[Coral-List] Need for more oil

GJ GJ at fishion.eu
Wed May 19 08:44:02 EDT 2010


Fossil fuel plant.... interesting change of perspective.
There are no plants that produce oil, gas or coal. So it must be plant from which biofuel can be made to replace fossil fuel. 
The question than is to make the plant grow without fossil fuels, right? 
I guess algae are the best candidate if pumps etc are run on electricity from wind or solar. 
The difficulty than is the conversion to biodiesel or another form of fuel and the transport of this fuel to the consumers. 
How do we make that independent of fossil fuels?? 

Of course we are addicted to oil, but it really isn't so simple to get hooked off. That being so, I really like the JFK quote. And going to the moon is easy in comparison.

Best wishes, GJ

--
Gert Jan Gast
Koningin Wilhelminakade 227, 1975GL IJmuiden, the Netherlands
Ph +316 5424 0126, Fax +31255 521546, Skype gjgast


-----Original Message-----
From: coral-list-bounces at coral.aoml.noaa.gov [mailto:coral-list-bounces at coral.aoml.noaa.gov] On Behalf Of Douglas Fenner
Sent: 19 May 2010 10:22
To: coral-list at coral.aoml.noaa.gov
Subject: Re: [Coral-List] Need for more oil

I agree, to my knowledge not a single fossil fuel plant in the world manages 
to sequester the carbon it produces yet (but maybe there are ones I don't 
know about).  One or two that were planned in the US were canceled, I 
believe, maybe due to high costs or technical problems, I don't know.
      As for visual pollution by wind turbines, well I tend to think beauty 
is in the eye of the beholder.  I suspect that anyone making a lot of money 
in the oil industry thinks an oil refinery looks beautiful (gas flares 
burning at night, all those lights on towers, kind of romantic way to read 
your profit checks by?).  Really, it does change your perspective, those 
that may make profits from windmills won't have much sympathy for those that 
want the unspoiled natural beauty.  That is, the natural beauty of amber 
waves of grain and green fields of corn, which totally replaced the North 
American prairie, an ecosystem that was totally obliterated by white 
settlers, with only minute scraps of it left in a few places (and a fair bit 
on the western edge where it is too dry to farm, so cattle are run on it 
instead of the bison that were killed to starve the Native Americans off the 
plains so whites could take the land.)  Likely those farms look beautiful to 
those who make a good living off them.  (By the way, I'm a U.S. citizen, one 
who hopes coral reefs won't be obliterated like the prairies were.)
      As for space for solar, there is vastly more space in the US southwest 
deserts for solar instalations than ever will be needed.  And in Germany 
farmers have solar collectors all over their fields, and make money off the 
cows feeding underneath them on the grass as well as the solar.  You can do 
both easily.  There is plenty of room.  More of a problem is that the desert 
southwest is too far from the populous US east coast markets, and most of 
the energy would be lost in the electric lines.  But for Phoenix, Arizona, a 
low-tech solar electric plant was cheaper and quicker to build than any 
other kind of plant, and provides electricity best during peak demand, on 
hot sunny days when everyone has their air conditioner on.  Australia and 
North Africa have enough desert for solar plants to power much of the world, 
the problem is not space, it is distance from markets.
     There are great technical hurdles, indeed.  But as JFK said "We choose 
to go to the moon not because it is easy, but because it is difficult."  If 
the alternative is to let climate change cause massive damage around the 
world (like when Greenland melts and oceans drown many of the worlds largest 
cities which are on coasts, or we have to put dikes around them all and huge 
pumps like New Orleans and hope Hurricane Katrina doesn't hit.  Estimates of 
when Greenland will melt vary widely, I believe, and it's likely to be 
hundreds of years or more.), should we be looking for excuses to not solve 
the problems, or for ways to solve the problems???
          Doug

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Quenton Dokken" <qdokken at gulfmex.org>
To: "'Eugene Shinn'" <eshinn at marine.usf.edu>; 
<coral-list at coral.aoml.noaa.gov>
Sent: Tuesday, May 18, 2010 8:20 AM
Subject: Re: [Coral-List] Need for more oil


> Strong commentary Gene.  We must also deal with the issue of visual
> pollution by wind turbines and space allocations for solar.  We seem to be
> caught between a rock and a hard place.
>
> Quenton
>
> Quenton Dokken, Ph.D.
> Executive Director
> Gulf of Mexico Foundation, Inc.
> PMB 51 5403 Everhart Rd.
> Corpus Christi, TX 78411
>
> Office:  3833 South Staples Suite S214
>                Corpus Christi, TX 78411
>
> 361-882-3939 o
> 361-882-1262 f
> 361-442-6064 c
>
> www.gulfmex.org
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: coral-list-bounces at coral.aoml.noaa.gov
> [mailto:coral-list-bounces at coral.aoml.noaa.gov] On Behalf Of Eugene Shinn
> Sent: Tuesday, May 18, 2010 11:01 AM
> To: coral-list at coral.aoml.noaa.gov
> Subject: [Coral-List] Need for more oil
>
>>Dear Listers who wish to end oil use.  An interesting article  was
>>published recently in the NYTimes titled  "A Bad Bet On Carbon." The
>>article lists a number of problems with Co2 sequestration but the
>>significant one had to do with scale. Here is the direct quote.
>>"The third, and most vexing, problem has to do with scale. In 2009,
>>carbon dioxide emissions in the United States totaled 5.4 billion
>>tons. Lets assume that policymakers want to use carbon capture to
>>get rid of half of those emissions---say 3 billion tons per year.
>>That works out to about 8.2 million tons of carbon dioxide per day,
>>which would have to be collected and compressed to about 1,000 psi
>>(that compressed volume of carbon dioxide would be roughly
>>equivalent to the volume of daily global oil production).
>>    In other words, we would need to find an underground location (or
>>locations) able to swallow a volume equal to the contents of 41 oil
>>supertankers each day, 365 days a year."
>>     The rest of the article is about the 23,000 miles of new
>>pipeline needed and the social problems with property rights and the
>>25% reduced output of power plants due to carbon capture.
>
> Any thinking person can see this is a near impossible task in the
> near term even if the figure is cut in half. Many look to France for
> Co2 reduction where its no secret that they do it using nuclear
> energy and reprocess the waste. They even export some electricity to
> other European nations.  If you believe Co2 is a real problem for
> corals and want to reduce oil use we should do what the French did.
> That way we can remain productive and not depend on foreign sources
> of goods such as the computers on which we write these messages. Gene
>
>>
>
>
>
>>Gene
>
> -- 
>
>
> No Rocks, No Water, No Ecosystem (EAS)
> ------------------------------------ -----------------------------------
> E. A. Shinn, Courtesy Professor
> University of South Florida
> Marine Science Center (room 204)
> 140 Seventh Avenue South
> St. Petersburg, FL 33701
> <eshinn at marine.usf.edu>
> Tel 727 553-1158---------------------------------- 
> -----------------------------------
> _______________________________________________

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