a far more valuable approach to any liquid fuel supplement than burning perfectly good food. I was impressed that the developers didn’t claim that this was going to save the world catastrophic global warming, One to watch for in the future. I have repeated the links inorder to save readers from trawling back through the thread to see what we are talking about.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermal_depolymerization
http://discovermagazine.com/2006/apr/anything-oil
http://www1.eere.energy.gov/biomass/pdfs/agricultural_waste.pdf
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn12141
You can not replace gasoline and Diesel liquid fuels with solar without changing the entire vehicle fleet to electric vehicles and that would take at least 15 years if we were already doing it, and we are not.
And solar vehicles simply don’t work. If you mean solar for charging batteries, won’t work either since the charging would have to occur at night, and unless you’re within the arctic or antarctic for a certain 6 months, that won’t work either.
Hi Nicole,
First, it is good that science is done both privately and publicly. Your comment about science not being for the public forum is a concerning statement. This website among others have greatly contributed to the accuracy of the temperature record. This is why both skeptical and pro-AGW scientist communicate with Anthony. They communicate because he and the thousands of thinkers, checkers, historians, mathematicians are like a massively powerful parallel computer that can often arrive at ideas, data, corrections extremely fast. While each one of us is not as powerful as a scientist with a million dollar lab, together we doing science (data integrity study and interpretation). What’s the best on-line encyclopedia today? Is it the best because it was left to a few private smart people to write? Or is it the best because thousands of experts who could have never been hired by a single company are allowed to comment. Public review and debate is a wonderful thing. And even better here as Anthony has kept his forum polite.
Continuing, you want to know about silicon temperature measurement, I’m probably in the top hundred in the world and probably in the top 10 in quartz. Very few universities types will know more than me about these areas – as they don’t have the access to the types of tools I have or the longevity in these areas. Remember money and technical data is sometimes more available in the commercial world. I’m not bragging as I know other readers here are amazing experts in the own right on tons of different scientific areas. I’ve spent the better part of 15 years in my small technical area – it’s just what I do. In the community here, there are people who specialize in chemistry, physics, semiconductors, sensors, etc. I bet I could ask some of the world’s toughest question here and a regular reader is a top ten expert in the area in question. Some of the world’s experts don’t work for the government or for a university. Are we supposed to be silent and not comment?
Your comments are great about education. Education is great, public, private, etc.
I’m a big fan of solar power. I used to work for a top 5 company in solar power based in the silicon valley. The solar wafer pays back the energy required to make it in about 1 1/2 years. However, there is still a bit to go because the solar panel frame, installation process, etc. actually consumes a lot of energy too. I’m extremely optimistic. However, like EM Smith said before … our environmental laws have caused most of the solar production and much of the development offshore. Remember it requires dams, nuclear plants, coal, etc. to create the energy necessary to make solar cells and environmentalist are against all of these things.
As a conservative I am not anti-conservation. I have no idea where you get these notions. Waste not, want not is a wonderful conservative principle. Everyday, my teams work on ways to get power consumption out of the semiconductor chips we design … we worry about a single mA. My last chip helps notebook computers achieve the latest Energy Star requirements. We don’t do this because we are anti-conservationists, we do it because it is the free market at work. It is more profitable to produce products that consume less battery life. Do you want an iPod that is massive and clunky? Do have any idea of the massive amount of power conservation technology rolled into a simple iPod? I could write a 5 page essay and would not come close to covering all the power saving technology in that device let alone the details. What is higher priced a notebook computer with 2 hours of battery life or one with 12? Do you think that as a conservative I don’t want long battery life equipment, that I don’t want LED lighting, high-tech cars? We do. Unfortunately, the regulatory environment, lawyers, enviro wackos raise the cost of research. If a scientist want to put in a lab today that requires a nasty but interesting chemical it takes a near act of God in California. Do that in Taiwan, no problem. Where do you think the next generation of science is going to be done? Remember, not all science labs can be stock with only water, baking soda, and vinegar … sometimes science requires a bit more toxic things.
I am anti-environmentalism, because I seem the damage environmentalism is doing to the environment, to the economy, to jobs. You care about education. How would you feel as a parent watching your children come home from school and then helping them with their Math … the Math is about the environment (an industrialist has a factory that is polluting X over 30 days, etc.), the Biology is about the environment, the Music is about the environment, the History is about the environment. I have 4 kids in Bay Area, CA schools – and frankly some of the classes at a few schools here are in full-brainwash mode.
I would love to see our dependence on foreign oil reduced. I drive a Prius becasue I’d rather send the Japanese the money then people who want to do harm to us and I get to drive in the carpool lane.
All the best to you in your journey
E.M. Smith — You can not replace gasoline and Diesel liquid fuels with solar without changing the entire vehicle fleet to electric vehicles and that would take at least 15 years if we were already doing it, and we are not.
She (nichole) doesn’t understand the fundamental difference between sources and storage mediums. QED.
nichole (05:36:57)
I do wish you would calm down. Learning is not a bitter fight, it’s open to all of us and fun. You seem to think you are not qualified and therefore go on the attack. It doesn’t have to be that way. We all learn as we grow and yes we often get things wrong. You should never think of others as your intellectual superior but learning from others through testing and demonstrating to your self that indeed they to have a better understanding and better knowledge on the subject of your interest than you, then you are becoming their equal. Let me give you some words that are not of my own but I believe profound.
You should have a bit more courage – at least the courage to use your intelligence. Scientists (let alone the ones in recently-invented and less rigorous fields) are not a superior species or a master-race with the right to bully others into silence. They are only human. Some are fools, some are crooks, others are perfectly honest but under pressure to produce dramatic headline-grabbing claims. And of course they all like money. Instead of grovelling before them you must judge what they say according to the normal criteria of logic, plausibility, consistency with other sets of facts etc. If you don’t, you are just a vegetable who doesn’t think because master told him not to.
nichole:
that’s why i don’t say if global warming is anthropogenic or not. i say neither as i’m not qualified to comment on the subject and neither are most of you.
Yes, you do, nichole. Because you have stated that you believe in the so-called “consensus”, which is a myth, but which falsely claims AGW to be true. You claim not to care whether it’s true or not, but you obviously do, because it fits your agenda.
All of the issues you claim to care about, conservation, energy diversification, energy independence, pollution, etc., we do as well. Apparently, you think “the ends justify the means”. They do not. Lying to people is never a good idea, and will eventually backfire. Science has been corrupted by AGW, and will take many years to recover. That is bad news for humanity, which needs good science to make advancements. Spending trillions of dollars on a non-problem is a huge waste, with tragic consequences for humanity.
Your rant against Republicans, and right-wingers is also way off the mark. I, and many others here happen to be liberals of one stripe or another. I voted for Obama, but most certainly not because of his hugely mistaken views on AGW. Unlike you, we here CARE about science, and yes, we laymen (many here are actually scientists) most certainly are fully capable (as are you, if you wanted to) of researching the subject.
Nichole’s
and you all insist on spewing facts at me when i told you i don’t care about that.
Nuff said….
Nichole,
Considering your blind faith to the “facts” regarding global warming and being, as you have written, unqualified to question the “scientific” community, I would assume that you believe in God because the vast majority of people in the world do, and you would be “unqualified” in making a self determined decision as you haven’t attended (I’m assuming) Seminary?
See you the front pew this Sunday!
when the cause is good, the ends do justify the means if the means are as trivial as not educating a public that’s not smart enough to understand anyway. take les for example. quote mines and takes things out of context, abuses statistics and thinks that any time he gets his feelings hurt he is the victim of an ad hom. total freaking moron, that one.
i am on the attack because you are as qualified as me, sir. which means you should stop talking about that which you do not know. oh we can all play the game! how sweet and post-modern and incorrect.
i am aware of the difference between an engine and a battery. how presumptuous of you. i can hypersimplify all i like.
i want to know about silicon temperature measurements? oh wait. no i don’t.
i totally said something about solar vehicles, too. poor straw men, always getting beat on.
we do ::need:: to diversify our sources of energy. yep, probably the most important thing. the intellectual renaissance was paid for with abundant energy. energy shortages will lead to terrible things. we’ve been humping the same legs for so long, it’s time for some fresh, renewable sources. global warming has made that politically viable. long term results of abundant energy for all are positive for everyone who isn’t opec. more energy will help us achieve all that stuff you said, because it will make our economy richer and we’ll have extra resources to spend.
sorry you don’t like how hysterical people are. they’re stupid, what do you want? my mom thinks vaccines cause autism, kay? stupid. subtlety is lost on them. lost on kids too. gotta get out the hammer. the thing about backlash is it often overcompensates.
Anthony,
Well done, and deserved!
Nichole:
So what are we getting? What are we supposed to be ‘ruining’?
Billions still pumped into researching ‘climate change’, when the science is supposed to be ‘settled’.
Energy costs rising, with most of the extra we’re paying disappearing into the black hole of govt taxation, and to the shareholders of the oil companies, amongst others. Yes, the oil companies actually like high energy prices – more money for them.
Carbon credits, etc, with most of the proceeds going into the pockets of Al Gore and his ilk.
Higher prices of everything, including food, because of energy costs, changes of land usage etc.
And precious little being poured into research and development of really viable alternate energy sources.
Hat tip to Anthony, all the contributors, all the moderators, and all the commenters that make this blog so great. This blog is a real eye opener!
As a side question, does anyone know of any sites that do a good job at explaining the scale of our atmosphere and the density of gases within it? I don’t think the average person really understands what .06% is and in conversations about CO2, I get the feeling most think CO2 is quickly replacing all other gases!
you know peter, obama seems like a smart guy and he hired some adviser types who also seem like smart guys and i bet you they know that oil companies like high prices.
how might we avoid their tyranny? by putting money into alternative energy research? i bet you they’ll do that.
you really think that all the money made from cap and trade gets paid to al gore? are you that stupid? because it’s going to get paid to the state as compensation for the pollution; it’s a license to pollute. al gore doesn’t get anything from that. unless he makes the state of gorida and some businesses move there. then they’ll have to give him money.
if you all would shut up about the nonexistent controversy, maybe we could divert funds from researching a dead issue into something a bit more worthwhile. so you agree with me, then? we still put money into researching if vaccines cause autism because of idiots like jenny mccarthy. everybody knows they don’t except for a bunch of stupid tax payers. we’re still putting money into researching the cause of global warming because of the ruckus caused by the minority opinion that global warming isn’t real.
CodeTech (10:15:08) :
The rest of that monolithic block of lower case text is safe to ignore.
Why is it so important for some people that things be bad?
I’ve thought about this a lot. I think it comes down to 2 clear things, and maybe a couple of more speculative ones.
Folks like adrenaline, and fear raises the level. There are many examples of ‘adrenaline junkies’. It’s exciting, you wake up and feel alive! Hitchcock sells.
The need for self esteem. Maybe an individual can not do anything that matters in the world, but they can join a group that claims they will fix some dire problem and thus feel that their life has some meaning. Which sounds better as your epitaph: “OK burger flipper on 5th street” or “World saviour”
And, of course, it is far easier to succeed at fixing a problem that wasn’t there to begin with…
I would also speculate that maybe after millions of years of evolution we are still prone to a genetic predisposition to be afraid of what goes bump in the night. Our linage was a prey species for most of that time. The fearful monkey that gets far from the lion lives, the calm and curious one that goes to check it out is called ‘lunch’… Unjust fear may be an inherent part of us.
My other speculation would be that there are folks who need followers. They crave the adoration and importance. These folks frequently use strong emotion to motivate their flock. Anger. Fear. How better to raise the level of these blinding emotions than with a story of impending doom? Watch any leader building their casus beli, it’s all about fear of the evil one about to do something horrible. It’s a well proven tool. Well, today, “the Devil is coming” has lost it’s punch and “communists under the bed” is dead meat too… so what is an aspiring charismatic cult leader to do?…
In conclusion: I think we are stuck with this part of our species behaviour. I don’t think we can change it. Maybe there is some way to use it better. I am fairly sure, though, that when you try to tell someone they need to not get their adrenaline fix and not see themselves as savior of the world and not follow their leader to glory; well lets just say you are working a long row with a very short hoe…
Pearland Aggie (10:28:46) :
I have never quite figured out why these folks are filled with such hatred and vitriol.
It’s hard to think, it’s easy to hate.
Nichole ought to take a look at the wonderful graph at:
https://eed.llnl.gov/flow/02flow.php
If she does, she will see that of 41.3 exajouls of oil consumed in the USA, 27 of them go to transportation fuels. 5.5 are ‘nonfuel’ while 4.2 is industrial and 2.4 is residential / commercial. There are 2.2 exported and 1 used for electrical production.
Oil is all about transportation fuels.
Oil has almost nothing to do with electrical production (and much of that is emergency / standby generation). The 5.5 of ‘nonfuel’ I would presume is the petrochemical part and can be easily substituted with natural gas or coal.
THE problem that must be solved to reduce oil consumption (at any rate faster than fleet change: 15+ years) is how to make a fuel that runs in our present vehicles. And that has already been solved a couple of times. You can use butanol (as BP is doing) or you can use natural gas, coal or high carbon trash to make synthetic gasoline and Diesel (as is being done by Sasol SSL, Rentech RTK, SYMX, SYNM Syntroleum, Chevron CVX, Marathon Oil MRO, Shell Oil RDS, and many others).
Nichole: your
when the cause is good, the ends do justify the means
As many a tyrant has stated. Look how they turned out.
if the means are as trivial as not educating a public that’s not smart enough to understand anyway.
You seem to have a very low opinion of the public. Of which you have set yourself firmly amongst, BTW. I, on the other hand, firmly believe that the public will make the right decision the majority of the time.
take les for example. quote mines and takes things out of context, abuses statistics
I would love to see examples and refutations.
and thinks that any time he gets his feelings hurt he is the victim of an ad hom. total freaking moron, that one.
Thanks for proving my point on this one. Note the term ‘ad hom’ followed immediately by an actual ad hominem.
Your whole argument can be summed up as:
Interesting.
Jeff Alberts (09:08:17) :
“You can not replace gasoline and Diesel liquid fuels with solar without changing the entire vehicle fleet to electric vehicles and that would take at least 15 years if we were already doing it, and we are not.
And solar vehicles simply don’t work. If you mean solar for charging batteries, won’t work either since the charging would have to occur at night, and unless you’re within the arctic or antarctic for a certain 6 months, that won’t work either.”
Gently disagree. Solar vehicles do work. Daily. Using California (I live here) as the example, many parking lots are now shaded with solar PV panels, with plug-in stations for the cars. The number is growing. Person drives up in the morning, parks in a favored spot, plugs in, goes to work. Car recharges with sunshine during the day. One of the benefits of living in a sunny locale. There is one such installation in the Santa Monica courthouse parking lot.
Probably will not work as well in more polar locations, or those with few sunny days.
And as for replacing the vehicle fleet, yes we are. You should see the number of hybrids on the road in California. Some of them are plug-ins, and some are pure EV. Have a look at the Detroit auto show, currently in progress. Whether gasoline prices go back up so these hybrids / EVs are a good buy is an interesting question.
I believe the Saudis will control oil production so that hybrids are not so attractive. They have two massive new oil production projects underway that should give them enough leverage to keep prices low. On the other hand, the demand for gasoline and diesel is growing, some say due to prosperity in India and China.
My prediction is that U.S. diesel demand will soon slacken, as more short-range diesel trucks acquire hybrid technology. UPS just took delivery of their first hybrid vans. U.S. gasoline demand also will decrease, even more than the 2008 reduction of about 4 percent. If this keeps up, we will see the U.S. becoming a product-exporting nation rather than importing.
Our current refinery expansion projects (U.S.) are likely to not see the financial rewards the owners hoped for, as demand declines.
Another very big factor is the startup of a huge refinery in India owned by Reliant Industries. It has just now started up, and is exporting products into the world market. Gasoline and diesel prices will likely fall as a result, and how far is not certain.
Roger E. Sowell
Marina del Rey, California
nichole (12:28:59) :
not here to debate the science. here to debate the prudency of debating the science in a public forum.
Then you are probably in the wrong place. We debate the science here. We take it apart and admire the good bits while we disparage the broken bits. That is what science is all about and this is a science blog.
Per prudent debate of science in public: It is always prudent to debate science in public. It keeps folks honest. Anyone can do science, and the citizen scientist is still important to the world. If cast adrift from public scrutiny and left to ‘the authorities’ science will become nothing more than a power tool of the power elite; another set of popes and cannons…
Congrats on your victory.
Sadly some people aren’t that happy – I’ve just read this post on the Weblog forum:
“The WebLog Awards provides a good service, but are open to abuse by special interest groups trying to distort the apparent popularity of their viewpoint. You might take note that an anti-science site is being given the best science blog award… ”
Very sad.
(I must point out that this was the view of a poster not the hosts)
Nichole, maybe I get where you’re coming from now. OK, how do you make people change? Right? How do you change the great ignorant mass of population, and persuade them to do what’s obviously right? OK?
Now you could have pulled a stunt like that 200 years ago. You could create a myth which moved people to behave in a way that works. I’m told by Muslim acquaintances that eating pig meat is forbidden, and that is simply a belief for them. But in some respects, due to the sanitation and hot climates of the times, it probably was indeed a bad idea to eat pig meat. So anyway it becomes dogma and part of the religion, so now people keep doing it without knowing what the rule was for in the first place.
Today you have two problems. To be a rational person, you have to question dogma and myth and beliefs. It begins with questioning. That’s really the starting point. So creating a myth (even accidentally) of AGW for the sake of convincing people, can’t work because people know that we have to start by being rational, and we have to question stuff. Like people are always trying to sell us stuff, so to survive in this world you have to question things. So creating a myth to convince the population, is the wrong strategy. Wrong because it won’t work. Most of that “dumb” population you refer to is actually a thinking population, and has been told many scary scenarios before. Oil fires were going to change the climate. A radiation leak was going to kill half the country. All that stuff, the dumb population has heard before.
Second, not only are people more questioning, we also can get access to information much more quickly. I can imagine environmentalists sitting in meetings deciding on a new publicity stunt, and within a day of doing it, people have already googled and discovered the real truth of the matter. So again, creating a myth won’t work in the modern world. You could create myths in the Bible, thousands of years ago. Today people will expect you to have a disk full of photos to prove it and preferably a video on their phone.
In short, it is just the wrong strategy, and you’ll need to think about actually working with people and the real intelligence which they do have.
Because whilst the energy crisis is frontmost on your mind, you are just one individual. As a country you have a widely distributed intelligence–there are people everywhere making decisions about their little corner of life. It has been said by a famous historian that no real democracy has ever suffered a famine. The reason appears to be that in a real democracy, people can find stuff freely themselves, and the food gets where it is needed. In a centralized system, however, it is a different story. A central authority can’t understand the whole system, nor handle everything fairly. Food may be available and yet people are starving. So learn to look at the wisdom of the masses, a sort of distributed global brain, if you will. If it was truly necessary to go for all these carbon rationing measures, the world would be doing it already.
wattsupwiththat (12:52:31) :
Actually we do have an economist on the panel here. Search for “Indur Goklany” in the upper right search box and you will see some of the articles he has guest posted here. – Anthony
Um, I’m one too… though I usually try not to admit it in public 😉
“If you laid all the Economists in the world end to end, you still could not reach a conclusion.”
Why do people still respond to nichole? She clearly is not going to change her mind no matter what you say. Like many people on this planet, she is immune to logic. She’s admitted she’s a troll, and she thrives on the negative attention she gets. Just ignore her now and in all future posts she makes.
example of les taking something out of context:
i say: “when the cause is good, the ends do justify the means if the means are as trivial as not educating a public that’s not smart enough to understand anyway.”
and you cut off the second half of that sentence to make me look like hitler. i put a qualifier on the end there, jackass. you didn’t even put an ellipsis.
glad you realize that i think i’m surrounded by idiots. amongst which you are counted, sir.
see, you truly think that an ad hominem is just an insult which is one example of why you are an idiot. okay, let me spell it out for the mentally impaired:
you are an idiot because your argument is false. = not ad hom
your argument is false because you are an idiot. = ad hom
calling you a moron is not an actual ad hom. moron.
your whole argument is “oh yeah?!”
E.M. Smith — re petroleum usage
Absolutely correct for the U.S. But the world picture is slightly different. Globally, oil products for transportation are around 50 percent. The EIA has some global statistics, but I suspect you know that.
And, the non-fuel disposition does include petrochemical feedstocks, also asphalts, lubricants, and solvents.
Roger E. Sowell
Marina del Rey, California