Brian Schweitzer and Energy Independence

Kari Chisholm FacebookTwitterWebsite

Brianschweitzer_4Some of you may know that, in addition to BlueOregon, I also run another blog called Western Democrat - dedicated to advancing the simple notion that here in the West, Democrats are figuring out how to govern as progressives in red states. The national party could learn a lesson or two from that.

The leading exponent of the new Western progressivism is the Governor of Montana, Brian Schweitzer. In just over a year in office, he's had an amazing run -- starting new health programs for small businesses, reframing conservation issues and extraction policies, organizing hunters and environmentalists together, launching a lobbyist reform initiative, and - most of all - proving that Western-style straight talk can be good politics.

But the issue that's really putting Governor Schweitzer on the map is energy independence. As I blogged here at BlueOregon in August, he's proposing a plan for ramping up America's use of a decades-old (but new-and-improved) zero-emissions coal liquifaction technology. The goal is to create a bridge to the future, to whatever comes after the coming oil collapse -- be it hydrogen-powered cars, electric cars, universal Segways, or who-knows-what.

Tonight, Governor Schweitzer will be on 60 Minutes (CBS/KOIN, 7 p.m.) talking about the plan. Here's a preview:

The governor of Montana says he can turn the billions of tons of coal under his state into enough diesel fuel to greatly reduce America's dependence on foreign oil.

And there's an added benefit, says Gov. Brian Schweitzer: the United States will be sticking it to the "rats and crooks" who run the countries that sell oil to us.

Last fall in Seattle, I spent about forty minutes over dinner chatting with him about this coal technology, energy independence, and the Middle East.

Watch 60 Minutes tonight. I suspect you'll be as impressed with the Governor as I was.

(Hat tip to David Sirota, and be sure to check out the 60 Minutes preview.)

  • jim karlock (unverified)
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    Do we know what proces they are proposing to use?

    I found a bunch of info at: http://www.fischer-tropsch.org including a projected price of around $22 per barrel in 1975 dollars.

    Hopefully this will shut up the peak oil crowd.

    Thanks JK

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    The Governor did a good job - hey was that a westerndemocrat.com screen I saw after DailyKos??

  • Karl (unverified)
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    Will coal liquifaction technology be a bridge to the future, or a way to continue to ignore the coming global warming disaster while getting even more carbon out of storage and pumped into the system. I'm afraid we're more concerned about maintaining our life style as is than we are whether our kids and grand kids can have a decent life.

  • Marvinlee (unverified)
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    The coal-to-diesel fuel (Fischer-Tropsch process) was first developed in 1922. It is a splendid diesel fuel and has just as much potential as the Montana governor believes. We are the Midas of coal countries and coal-derived fuel will become vital to our future. Unfortunately, it is not a substitute for all that oil does for us. So I still believe that falling global energy reserves will have a major negative impact on our standard of living. Coal is dirty and hazardous, but that prove to be a resolvable technical challenge.

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    Schweitzer was great. Sort of like a cooler Tim Russert, more relaxed and less detached. Gasification can't solve the problem, but all we need now are 25-50 year stopgaps that let us focus on new technology research to solve the long-term issue of when oil truly runs out. There's nothing wrong with a combination of biodiesel, ethanol, gasification, geothermal, wind, solar (and nuclear) that reduces our capacious consumption in the short term. Do it ALL.

  • Fred Heutte (unverified)
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    The hype around gas-to-liquids is pretty remarkable. The reality is much more mundane and not at all uplifting. Sasol has made a huge mess in South Africa, their F-T plants are converting to gas, and the proposed Montana projects are enormously expensive and sure to be damaging to the land and wasteful of water and other resources while pulling capital away from much more beneficial renewable energy and efficiency investments.

    The Northern Plains Resource Council has an excellent booklet explaining the reality of this wayward proposal by Governor Schweitzer.

  • Steve (unverified)
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    This is all wonderful, but I assume if this was cheaper to get than NatGas or Oil, there would have been a lot of people developing this already which kind of takes some of the guy's credibility away.

    The answer is still going to be getting away from oil-based power (yes, even if it means atomic) if we want future generations to have some semblance of our lifestyle.

  • jim karlock (unverified)
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    How much enviro scare stuff should we read through before we give up on this "excellent booklet"?

    1. Produces 800,000 tons of sulphur pre year. I thought that sulphur was a saleable industrial feedstock chemical. AM I wrong?

    2. Land strip-mined is 221 square miles. They leave out the OVER 40 YEARS part. And choose the scary 221 sq miles instead of saying that it is a 15 miles square over a 40 year period. Doesn't Oregon have ranches bigger than that? They choose NOT to say that is only a 2 mile square per year. This is a bad as the crap coming out of the Bush administration.

    The 60 min story showed a previously mined field. It looked like any other flat land in the plains.

    If your real goal is to protect the environment, then work for common sense air and water quality regulations and let a clean industry come to life and further our goal of energy independence. Trying to stop the plant merely suggests that your real motive is to hurt modern civilization. I only say this because of all the posts I see on the blogs wishing for an end to oil, cars and mechanized transportation. They don’t even try to hide their glee at the prospect of their bikes being the only way to get around and that many (others) won’t be able to get food.

    Those people will try to stop this project so that the price of driving will be driven up to force people out of their cars and into mass tranist. Doesn't work in Europe with $5/gal gas and won't work here either. All it will do is further hurt the poor - the rich will be able to afford gas at any price.

    One swipe that they take at the project backfires: Princeton University Professor Robert H. Williams calculates the breakeven price of crude oil needed to profitably operate a Fischer-Tropsch plant producing diesel from coal, with carbon capture and sequestration, at $66 per barrel. So, event the critics admit that the plant might be economically justified at recent oil prices.

    Another quote: The Fischer-Tropsch coal-to-diesel process has been used on a commercial scale only in South Africa, with dubious results. Gee, don’t the authors of this report even know that Germany practically ran a war machine on this process?

    Thanks JK

  • Tom Civiletti (unverified)
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    jim karlock,

    You must be kidding. You complain that environmetalists measure land area in square miles. If this is "enviro scare stuff", you certainly spook easily.

    I wouldn't get too excited over Fischer-Tropsch Synthesis until it can be shown to have overcome the horrendous environmental damage of the only working example of the technology. Even if the process pollution can be contained, the destruction of ecosystems through stripmining will remain. Then there is the question of scale. Can this coal conversion replace our petroleum supply? I'd like to see some numbers, as opposed to silly remarks about endless supplies of coal.

    Rather than wishing that the "Peak Oil crowd" would shut up, perhaps you should look at the realities of energy supply, and not get carried away with the promises of unproven technology. You dan't seem like the kind of fellow who would use lottery tickets as his only form of investment. Why depend on pie-in-the-sky technologies as your plan for our future energy budget?

    On mass transit, just because the Europeans are ahead of us doesn't mean they are prepared for Peak Oil. As to their mass transit not working, that's not what I've heard from Europeans.

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    This is all wonderful, but I assume if this was cheaper to get than NatGas or Oil, there would have been a lot of people developing this already which kind of takes some of the guy's credibility away.

    The issue has been the price of a barrel of oil. Below $30 a barrel, the F-T process doesn't make sense. Above, it does.

    Building a single plant costs $1.5 billion - and that's the pre-overrun estimate (rimshot). It'll take 20-30 years to pay back the loan with the proceeds.

    If you're a big-money lender, you're not going to lend $1.5b (or $2b or $2.5b) if you think there's a chance that some miracle source of oil will be discovered and drive the price down below $30/barrel.

    So, what's needed - and what Schweitzer is really campaigning for - is a federal loan guarantee.

    In my mind, it's a small price to pay - compared to what we're spending EVERY DAY in Iraq defending our access to oil.

    Tom, Fred, and others may be right about the consequences. I think it's worth trying to do it once. Then we'll see if it works. The environmental impact of a single strip-mine in Montana (done right, reburied, with all CO2 shot back into the earth) is vastly less than the environmental and human impact of our current oil-consumption behavior -- which may yet lead us to world war.

  • Tom Civiletti (unverified)
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    Worth exploring, for sure, Kari; but a few billion dollar investment tends to create a mandate for plant operation, whether or not the process ends up adding to pollution and ecosystem destruction. Look at the old coal burning power plants that not only continue to operate, but are allowed to do so without adding easily obtainable pollution control equipment. We don't need another massive polluter with a political power base.

    On Peak Oil, today's Oregonian printed Oil expert: Output downhill from here about a leftwing wacko's, er, no, a former Shell oil geologist's view on energy supply.

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    Tom, I'm no chemist, but everything I've heard suggests that the F-T coal liquifaction process has zero toxic emissions - except CO2. And that CO2 can be captured and pumped back into the ground.

    Remember, coal power plants BURN coal. The F-T liquifaction process doesn't.

  • Tenskwatawa (unverified)
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    Yes, yes, Tom Civiletti's link to the Deffeyes interview. As retarded as information has been kept from getting to this point in newspapers -- Extra! Extra! Earth without oil !! -- seems suspect enough, the unfilled vacuum is unnatural enough, to ask if they really don't get the concept in the media, or if they have intentionally sat on it for whatever insider advantage was in keeping it secret. (Like they stifled the Goldschmidt news for the blackmail control it gained the newspaper ... as long as it was a secret.)

    Deffeyes gives your coal gasification props, Kari, (and Governor, and Montana), in a single sentence: "Coal gasification, where you react the coal with steam and a little bit of air and get a little gas, would be a win."

    Would be IF it were to be. Read further, and he says: "There's talk about building a nuclear plant up there [Canada-ish], and that's a good idea, but it'll take 10 years to get a plant in there." Read: So it's not going to happen. Gasification of Montana's coal would be a win but ... there is not enough time to build the appliance. Oil is that close to the effective end. (As Deffeyes says, if the media had done its educational precept, first to itself and then to its readers, twenty-five years ago, and had extolled Carter and execrated Reagan as the proper deservings for each of them should have been before the powerdrunk media's corruption of known facts ... (don't get me started), then people would not be so blindly ignorant this close to going over the edge.) Any 10 year proposal to fix the 'oil problem' is too long. We don't have 10 years left of this "lifestyle" as somebody's comment called it.

    That's what the commenters here are missing, and, somewhat, you too, Kari, and Gov.Schweitzer -- Earth's oil runs out in 5 or 10 years. We each should think about that.

    Deffeyes in conclusion: "Q.: How would you prepare for this? A.:... Owning something that's relatively energy independent and supplies food for the survivors to eat would be the sweetest target."

    Whoever can be making all their own electricity AND be growing all their own food, in 5 years, or align their politics with the pragmatics of a socialized community wherein organization and specialization of communal labor enables making enough electricity and growing enough food, so shall they be alive after 2012, say. He whose toys don't die wins.

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  • jim karlock (unverified)
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    Tenskwatawa Feb 28, 2006 : Earth's oil runs out in 5 or 10 years. We each should think about that.

    Deffeyes in conclusion: "Q.: How would you prepare for this? A.:... Owning something that's relatively energy independent and supplies food for the survivors to eat would be the sweetest target." JK: Wow, shades of 2000 millennium bug, chicken little sky is falling and Professor Harold Hill!! You must love Art Bell too.

    Tenskwatawa Feb 28, 2006 : Whoever can be making all their own electricity AND be growing all their own food, in 5 years, JK: We can’t. The government gods won’t let us have land anymore. It is too valuable for nature or something.

    Tenskwatawa Feb 28, 2006 : or align their politics with the pragmatics of a socialized community JK: The early pilgrims tried that and many starved. So did the Soviets. Same result: millions starved and died. Also China (great lap forward) etc. Got any better ideas?

    This was sent to me: As far as whether we're running out of oil, You might take a look at Peter Huber's new book "The bottomless well."

    Here's an article debunking peak oil by energy consultant Michael Lynch http://www.energyseer.com/NewPessimism.pdf.

    And here's an article by Rob Bradley, and energy policy researcher, debunking depletionism http://instituteforenergyresearch.org/running_out_oil.pdf

    from http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/F5CA4CFD-0FAA-4FCD-84FA-A74908EC2D6C.htm

    Saudi Arabia now pumps 9.5 million barrels of oil daily, with the capacity to produce 11 million barrels a day. The country has pledged to increase daily production to 12.5 million barrels by 2009, and the nation's oil minister said last month the level of 12.5 million to 15 million barrels daily could be sustained for up to 50 years.

    <hr/>

    And finally you have to have an incredible chain of event to actually run out of oil: You have to believe EVERY one the following:

    That, after 100 years of false alarms, we really will run out of oil. AND That, contrary to widely accepted economic laws, higher prices will not reduce demand,.

    AND That, contrary to widely accepted economic laws, higher prices will not bring additional supplies.

    AND That the experts are wrong about the amount of shale oil.

    AND That the experts are wrong about the amount of tar sands oil.

    AND That we cannot use hydrogen because we will run out of uranium to run the nuclear power plants necessary to make hydrogen.

    AND That we cannot make gas from our huge reserves of coal like the Germans did to run their war machine in 1943.

    AND That, after harnessing steam power, electric power and the atom. Placing a man on the moon and exploring other planets. Creating the telegraph, telephone, radio, television and computers. Conquering plagues, famine, polio, smallpox and dozens of other diseases and decoding the genetic code. After centuries of solving every kind of problem imaginable, mankind will suddenly lose his ability to solve problems. ---- Gimme me a break ----

    Thanks JK

  • Karl (unverified)
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    JK So you believe that putting all that stored carbon in the air will have no effect?

    AND that there is an infinite supply of it?

    AND an infinite supply of uranium?

    AND that we can responsibly guard nuclear waste for the next 20,000 years?

    AND that we don't have to worry about these things because we can let our kids and grand kids figure out what to do about it?

    Sounds like Pollyanna plus to me.

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    It was a great piece, and EXACTLY the kind of things Demos need to get on board with. Even though Republicans are distrusted and disliked, Dems haven't been able to parley that into support. Why? Because they lack a vision of the world they want. Governor Schweitzer's proposal hits on a key issue with layered resonance for liberals. It identifies an actual problem (as opposed to the fake ones the GOP promotes)--one that most Americans are worried about--and a win-win solution. Not only do we address the issue of global warming, but we weaken the hands of despotic oil producers.

    I believe the environment is the single biggest issue the Dems can exploit. It is a real problem, with real-world consequences (domestically and internationally), and the solutions take us in a positive direction on so many levels. National Dems should be clamoring to support Schweitzer on this one--there ain't no downside.

    (Plug: I spent a week at Low on the Hog talking about global warming and the <span style="font-weight: bold;">dangers it poses</span>, as well as the <span style="font-weight: bold;">political and tangible benefits</span> of making it a plank on the Dem platform.)

  • jim karlock (unverified)
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    Karl Feb 28 JK So you believe that putting all that stored carbon in the air will have no effect? AND that there is an infinite supply of it? AND an infinite supply of uranium? JK: 1. AND you know otherwise or either way? Tell me where to get such a crystal ball. 2. We don’t need an infinite supply of any energy source, only enough to last until a BETTER source comes on line. That might be fusion (cold or hot), di-lithium crystals or who knows what?

    You problem is thinking that since we can’t figure it out now, it will never be figured out:

    Place yourself in a typical house in 1900, chopping (or stacking) firewood. You physic friend tells you that in 50 years you won’t have to chop wood because heat will be delivered to you over a 1/4 inch diameter copper wire. Do you believe him? (Just in case you don’t get it, that is electric heat)

    Now tell me that you know what the next energy source will be.

    No one knows, it is unknowable. To hobble our current society because you do not know the unknowable is idiotic. But that is what the peak oil zealots are trying to do.

    Karl Feb 28 AND that we don't have to worry about these things because we can let our kids and grand kids figure out what to do about it? JK: That is what our grand parents did to us. They didn’t panic because electricity, computers and antibiotics weren’t invented. They just lived their life. And it all worked. They couldn’t even conceive that they should preserve SAND for us to build microchips from. Or preserve copper for electric wiring. Or aluminum for aircraft (aluminum, of course, being a semi precious metal at one time)

    Worse, suppose that they were into being sustainable. They would have built massive horse farms to be sure that the future masses has a source of transportation. Of course they didn’t even guess that modern technology would give us a population explosion, or that said population bomb would take care of itself through the technology of birth control. You are thinking that your fellow people are too stupid to adapt and to solve problems that you can’t even know exist.

    Karl Feb 28 Sounds like Pollyanna plus to me. JK: No, it is reality. More of Portland’s liberals should try it.

    PS: The only thing stopping freedom from oil via electric cars is a better battery. One discovery in a lab, or basement somewhere can completely change all of our energy thinking. (Actually, I should have said a solution to the range/recharging problem) Of course if gas hits $50/gallon, recharging your electric car every 50-75 miles will look pretty good. In any case we/they will figure out a way around any oil problems.

    PS2: Since you are so worried about the future, tell me how a futurist, in 1905 would plan for the first freeway to open 35 years later? Oh, just one complication: the automobile was just an expensive toy for the ultra-rich until five years later when Ford did his thing. (Of course in smart Portland we plan out 50 years.)

    Thanks JK

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    Sorry this is a bit late, but hopefully some folks are still reading this post and comment.

    Those who've worked for years on conservation issues in Montana are very nervous about what Schweitzer is proposing, which based on past experience with coal mining, will lead to massive clean water problems, and absolutely will contribute to global warming.

    Below is an email sent out by Theresa Keaveny, the long-time head of Montana Conservation Voters and another from the head of the Northern Plains Resource Council.

    From Theresa Keaveny, Exec. Director, Montana Conservation Voters

    Last night, Montana Governor Brian Schweitzer was featured in a "60 Minutes" segment called "The Coal Cowboy", in which he advocated a coal-to-liquids facility in Montana to reduce our nation's dependence on foriegn oil. Two other individuals, including Helen Waller with the Northern Plains Resource Council, were featured in the segment as well. Schweitzer wants to develop Montana's coal reserves using a technology that is commerically unproven, based on a method used in Germany and South Africa. The Governor says that the new technology will not contribute to global warming pollution, can be operated "pollution free" and will provide a cleaner fuel than standard diesel fuel. Ironically, last week, "60 Minutes" aired a segment detailing the global warming crisis and how to address it.

    The Northern Plains Resource Council and several other groups in Montana believe that there is a better way to achieving energy independence, namely, the development of renewables such as wind, bio fuels, solar, and conservation -- strategies that also protect the enviornment and foster sustainable economic development. Montana Conservation Voters and a number of allies met with the Governor's office in October to discuss his proposal, and what we see as a better way. We raised several questions related to the enviornmental impacts of his proposal, and discussed the need to upgrade Montana's laws and rules to a much higher standard in order to ensure that the plant can indeed be operated "pollution free." To date, he has not answered the issues raised at this meeting, or in a follow up letter sent to him by Northern Plains Resource Council.

    As you know, Montana Conservation Voters endorsed Governor Schweitzer in the 2004 election and, with thousands of conservation voters across the state and nation, supported his election. Now that he has gained national attention, we are not only concerned that he is impacting energy policy debate in Montana, but in your own states and nationally. We think that it is important that he hear from people outside of Montana about the need to focus on the priorities that matter -- renewable energy, wind, bio diesel and conservation.

    The Governor says that he wants to have a healthy public debate on this topic. Together with our allied conservation and environmental groups in Montana, Montana Conservation Voters encourages you to contact "60 Minutes" and Governor Brian Schweitzer and advocate alternatives to massive coal strip mining and his coal to liquids proposal, and the need to reduce global warming pollution; discuss the need for an energy plan that embraces sustainable, affordable, renewable energy; and point out the contradiction by "60 Minutes" in airing "The Coal Cowboy" on the heels of the February 19th Global Warming Segment.

    Please feel free to call me with questions.

    Thanks for your attention!

    Theresa Keaveny

    From Mark Fix, Northern Plains Chair Miles City, Montana

    I'm writing to encourage you to tune in to CBS News' "60 Minutes" this coming SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 26. In Montana, the program is scheduled to air at 6:00 PM on local CBS affiliates. If you have cable or satellite, check your local listings.

    "60 Minutes" will feature an interview with Helen Waller, a farmer from Circle, Montana, and a past chair of Northern Plains Resource Council. Helen discusses Montana's energy future and the effects of the governor's industrial coal-to-diesel proposal.

    You and I know that Montana and our nation are both at a crossroads. We have a choice. We can invest in unproven, uneconomic technologies of the past. Or, we can develop our vast, clean energy supplies like biodiesel. After all, it is a faster, cheaper, and better way to bring broad prosperity to rural Montana and meet our nation's energy needs.

    Devastating Montana's farm and ranch families by strip mining is a bitter and needless sacrifice, especially when we can address our energy and fuel needs with clean, renewable sources. Regardless of how dirty or clean a coal-to-diesel industry would be, it would require massive amounts of strip mined coal.

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    So let me get this straight.

    The environmental activist community is opposed to strip mining Montana and instead favors wind, biofuels, and something-or-other.

    The environmental activist community in Oregon, after spending months dealing with Dan Carol of the Apollp Project, has decided to oppose the biofuels initiative that he is bringing forward.

    Does anyone want to 'splain this to me or is your default postion that you just oppose everything and anything once the nose of a shovel bites into Mother Earth.

    Just asking.............

  • jim karlock (unverified)
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    The real goal of many in that movement is to shut down modern society and return to the middle ages. They don't care how many people would die (many of them think there are already too many people.)

    Thanks JK

  • Tenskwatawa (unverified)
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    My comments include short review of relevant supporting sciences. Or, I try. When brief comments are said to be too long to read comprehensively, it seems to me a sure bet the reader has not accomplished the longer full courses (of science) that the extracts are from. Which is why I feel obliged to supply the 'support pieces' to begin with. Which is why it is said to be too long to be understandable, which is why I put in more of the missing substantiation, ... lather, rinse, repeat.

    Starting pointlessly; on background: the thing the most of observers are missing in regards to oil is steel. No oil = no steel. It is about the temperatures oil (hydrocarbon formulations) can achieve. Humankind cannot molten steel using fires of wood, nor coal. Because, look, they had that heat for scores of centuries and never made steel. Brass, yes, we got to making brass. That was the acme of metallurgy. Until crude oil started, and call that 1830 to 1860, although that's a little early. It needs to distinguish a second development occurring in parallel, which was improving control of elemental chemistry, and especially the 'synthesis' or manufacture of oxygen. Injecting oxygen in the smelting furnace fire increases the temperature of operation. If you have oxygen to inject. Those aeration processes were developments from the earlier bellows ideas that metalworking smiths had evolved. In summary, if humankind had gotten into oil without oxygen injection, they couldn't make steel. And with oxygen injection but no oil, they couldn't make steel. Nuclear reactors and whole lightning-boltfuls of electricity, while very high temperature, are no substitute in the steelworking process for the high energy release of carbon-based chemical bonds in fuels such as crude oil.

    Steel making, more than any other thing I can think of, is the apt symbol for the Industrial Age -- they start and end together, circa 1820 - 2000. Idiomatically, the colonialists' USS Constitution was call Old Ironsides, not Old Steelsides. A century later, the 'nation' was knitted together with mighty steel rails, being the tracks the 'Iron Horse' rolled on that didn't wear down as fast (as softer iron rails). And a century later, titanium-cased bunkerbusters 'constrain' their charges from premature detonation in the course of ballistic impact and penetration.

    Okay, that concludes the brief background material, three tiptoe taps across latter day science history. Now, let's apply it. It means there ain't no new, coming soon, undiscovered, gonna save us, science. I think I understand that if someone doesn't know science then they wouldn't know the limits of science. There are things science cannot invent. (Regardless of the politics of how and how much money and manpower gets invested in the cause. Once upon a time among computer programmers, who were inventing programming as fast as creativity injected with inspiration could burn, management would berate them to invent faster, (the Dilbert labyrinth), and the programmers would peal with laughter, or maybe lunacy, and respond in unison: "you can't. shit. science.") (You hatch it.)

    So there is no undiscovered unforeseen unimagined savior slightly beyond our sight in the future, heading this way to save us. Science has devoloped so far that it can show it cannot develop farther, there is no further frontier. Science has seen the edge of the universe, (literally), and stopped a single photon of light, (literally), or, as a lyric has it, 'if I could put time in a bottle.' Well, now we can. Now we can put time in a bottle. (And we did. But it was yesterday's time. And it's still there tomorrow, good as new.) There is no smaller unit of time. There is no farther reaches of the universe. There is no other bottle. Ultimately, as predicted, it comes now that science can go no farther. It has reached the point where it can prove it cannot go beyond the point. I'm saying the same thing six different ways. I don't know how to convey the sense-most knowledge that science has reached its limits, today, without referring to science and its development up to now.

    The main problem in seeing what is or is not a viable alternative fuel to oil, is seeing oil's part in making the alternative. If it takes oil to make steel and it takes steel to make solar panels, (neither clause being strictly true but those are the default conditions without re-engineering), how can there be solar panels after oil runs out? We don't just 'switch over' to solar power. We have to commit spending some of the reduced oil supply to making solar panels. Voters in a democracy could make these commitment decisions and trade-offs ... if voters understood the science at issue. Bush mentioned making hydrogen fuel, but the process he's fronting for uses three barrels of oil (or the coal equivalent) to make electrical power, to electrolyze water, to split off hydrogen, to collect enough, to have fuel with the equivalent energy of one barrel of oil -- so uses three barrels of oil to make one.

    In mining Montana's coal there are many similar considerations. Foremost, it is finite. Big, vast, but finite. When it's gone, then what? Future generations are not going to have discovered something to 'switch to.' (We know this because the science that advances us to this energy circumstance is the same science that proves there is no alternate circumstances in energy.) After we decide to mine and gasify the coal, then there is the infrastructure of doing so. It take oils to make the steel to make the mining equipment. And oil to haul it in and haul it out. Then we get to the energy cost/benefit of the gasifying process itself, which looks to be about break-even or a little better. So it does yield more BTUs coming out a gas pipeline than went into making the gas get into the pipeline. If it is smartly done right. As far as it goes. The last daunting consideration is in seeing the scale of the situation today, and just to pick a ratio out of thin air to give a sense of the 'scale,' consider that all the coal in Montana contains less energy than we use in this country in one year at the rate we are using it. (Or say ten years' worth, it hardly makes a difference at this scale.) Which shifts the study toward finding ways to reduce our rate of using energy. Use it slower, and Montana's coal lasts longer. We use energy slower either if each of us uses less, or if there is less of us using it. And if half of us die off before the coalgas can come online and be delivered, then who is left to deliver it to, and do they need it, and is it still 'workable' (whereas 'profitable' quite ceases to be measured when the matter is the appropriation of public money to keep the public alive).

    That's not all but that's enough. It's too long.

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  • jim karlock (unverified)
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    Tenskwatawa | Feb 28, 2006 : thing the most of observers are missing in regards to oil is steel. No oil = no steel. It is about the temperatures oil (hydrocarbon formulations) can achieve. Humankind cannot molten steel using fires of wood, nor coal. JK: Natural gas can reach the same temperatures. Electric can reach even higher. Synthetic oil is hydrocarbon.

    Tenskwatawa | Feb 28, 2006 : Injecting oxygen in the smelting furnace. . .are no substitute in the steelworking process for the high energy release of carbon-based chemical bonds in fuels such as crude oil. JK: Actually the oxygen injection is to remove the carbon from the iron ore to make pure iron, then carbon is added in varying degrees to make various grades of steel. Natural gas has all of the basic molecules of oil, just in shorter chains. Where did you learn your chemistry -from a Sierra club handout?

    Tenskwatawa | Feb 28, 2006 : It means there ain't no new, coming soon, undiscovered, gonna save us, science. I think I understand that if someone doesn't know science then they wouldn't know the limits of science. There are things science cannot invent. JK: Science DOES NOT INVENT, people do. Science is a process of discovery.

    Tenskwatawa | Feb 28, 2006 : Science has devoloped so far that it can show it cannot develop farther, there is no further frontier. JK: Your claim that we now know everything that is knowable is laughable.

    Tenskwatawa | Feb 28, 2006 : The main problem in seeing what is or is not a viable alternative fuel to oil, is seeing oil's part in making the alternative. JK: You premise is wrong: synthetic oil is oil (without a lot of impurities)

    Tenskwatawa | Feb 28, 2006 : the process he's fronting for uses three barrels of oil (or the coal equivalent) to make electrical power, to electrolyze water, to split off hydrogen, to collect enough, to have fuel with the equivalent energy of one barrel of oil -- so uses three barrels of oil to make one. JK: That is why the French are using nuclear power (in off peak hours) to make the hydrogen. BTW: once you have the H2, you use atmospheric carbon from CO2 instead of coal. Then you have a closed carbon cycle with no alleged global warming (oops, climate change) implications. The Luddites will have to look elsewhere to try to convince people to give up their freedom to travel.

    Tenskwatawa | Feb 28, 2006 : If When it's gone, then what? Future generations are not going to have discovered something to 'switch to.' JK: Oil only needs to last long enough to discover something better.

    Tenskwatawa | Feb 28, 2006 : (We know this because . . . science that proves there is no alternate circumstances in energy.)
    JK: That is pure pseudo-science.

    Tenskwatawa | Feb 28, 2006 : . Then we get to the energy cost/benefit of the gasifying process itself, which looks to be about break-even or a little better. JK:Hitler didn’t run a war machine on a process that was only a little better than breakeven.

    It's too long. JK: At last , one correct statement.

    One request: Please quit playing with us, upon re-reading your statements, it is pretty clear that you don’t really believe the above, you’ re just wasting everybody’s time.

    Thanks JK

  • Tom Civiletti (unverified)
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    Kari wrote:

    "Tom, I'm no chemist, but everything I've heard suggests that the F-T coal liquifaction process has zero toxic emissions - except CO2. And that CO2 can be captured and pumped back into the ground."

    I don't know what you've heard, Kari, but the only operating facility usinf this technology is such an environmretal nightmare that they are shifting from coal to natural gas as an energy source.

    I read the articles linked to above by Jim Karlock and don't find them persuasive. I haven't heard any defenders of the Hubbert Curve suggest it is some magical formula. It does, however, in spite of the objections in these works, very accurately express the behavior of petroleum supply worldwide over several decades. Some of the discussion of OPEC reserves naively ignores the inflation of those nations reserves in order to increase their production quota. Industry insiders suggest that Saudi Arabia, in particular, is unable to increase production significantly, no matter how hard they pump [and remember that overproducing a field reduces the total field production]. Also, these articles exploit the canard that we are running out of oil. That is not the current problem, but it does not mean that their is no problem. We are very near Peak Oil, meaning that production cannot be increased and we have used about half the oil available. Demand, however, continues to grow. These two trends likely mean hyperinflation of oil prices in the near future. That is the current problem, and that is enough to tank the world's economy and end "life as we know it."

    As to the assertion that Peak Oil proponents want to return to the Middle Ages, no matter how many people die is a total reversal of the situation. The ignorant adherence of the economics of infinite supply is what will land us in the Dark Ages while killing off billions, yes, billions of people. Adapting to changing circumstances is what can mitigate the disaster. Check out Darwin's Theory of Evolution for a discussion of the value of adaptation in increasing survivability.

    It amazes me that a species with our intellectual ability can so ignore a situation that is about to hit us with an exponentially larger clout than the total of all the disasters that have made the news on the past fifty years. We're on our way down the slaughterhouse chute while mooing contently.

    I suggest everyone go plant some peas and carrots.

  • (Show?)

    I suggest everyone go plant some peas and carrots.

    All good points Tom, except for the last.

    How about we do the preparedness this way:

    You go ahead and plant the veggies, an I'll bring my arsenal over to protect your crop from Chris--"I don't need no danged cops, 'cause I have a concealed carry permit"---and his buddies. Hey, I'll bring my dogs too. We can eat the fat one and put the Skinny Puppy on guard duty.

    Peaceful resolution will definitely be out the window in your predicted scenario, so-o-o-o-o-o-o.......

  • Tom Civiletti (unverified)
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    ...which is why, Pat, I'm becoming more a fan of gun rights all the time.

  • jim karlock (unverified)
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    Tom Civiletti I suggest everyone go plant some peas and carrots. JK: We can't. Metro won't let us have enougn land to plant anything. You see, you smart growthers have forced all of us into a compact city with no back yards in our giant ugly condo buildings and towers.

    You compact city advocatees also won't let us have enough space for solar panels or a wind generator because both of these take land area (roof top solar is OK for single family houses but there is not enough roof area on a 4 story condo building for enough solar panels to supply power. PS: You only get about 10 watts per square foot so for a typical 20 KW-hr per day, you need well over 2000 sq ft of roof are per houing unit if the sun were overhead 24-7 which it isn't.

    Thanks JK

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    the only operating facility usinf this technology is such an environmretal nightmare

    ....yeah, but that's not in America. I suspect we might do things better. In fact, that's one of the elements on which Schweitzer predicates his plan. Without it, there's no point.

    At a speech in Seattle last fall, Schweitzer told a story about meeting the Bush administration junior official who - realizing that Schweitzer was from coal-rich Montana - said, "hey, I'm the guy who personally wiped out the mercury pollution standards for coal." What the Bushie didn't realize is that mercury pollution causes autism - and Schweitzer has an autistic kid. I don't remember Brian's exact response but it had something to do with threatening physical violence on the punk kid.

  • Tom Civiletti (unverified)
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    Not quite, JK. Landuse goals and zoning make it difficult to get a NEW house on a big lot within the UGB. I agree with that policy. It helps prepare for the age of expensive energy. One can, however, find existing homes with enough land to grow a garden [I did]. One can also use a community garden plot or join a food growing co-op.

  • Tenskwatawa (unverified)
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    JK, your spelling and grammar credit your comprehending account, but do not offset your overdrawn drafts of for Insuffient Knowledge. Usually someone with your voice so obviously smart reciting the nazi hatemongering of imbecile Bush/Liars types is a paid propaganda hireling -- Have Voice, Will Lie. Have hate, kill civil sense, might nicely noose your news and you.

    Your incoherence is not what is so curiously stupid -- you can't. shit. science period, and you saying the future can shit science, not you now, symptomizes your case of contamination with the anti-irreligious tongue toxin and blind person's bluff; no, what is most defective in your presents is the zealous stealth. This, in maniacs, does seem ambitious. Overmuch. Beyond a fault, to felony; mephistophelian: Yours is the voice of the self-damned and deathly possessed. I offer what exorcisms I bring, first one being instruction to take your head out of your handler's asshole, and second being take time to read five threads here before commenting in one and in that one read five comments before yours. Save bandwidth, suck your two-bit's.

    You can't think your patronizing hot-breathed hate here contributes in quantity with quality nil. A million times nothing is nothing. You come here all the time and don't do a damned thing. Well, maybe reassure readers how potent crystalline facts cause electrocution spasmosity in slimey liars; or, salt set on a slug sure makes it jerk in the dirt a lot.

    Fact: Natural gas co-develops geologically with petroleum. Read 'oil deposits' as 'natural gas and oil deposits' in the discussion. When there isn't oil to power a coal gasification process then incidently there isn't natural gas, either. And it isn't that there is zero oil overnight, before that is an austerity vise of effectively no oil in one use, (steel making, say, or the Pentagonistic militarism), rationing greater good in another -- growing food, say, or pharmaceutical medicinism. Have swords, beat ploughshears.

    Ref.: Flying is Dying, by George Monbiot, AlterNet. Posted March 1, 2006.

    There is no way to halt global warming and continue traveling long distances at high speeds. The only solution is to stop flying in airplanes.

    At last the battlelines have been drawn, ...

    The industry has seen it, and is getting its revenge in first. Last week the Guardian obtained a leaked copy of a draft treaty between the European Union and the United States which would prevent us from taking any measure to reduce the airlines' environmental impact without the approval of the U.S. government.

    An unbridled 'government,' like JK comments, going on in deadly hoof thrashing meant only to impair progressives' and the world's healthy future.

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  • Tenskwatawa (unverified)
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    What Kind of Country do We Want?, by Peter G. Cohen

    The factories that are turning out missiles and bombers could be producing solar panels and wind generators for ourselves and an energy-hungry world. ...

    This huge military establishment is corrupting our nation and its people. We must reject the corrosive action of fear and boldly imagine a new America that deals with the real problems of our nation and the Earth. Then we must elect representatives who have demonstrated their devotion to the ideals and needs of the American people and have the ability to put them into action.

    Peter G. Cohen, artist and mural painter, is a veteran of WWII and a Vietnam peace activist.

    JK, as you reject the best attributes of your sound mind and social mein, so you are reject.

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  • jim karlock (unverified)
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    Tenskwatawa | Mar 2, 2006 Your incoherence is not what is so curiously stupid -- you can't. shit. science period, and you saying the future can shit science, not you now, symptomizes your case of contamination with the anti-irreligious tongue toxin and blind person's bluff; no, what is most defective in your presents is the zealous stealth. This, in maniacs, does seem ambitious. Overmuch. Beyond a fault, to felony; mephistophelian: Yours is the voice of the self-damned and deathly possessed. I offer what exorcisms I bring, first one being instruction to take your head out of your handler's asshole, and second being take time to read five threads here before commenting in one and in that one read five comments before yours. Save bandwidth, suck your two-bit's. JK: Sore Loser. Goodbye.

    Thanks JK

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