boobear
Member
But to make the towels you use machines that use it.
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Ukraine Banter Thread
- Thread starter Jessy89
- Start date
severestorm
Member
the way folks want to cut oil out, we all will be making them like my grandma did and that's the old fashioned way.
Shaggy
Member
Nobody is saying cut it out but how about not demonizing any attempt to move on from it eventually? That would be a good start
A little hyperbolic there, no one is rejecting "every" attempt at reducing the need for oil. Although, I thought we liked stuff from mother earth hmmm
Sandbar
Member
Indeed!I'm glad to see our 2 resident self proclaimed conservatives are still leading the conservatism charge on here
Downeastnc
Member
Not really, a lot of conservatives treat any attempt to go green as a negative, gas prices will never be under $2 again outside of pandemics shutting down the world, heck getting excited for gas under $3 is going to be the new normal before too long since the amount of oil is pretty finite....and we are using it much much faster than its being created. Realistic estimates say 50-100 yrs of supply left at current usage rates...so even if you remove the environmental impacts from GHG from the equation the problem of limited supply still remains....the supply is finite, cheap gas is never going to come back because the oil being used can not be replaced..
You missed the point but it's ok, I love to read your very well thought out and articulated deflection comments. B's is calling your name eat some BBQ for me.
Downeastnc
Member
Its not a deflection, conservatives poo poo green energy because they see it as a nefarious liberal plot to control their lives, I see it all over the place. The facts are the facts however....oil is gonna run out sooner than most think, this means gas prices will do nothing but go up....
B's it tough to get most of the time, I live 5 mins from Parker's and their fried chicken is the bomb sooooo I go to Parker's way more than B's which is a few times a year thing while at work ( closer and we can send someone to sit in line )
ForsythSnow
Moderator
Ah yes, Political thread #3
NCSNOW
Member
Imagine if you could find a way to dispose of car batteries. Or when ones on fire, the fire dept not refuse to get close enough to put out. Saw where one caught on fire and burned 3 others right beside it at the charging stations. FD refuses to get near when those things are on fire. This on top of the rain forest devastation to harvest a raw material used to make the ole electric battery hum/go.
NCSNOW
Member
B's rules the roost. Parkers aint bad either. The hidden treasure of living in eastern NC. Over here I have to find the Smithfield's in Gboro or do it myself. No fan of that Lex style.
Labels are fun. Libertarians poo poo going green too. So do liberals. See how easy that is?
I gave a like for the last part of your post Lol.
Every conservative does not reject every attempt, that was hyperbole. But all libs want to completely get off fossil fuels, they haven't hidden the fact that they want to end the industry completely and it's not possible. By the way, I've been meaning to ask you, you of all people will be able to answer this for me. How many miles do you get on your electric vehicle before you have to charge it and how expensive is it to recharge at one of those charging ports? Also, I know you love to hunt those backwoods around the Pitt Co area, you getting back there on your electric truck? Electric four wheeler? or horseback?
boobear
Member
The problem is the "solutions" are pushed by politicians who plan on making profits ,not thought out long range about affects on the environment. Not one country that was part of the Paris fiasco agreed to do what their expensive study said they needed to. It allowed China and India to increase their carbon foot print and wealthy countries to buy poorer countries carbon footprints. The very most they agreed to was half of what they said they need to do. Costa Rico was the only country that meet what they agreed to meet. The rest of the countries agreed to to half or less than what the study said needed. None of them met it. They did however have countries very eagerly to make and sell things like batteries. They made no great attempts to clean things up , but they did figure out ways to make money. Nothing is green. Windmills parts are not easy to dispose of and kill a lot of birds. Solar has the same problem. You need petroleum to make solar and wind. I can only imagine the crap that is going into the ocean from those large solar farms China has floating on the ocean. You will need to remove trees to use solar panels in a lot of places and long periods of rain or snow will make solar not something to depend on. I have a hybrid and I love it , but I am concerned about where the battery will end up.
It's a smart thing to gradually reduce dependence on a resource that is declining in its availability. Agendas that push to grind it to a halt are foolish. Ignoring the fact that it is being depleted is also foolish. If someone would come up with a cheap green energy source that was easy and convenient to access, people would fall all over themselves to use it. Why hasn't that happened, since all the really smart people agree that it makes the most sense? Hmmm? Is it because the dumb conservatives try to block it at every turn? Well that hardly makes sense.
So it must be something else. That really leaves us 2 options: Either we're just too dumb to invent a cheap and convenient renewable energy source, or there must be a reason we haven't done it. I hope folks will gravitate toward the first option, lest they place themselves in the precarious position of stumbling headlong into the conspiracy theory realm *.
* Disclaimer: I have no super secret information, in case anyone is lurking about who may think such a thing.
Downeastnc
Member
Reliable electrics trucks are not to far off, at least hybrids....and they 4W drive to boot....I dont advocate ending oil or gasoline usage, but the FOCUS needs to be on getting off fossil fuels since they are going to run out. This needs to happen as quickly as technology allows for a multitude of reasons.
The average cost per month for a EV depends on how much you use it, what you pd for your last refill on your vehicles would pay for MONTHS on a EV.....https://www.marketwatch.com/story/how-much-does-it-cost-to-charge-an-electric-car-we-do-the-math-11615580227
"To put this into perspective, let’s give an example. Let’s say you drive about 540 miles a month. For an EV, you will use 180 kWh in that time frame. Then, using the U.S. household average of 12 cents per kWh, that gets you to $21.60/month to charge an EV."
severestorm
Member
I guess inflation doesn't effect electric companies
Electricity prices and customer debt are rising: 'There will be suffering,' warns consumer advocate
In Massachusetts alone, electric and gas customer accounts 90 days or more past due are now in excess of $500 million, according to the National Consumer Law Center.
You don't advocate ending oil but advocate that the focus needs to be on ending it...... got it
Also, I could've researched those prices, I was asking about your electric vehicles, I presumed you owned one or two or so since that should be our focus.
D
Deleted member 609
Guest
This is easily number 4
If we count each time we've shut one down and reopened the same one, we could be pushing double digits
D
Deleted member 609
Guest
Just keep it out of the stock thread. I use it to learn new ways to lose money on a daily basis.
LickWx
Member
Except fears over oil running out have been very overplayed . We have a ton of oil , enough for much much cheaper gas prices . Not too mention demand will decrease over the next few years . Don’t drink the kool - aid
He has to, he makes it
Now stay with me a minute. Some physics for ya'll
Remember, Crude OIL, we consume about that amount in coal-equivalent between both gasoline and diesel.
Consider this: There is 13 times as much energy in coal in the form of Thorium as there is available by burning the coal, and right now we literally throw it away in the ash pile!
What is Thorium? It's a fertile material. That means that when struck by a neutron in a reactor it transmutes via a nuclear process to an element that is capable of fission. Note that Thorium itself is not fissionable - that is, it will not (directly) split and release energy. Instead it captures thermal neutrons and turns into Uranium-233. U-233 is fissile.
There is a type of nuclear reactor that utilizes this fuel cycle. Instead of the traditional nuclear reactor which uses water as a moderator and coolant (either a boiling or pressurized water reactor) these reactors use a liquid salt. In the vernacular they're called "LFTR"s, pronounced "Lifter."
You've probably never heard of them. But they're not pie in the sky dreams. Our nation ran one for nearly four years in the 1960s at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory. It was scrapped in favor of the traditional uranium fuel cycle we use today because the fuel it produces is very difficult to exploit for nuclear weapons, and it breeds fuel at a slow rate. The natural process of the nuclear reactions in the core of such a unit produces a byproduct that is a very strong gamma emitter that is difficult to separate from the other reaction products. For this reason - and because we wanted both nuclear power and nuclear weapons - we built the infrastructure for uranium and plutonium rather than thorium.
Thorium-based reactors have several significant advantages and a few disadvantages. We have much less experience with LFTRs than traditional nuclear power, simply because we stopped working with them for political and war-fighting reasons. They use a fluoride salt which is quite reactive when in contact with water, but the reactivity is a bonus in all other respects, because it tends to encapsulate the reaction products (the nasty fission products that you don't want in the environment) through that same chemical process. It runs at a much higher temperature (typically 650C) than a traditional reactor and unlike a traditional reactor the fuel and the working fluid is the same - there are no fuel rods that can melt and release their nasty fission product elements, as the fuel is dispersed in the coolant.
Finally, the unit is intrinsically safe. It does not require high pressure; the working fluid and coolant is a liquid at ordinary atmospheric pressure. This gets rid of the need for high-pressure pumps, pipes and similar materials. Without the moderator the reactivity is insufficient to sustain a chain reaction, and the moderator is in the reactor vessel itself through which the fuel/coolant is pumped, so criticality is impossible outside of the reactor vessel and inside the vessel the fuel and coolant are the same, and a liquid. The working fluid is contained in the reactor loop by an actively-cooled plug. If power is lost cooling ceases and the plug melts; the working fluid then drains into tanks by gravity under the reactor and cools into a solid, as it cannot maintain criticality outside of the reactor itself (there's no moderator in the tank or the plumbing.) As the fuel is in the fluid, there is no core to melt as occurred in Japan and being dispersed over a much larger area the working fluid naturally cools from liquid to solid without forced pumping and cooling. This safety feature was regularly tested in the unit at Oak Ridge - they literally turned off the power on the weekends and simply went home!
There are some downsides. The working fluid requires special metals made out of Hastelloy. But these are no longer particularly-special materials, being used in other chemical plants where highly-corrosive material is commonly handled. They are expensive, but then again so are traditional reactor pressure vessels which require high-pressure integrity and thus special welding and inspection techniques.
Why did I just spend all this time talking about LFTRs?
Let's remember two facts from up above:
This light bulb should be coming on about now: We can replace our gasoline and diesel consumption, plus replace the coal-fired plant electrical generation, and have lots of energy left over - all while completely eliminating the requirement for foreign petroleum from anyone!
Now let's put the pieces together.
We'll start with the same amount of coal we burn today.
We have the fuel energy in the coal, and we have 13x that much energy which we are going to extract from it in the form of the thorium naturally contained in the coal.
Let us assume we consume twice the fuel content of the coal extracting the thorium. We have 11x the original energy left (once in combustion of the coal, and 10x in thorium energy content.)
We will then use the Fischer-Tropsch process to turn the coal into synfuel - gasoline and diesel. We will be rather piggish about efficiency (that is, presume we're not efficient at all) and assume we put in twice as much energy as the coal contains in fuel content converting it. Since the process heat from the reactor is of higher quality (higher temperature) than the Fischer-Tropsch reaction requires by a good margin, we can do so directly without first converting to electricity (which would introduce more losses.)
We now have all of our gasoline and diesel fuel, and we also have 8x the original BTU content of the coal left in thorium energy content.
We will then use the remainder to generate electricity.
So what do we have out of this?
A nuclear and physical technology that:
Are their engineering challenges in this path? Yes. Is it "free energy"? No.
Can this be made to work given what we know now, at a reasonably-competitive price? YES.
Remember, Crude OIL, we consume about that amount in coal-equivalent between both gasoline and diesel.
Consider this: There is 13 times as much energy in coal in the form of Thorium as there is available by burning the coal, and right now we literally throw it away in the ash pile!
What is Thorium? It's a fertile material. That means that when struck by a neutron in a reactor it transmutes via a nuclear process to an element that is capable of fission. Note that Thorium itself is not fissionable - that is, it will not (directly) split and release energy. Instead it captures thermal neutrons and turns into Uranium-233. U-233 is fissile.
There is a type of nuclear reactor that utilizes this fuel cycle. Instead of the traditional nuclear reactor which uses water as a moderator and coolant (either a boiling or pressurized water reactor) these reactors use a liquid salt. In the vernacular they're called "LFTR"s, pronounced "Lifter."
You've probably never heard of them. But they're not pie in the sky dreams. Our nation ran one for nearly four years in the 1960s at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory. It was scrapped in favor of the traditional uranium fuel cycle we use today because the fuel it produces is very difficult to exploit for nuclear weapons, and it breeds fuel at a slow rate. The natural process of the nuclear reactions in the core of such a unit produces a byproduct that is a very strong gamma emitter that is difficult to separate from the other reaction products. For this reason - and because we wanted both nuclear power and nuclear weapons - we built the infrastructure for uranium and plutonium rather than thorium.
Thorium-based reactors have several significant advantages and a few disadvantages. We have much less experience with LFTRs than traditional nuclear power, simply because we stopped working with them for political and war-fighting reasons. They use a fluoride salt which is quite reactive when in contact with water, but the reactivity is a bonus in all other respects, because it tends to encapsulate the reaction products (the nasty fission products that you don't want in the environment) through that same chemical process. It runs at a much higher temperature (typically 650C) than a traditional reactor and unlike a traditional reactor the fuel and the working fluid is the same - there are no fuel rods that can melt and release their nasty fission product elements, as the fuel is dispersed in the coolant.
Finally, the unit is intrinsically safe. It does not require high pressure; the working fluid and coolant is a liquid at ordinary atmospheric pressure. This gets rid of the need for high-pressure pumps, pipes and similar materials. Without the moderator the reactivity is insufficient to sustain a chain reaction, and the moderator is in the reactor vessel itself through which the fuel/coolant is pumped, so criticality is impossible outside of the reactor vessel and inside the vessel the fuel and coolant are the same, and a liquid. The working fluid is contained in the reactor loop by an actively-cooled plug. If power is lost cooling ceases and the plug melts; the working fluid then drains into tanks by gravity under the reactor and cools into a solid, as it cannot maintain criticality outside of the reactor itself (there's no moderator in the tank or the plumbing.) As the fuel is in the fluid, there is no core to melt as occurred in Japan and being dispersed over a much larger area the working fluid naturally cools from liquid to solid without forced pumping and cooling. This safety feature was regularly tested in the unit at Oak Ridge - they literally turned off the power on the weekends and simply went home!
There are some downsides. The working fluid requires special metals made out of Hastelloy. But these are no longer particularly-special materials, being used in other chemical plants where highly-corrosive material is commonly handled. They are expensive, but then again so are traditional reactor pressure vessels which require high-pressure integrity and thus special welding and inspection techniques.
Why did I just spend all this time talking about LFTRs?
Let's remember two facts from up above:
- There is 13 times as much energy in coal in the form of Thorium as there is available by burning the coal.
and - We use 1,234 million short tons a year of coal equivalent in gasoline and diesel fuel which is approximately - within 20% - of the amount of coal we burn now.
This light bulb should be coming on about now: We can replace our gasoline and diesel consumption, plus replace the coal-fired plant electrical generation, and have lots of energy left over - all while completely eliminating the requirement for foreign petroleum from anyone!
Now let's put the pieces together.
We'll start with the same amount of coal we burn today.
We have the fuel energy in the coal, and we have 13x that much energy which we are going to extract from it in the form of the thorium naturally contained in the coal.
Let us assume we consume twice the fuel content of the coal extracting the thorium. We have 11x the original energy left (once in combustion of the coal, and 10x in thorium energy content.)
We will then use the Fischer-Tropsch process to turn the coal into synfuel - gasoline and diesel. We will be rather piggish about efficiency (that is, presume we're not efficient at all) and assume we put in twice as much energy as the coal contains in fuel content converting it. Since the process heat from the reactor is of higher quality (higher temperature) than the Fischer-Tropsch reaction requires by a good margin, we can do so directly without first converting to electricity (which would introduce more losses.)
We now have all of our gasoline and diesel fuel, and we also have 8x the original BTU content of the coal left in thorium energy content.
We will then use the remainder to generate electricity.
So what do we have out of this?
A nuclear and physical technology that:
- Replaces all of our gasoline and diesel fuel requirements. This ends our foreign oil imports. It also allows us to remove all foreign military activity related to securing that foreign oil. It is essentially a lock that we can drop $200 billion a year off our military budget this way, and it's not unreasonable to expect that we might be able to cut the DOD in half. Over 20 years this is at least $4 trillion in budget savings, and might be as much as double that. Those funds should do nicely to build the plants involved.
- Continues to use liquid hydrocarbons for light and moderate transport needs. Sorry folks, there's nothing better. I wish there was too. There isn't. Some day there might be, but that day is not today. The problems with the alternatives are all found in thermodynamics as a consequence of energy density and those are laws, not suggestions. The energy and money required to produce a plug-in vehicle or hybrid is, for most users, greater than the incremental cost of the fuel over the entire lifetime of the car. Hybrid and all-electric vehicles make no sense unless you have no rational way to produce the liquid hydrocarbons. We do have the ability using the above.
- Reduces our carbon emissions by the amount of the former oil imports that were burned.We still burn the gasoline and diesel, but that's in the form of the converted coal. Since we're only using half the hydrocarbons we used before between coal and oil, our CO2 emissions go down by the amount of the formerly-burned petroleum. I'm not an adherent of the global warming religion but if you are you have to love this plan for that reason alone.
- Provides us dramatically more electrical power than we have now, and more-efficiently on a thermal-cycle basis. Conventional nuclear power uses Rankine-cycle turbines. This is one reason why they need access to large amounts of water. Due to the higher temperature of operation these reactors can run combined-cycle generating turbines, which makes practical siting them in places where they are air-cooled yet they can still achieve reasonable thermal efficiency.
- Is sustainable for two full centuries, even assuming our historical 1% population growth rate and no decrease in per-capita energy use. Within 200 years we should be able to get fusion figured out. 200 years is a long time for technology to advance. This much is absolutely certain: There is no other option that is reasonably feasible with today's technology and which has an exhaustion horizon of more than 100 years available at the present time, allowing for our historical population growth and no dramatic reductions in per-capita energy consumption.
- Is not subject to the same constraints and risks that exist for today's reactors, even though this has nuclear power at its core. The accident in Japan, for example, cannot occur with these units because they do not require active cooling after being shut down to remain safe. The working fluid also tends to bind any reaction products, which inhibits the spread of any material if there is a pipe break or other release into the environment.
- Produces much less high-level nuclear waste than conventional reactors. Most waste is burned up in the reactor via continual reprocessing on-site. The final waste product produced is a tiny fraction in volume of that from conventional plants. It is not zero to be sure, but these units present a much-smaller waste profile than do traditional uranium/plutonium cycle nuclear plants.
Are their engineering challenges in this path? Yes. Is it "free energy"? No.
Can this be made to work given what we know now, at a reasonably-competitive price? YES.
True, but taking into account the cost of the EV you never ever get close to breaking even on costs unless EVs drastically drop in price. For instance it would take 150 years of cost savings to make up the difference between my car and a Tesla assuming you could keep the car running and the Tesla wouldn’t need any maintenance.
I wouldn’t mind at all to have an EV, but it is far unrealistic to my circumstance.
Downeastnc
Member
Correct but its going to take several decades to more the infrastructure over to electric, it is cost prohibitive for most folks now but give it a decade or so. I remember when electric weed eaters, leaf blowers, lawn mowers came out and they had crappy battery life and everyone one like these will never make it....now they are everywhere and perform well for a lower price than most gasoline models.
Downeastnc
Member
You don't advocate ending oil but advocate that the focus needs to be on ending it...... got it
Also, I could've researched those prices, I was asking about your electric vehicles, I presumed you owned one or two or so since that should be our focus.
This notion that I have to own a electric vehicle to have a opinion that we need to get off fossil fuel is dumb....
Second you guys love to put words in peoples mouths.....I never say we need to end all oil, we will always need oil for a whole plethora of products, and things like aircraft, ships etc that will be tough to make efficient on other energy forms for the forseeable future. The focus absolutely should be on making electric vehicles affordable and efficient enough to replace a large part of the existing vehicles on the road over the next few decades.
Maybe it will. I actually just bought two Makita weed eaters for my kids to use and I’m pretty impressed. That said they still can’t compare to my Husqverna 223L. Maybe one day they will be able to.
Downeastnc
Member
It comes down to what you need, for my house my electric weed eater is ok until its time to do the ditch then its a full charge to get 80% of it done then charge it overnight to finish up the 20% left, for the rest of the stuff I can get it all a few times on every charge.....its like electric lawn mowers, they were and heck still are joked about quite a bit, I have friends who say they wouldnt be caught dead on one, and I just dont get that mind set.....but my neighbor has one now that is electric and got it for less than I paid for my Husqverna and it does his entire yard on a charge easy, in fact he can almost cut his yard twice on one charge, granted his yard is less than half a acre probably....it runs a little over a hr on a charge so I could probably almost get my yard with it. I guess the point is the tech is getting better.
pcbjr
Member
Interesting and thank you for sharing ... now to delve in ... ?
Nah, I don't think you have to own EVs to have an opinion about it but telling us we should focus on xyz while not actually focusing on xyz, seems different.
Anyway my apologies, I figured when you said "the FOCUS needs to be on getting off fossil fuels" you meant getting off fossil fuels. I was wrong, just like when Biden said "for God's sake, this man can't remain in power", I thought it meant regime change. I'll figure this liberal double talk out after while
Looks like this thread's more fun than the main one, eh gentleman?? ?
NoSnowATL
Member
?
ghost1
Member
You can buy an all electric vehicle for $28000-$40000. There are several electric vehicle choices outside of Tesla... so the initial price is competitive
NCSNOW
Member
What's warranty on those battery's? Does Charger come with it? How much is it to wire/ call the electrician out to set up the charger at the house?
Big question is how much is it to replace the battery when it dies off? Where and who do you get to service? Where do you take dead battery to dispose off/ recycle as most landfills wont take.
The lithium required for the batteries has to be harvested through mining. Means all the trees/plants on top of the reserves has to be clear cut off the top.
Never hear anyone address the issues this rush to go EV will cause. More detrimental than harvesting the Fossil fuel and burning it. This whole Carbon footprint /GW / worlds gonna end in 5-10 years False Flag excuse to create a mythical doomsday crisis is hogwash and needs to be called out, examined, weighted etc.
All I see are the Al Gores and John Kerry's of the world flying around, making millions selling this scenario. Same way I see Pfizer/Moderna raking in billions off Jabs # fill in the blank.
Ain't a person on here , myself Especially, that values being a good steward of the environment, appreciates ways to make it better for current and future generations. But all I see is millions and millions of our tax dollars getting collected for these Climate accords here there everywhere. Knowing full well its us pumping money and lord only knows who is re-directing it on the other end / funneling it to outfits/companies fatting the wallets and bank accounts of a select few .
Time we all started following the money and quit just lumping it in these pork budgets without strings. The whole establishment up there is taking those paying taxes for a merry go round ride.
Ghost1 , not debating you, are boo booing the cleaner energy / hunting environmental more friendly , more efficient ways. I just think EV is gonna create a bigger mess 10 years down the road than its gonna solve. So many politician friends/ donors in private sector benefit off legislation that forces consumers hands. Establishment caters to self and lobbyist. Not common citizens. So you got to ask why, follow money and call em out/ hold accountable. I don't ever hear answers to the EV negative effects.
Haven't even got into the ground water debates of landfilling this stuff that gets disposed. Clean and sufficient water is a bigger/pressing issue going forward than burning fossil fuel /GW imo.
Believe it or not the first vehicle we got my oldest daughter some years back was a Prius (Hybrid no plug in), different times and I'm sure technology has improved.... but, the reason we got rid of it and purchased something else, was the cost of replacing the battery pack. The cost was going to be basically the same value of the car and the worry of that failing, with no way of making repairs, was too great to risk. These are very fair points and issues that really need to be resolved before we jump both feet into the EV only world.
That is true, but you have a lot less range for instance this Nissan Leaf is 28k but has an effective range of 75 miles. Not only are you not paying for the quality of a Tesla, you are paying for a much smaller battery and one you will have to charge much more often. So it’s pretty much buying a Walmart brand tool with a 1ah battery or a Makita with a 4ah battery and staking your trip on it. It wouldn’t be bad if you had a twenty mile round trip though.