Re: Global Warming -- Follow the Money!!

On Mar 29, 9:55 am, Gogarty <Goga...@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
You, um, pay a lot for your sunshine, do you, moron? You do know, moron,
that bio-diesel is both cheaper and MUCH less environmentally harmful than
diesel from oil, right? And finally, moron, it's a fact that the only thing
more abundant than hydrogen in this universe is conservadolt stupidity.

Oh you of limited vocabulary (moron? That's all you've got?) biodiesel in free
competition is not cheaper than petroleum based diesel. Far from it.

All you need to do is count the number of processing steps and the amount of
energy invested for each step. Then you subtract the tax charged on petroleum
diesel fuel and remove the subsidies for anything named "bio."

You cannot produce a gallon of corn oil or peanut oil or olive oil at a cost
as low as you can produce a gallon of No. 2 oil. It's a simple distillation
that recovers a narrow range of simple petroleum products in a small molecular
weight range. No expensive processing like catalytic cracking required. No
presses. No people in bare feet jumping up and down in vats.

Mind you, I am on your side in this argument. But I am also a realist. And I
own two diesel engines, one in a car and the other in a boat and I am paying
much more for diesel these days than I would for gasoline (especially the
marine diesel, which is untaxed but dispensed by a monopoly marina).

The abundance of hydrogen in the universe is quite irrelevant. On Earth, at
any rate, this highly reactive element is bound up in other compounds, e.g.,
petroluem and water. Free hydrogen, whatever the isotope, does not exist in
the wild. You have to expend energy and capital to unbind it then recover the
energy to make it do work and you can't get as much work out of it as you put
into it.

Nice to see I've started some rigorous debate on relevant material,
and not the usual pseudo-religious moralizing.

Getting back to nuclear fusion, if you don't mind, bear in mind it was
1,500 years between the development of the steam engine and its
effective practical application. The obstacle? Largely the
development of cast iron through coke and blast furnaces. Not an
obvious development, but not beyond the capacity of the Roman Empire.
I would argue that some comparable, not insurmountable obstacle is the
problem in nuclear fusion. I suggest nuclear fusion is, effectively,
a nano-technology problem. Operate on a small enough area with micro-
lasers, the containment problems physicists regularly complain of
disappear. It would also be a far cheaper technology to develop,
using a small area and micro-lasers. Exactly why this is not being
done -- rigidity, incompetence, stupidity, corruption, lack of
interest, deliberate obstruction -- I really couldn't say for sure.
But fusion is the obvious solution. Everything else is a distraction
or a stopgap.


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