Re: Gazans phonebanking for Obama - Al Jazeera

In article <11665-48348D49-343@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>,
Dvora L <Dvora1988@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Re: Gazans phonebanking for Obama - Al Jazeera

Group: soc.culture.jewish.moderated Date: Wed, May 21, 2008, 6:13pm
(EDT+4) From: hrubin@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx (Herman=A0Rubin)
In article <21526-48345221-174@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>, Dvora L
<Dvora1988@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Re: Gazans phonebanking for Obama - Al Jazeera
Group: soc.culture.jewish.moderated Date: Tue, May 20, 2008, 6:34pm
(EDT+4) From: hrubin@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx (Herman=3DA0Rubin) In article

<big snip .>

---- from Dvora
The need for oil will not cease or decrease in the forseeable future --
there must be a solution for the short term -- while we are working on a
solution for the longterm ?????
-
Do you have any feasible ideas in mind for how to deal with this ?

--- from Herman
Feasible, yes. Cheap, no. I am not an expert, and I do not know more
than what an educated person should.
1) We can convert coal to oil or natural gas. If we collect the
impurities, this is no worse that using oil or natural gas. This is
known technology. However, there needs to be government guarantees that
those doing this will not go broke if OPEC decides to flood the market.
-
Has this happened in the past ? --

Germany used the process to produce gasoline in WWII,
not having access to too many petroleum sources.

South Africa produced about 1/3 of their gasoline this
way when there was the boycott of them.

So this can be done on a fairly large scale.

Also, before natural gas became abundant, gas for
household use was produced on a large scale in this
country from coal.

-
2) We can grow "efficient" plants and burn them, or use them in other
ways, such as producing methanol or ethanol. Both of these have been
used for fuel.
-
Also, biodiesel. Diesel himself thought the engine should run on
biofuel, and people have run their engines on waste oil from restaurants
and such.
-
Have thse three been tried on a large scale yet ? how successfully ?

It has been tried successfully. Waste restaurant oil is
not available in large quantities, nor is biofeul at the
time. But those who have tried it have succeeded.

The price of cooking oil at the stores is often less than
the price of diesel, but not that much less now. Of
course, if it was diverted for this purpose, the cost would
go up. Our legislatures cannot repeal the law of supply
and demand.

3) More reliance on nuclear energy. The solutions above require energy,
and the complaint has been made that the use of corn for ethanol
production consumes almost as much energy as is released by the ethanol.
-
Is this true ?

Yes.

-
4) Hybrid vehicles. They will not be a major solution, but will help.
I know the problems with hydrogen as a fuel.
-
There is a recent discovery at Purdue which eliminates some of the
nastier problems, but to use a pound of gasoline, one would have to use
as fuel 9 pounds of water, and carry along 9 pounds of doped aluminum,
both of which are used up. At the end of the trip, for each pound of
hydrogen used, there will be 17 pounds of aluminum trioxide to be
converted to 9 pounds of aluminum, and this takes lots of energy.
-
There has been a lot of work on hydrogen as a fuel. Hydrogen gas is not
sufficiently compressible, and a knowledge of elementary chemistry is
enough to show that there are not many non-tested hydrogen compounds
available with more than 10% hydrogen, methane being the most
concentrated at 25%.
-
This sounds like a lot of work would need done first --- and you are
right -- none of th above will end up being a cheaper solution --
-
do you think there are ways to drasticly reduce our national consumtion
in ways the american public would tolerate -- and that would help on a
large scale ?

I doubt that consumption can be reduced, but it might well
be diverted. We cannot really increase engine consumption
that much in city driving without substantially increasing
the time taken, and time is often the costly item. Most of
the "efficiency" in cars is due to smaller size; there are
tradeoffs between efficiency and the production of oxides
of nitrogen.

The oil companies are not sitting on better engines,
and with foreign manufacturers trying to get a bigger
share of the Americcan market, they could not.

and Herman -- THANKS :-)
-
I hope your world is quiet :-)
******
Be safe and well :-) .... DVORA
--
This address is for information only. I do not claim that these views
are those of the Statistics Department or of Purdue University.
Herman Rubin, Department of Statistics, Purdue University
hrubin@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Phone: (765)494-6054 FAX: (765)494-0558
.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: So what happens when 100LL is gone anyway?
    ... Which will increase our consumption of coal, oil, and natural gas. ... George Patterson ...
    (rec.aviation.piloting)
  • Re: NBC: Stop the Energy Insanity; by Mortimer Zuckerman
    ... drilling in ANWR will _not_ reduce U.S. dependence on foreign oil. ... energy and a different energy future? ... The United States is the Saudi Arabia of wind power. ... Natural gas and bio-fuels are the only domestic energy sources used ...
    (rec.music.artists.springsteen)
  • Misleading stories about Arctic scramble - more reactionary "green" propaganda
    ... headlined in translation "Five Countries Fight over ... North Pole's Oil". ... resources of oil and natural gas in that region - which is ... the "scarcity" of oil and natural gas, ...
    (talk.politics.misc)
  • Re: Putka is really frothing.
    ... Russia beyond Moscow and St Petersburg. ... middle-income emerging economy. ... Although high oil ... Oil, natural gas, metals, and timber ...
    (soc.culture.baltics)
  • Re: OT: Mortgage industry bail-out
    ... barrels of oil and natural gas liquids, ... oil are available - 25 times more than the original estimate made in 1995. ... lower 48 natural gas production is not projected to ...
    (rec.arts.dance)