NationStates Jolt Archive

A proposal regarding alternative fuels entitled "Alternative Fuels" has been submitted. This proposal would greatly benefit the environment, improve political stability, and in fact would in the long term benefit the Automobile Industry. Considering these facts the Armed Republic of Judaicland urges nations to either approve the proposal or to urge their regional delegate to do so.

Long term, well, just how long term, and whats all this wishy washy liberal stuff about "environment"

global warming is the stuff of daydreams, just look at what my mate George W was saying before his staff (too liberal for me...) started talking to him and making him change his mind. Its not really happening I tell you

Well, thankfully we won't be voting for this proposal anyway. Anyone who does, well, come on now...

As for Judaicland, we see you have far more suitable methods for a long term benefit of your automotive industry - "punitive tariffs protect local industry", might we suggest more oppression of workers and allowing Killerland to import its incredibly cheap, but great quality, child labour produced cars to help your police force drive around in their mission to catch those union activists (what, you don't kill them, you need help man....)

:P

Forever with love.... Killerland is here and ready to oppress the world (you've just got to give me your delegate vote...)

Judaicland has resubmitted the proposal because the original submission left out the actual action to be taken by the UN.

Considering the fact that the proposal actually benefits industry and protects the environment we should all wonder why such a resolution should not be put into effect.

The governement of the Fiefdom of Baron Porkonia is higly in favour of this proposal. Already, progress has been made in this fiefdom to encourage the production of hydrogen powered cars. The by-product, water, thus also alleviating the lack of fresh water problem.

There are no points that we disagree with in this matter.

I think this is a great proposal.

whether global warming will happen has yet to be seen, this could just be cycles...

Smog and acid rain, however, are quite real. And the removal of these is quite important.

We of the Cima Fleet would quite agree. We are glad to back this proposal.

I'm in favor of it. Even if you ignore all other factors, eventually we will run out of fossil fuels. If we don't have alternative energy sources by then, it could lead to a near-total economic collapse!
-the High Prriest of Valdren

Anyone with a basic knowledge of Physics (or a Ph.D) is fully aware that none of these "alternative" fuels has a snowballs chance in hell (given current development).

Hydrogen Power:
Problem: Where do you get the hydrogen?
Answer: 1. Electrolysis, "water cracking". or 2. From fossil fuels "hydrocarbon cracking"
#1 Requires you put in MORE energy than you get out. So... if I spend 100KW/hrs of electricity I get out 10KW/hrs worth of hydrogen (chemical) energy. Where do I get this initial 100KW/hrs of electricity? coal, or nuclear power. Except now, I produce 10 times the pollution.
#2 That same hydrocarbon string would've produce more energy had you turned it into gasoline. This reduces pollution, but RAPIDLY depletes oil supplies, and is not cost efficient.

Wind Power:
Problem: Land. Populations rise, land becomes more expensive. Wind power isn't worth the value of the land it occupies for very long. NIMBY problems are prolific.

Solar Power:
Problem: Land. Expense of Solar panels to construct (this *is* coming down, but SLOWLY), fragility of solar panels (not quite as bad wtih CSP systems), and lack of usefulness in areas that don't get frequent sunlight. Most Solar systems, are, and will remain supplemental power supplies, used during "peak" electricity usage times, if they are used at all. While some people manage to power their homes with solar power, most people live in Urban settings, where they don't have the requisite land to generate this power.

Geothermal:
Problem: Drilling is exceedingly expensive, and further has the potential to cause unknown destruction to the environment. We KNOW what petroleum products do, we DON'T know what messing with the magma below the earth's crust will do in the long term.

Hydro-electric:
Problem: Disturbs fish migration. Other than that, its a mature, reliable, safe, and efficient system, plus its cheap.

Wave-power:
Problem: Aside from being new and untested, and in developmental stages, the only complication is the same one hydro-electric has: the animals.

Nuclear:
Problem: Expensive initial costs, lack of safe long-term storage location for forseeable future. Yucca mountain.... even if waste is EVER dumped there, can't hold all of it (though it would be a start). If nation states could solve this problem, it would very very viable. Oh, and before anyone suggests shipping the Nuclear waste into space.... see space based solar. One really new, and neat idea is to use the waste, which generates heat (exothermic) in tiny cermaic spheres, and use it to produce electricity (in the basic steam-turbine reactor system), but this needs development. It'd be a sweet idea, and has basis in *real science* (as opposed to fuzzy math, pseudo-science, or wild hopes and dreams).

Static Electricity:
Problem: not invented, read Atlas Shrugged.

Nuclear Fusion:
Problem: Cold Fusion isn't very reliable, hot fusion might become viable, with a few billion dollars, but then the problem becomes where the hell are we gonna get the hydrogen?

Space based Solar:
Problem: Not invented yet, and microwaves could be very dangerous if they ever miss their dish. But that'll *never* happen, just like space shuttles never blow up, and rockets don't explode, and satellites don't crash, and space stations don't re-enter orbit.


So if you know of a DIFFERENT "alternative energy" be my guest.

If there were a real effective "alternative energy" out there, I GUARANTEE you, someone would be using it, and making a fortune doing it. There is no conspiracy, the companies care about one thing: money. If they could generate electricity by clubbing seals, smoking 50 packs a day, or selling their first born, they'd do it.

I spent a lot of time, and money looking into all these ideas, and so have many, many companies, and many, many governments, and the plain facts are none of them are used on any scale larger than a test-bed.

-Morgan

First:

Hydrogen Power - Can be used of a battery of sorts, split the hydrogens of the oxygens, store them as h2 and 02 recombine them when you need power.

Solar - Can be used in building designs to assist and at least reduce the amount of fossil fuels used

Geothermal - You don't need to come close to the actual magma are you nuts? You come close maybe. But ussually they are built in areas which are near the heatsource already, ie hotsprings. The problem is not some unforeseen danger of messing with magma the problem is finding the locations which are rather limited.

Hydro-electric: Fish ladders

Wave-Power: Doesn't really affect the animals like hydro since they are put in areas with VERY rough serf that and the water never goes through a turbine (at least in some designs)

Nuclear: Take all the waste, distribute it evenly over the entire world, problem solved. The radiation will be less then natural background radiation.

Nuclear Fusion: No solution for all that deutrium and tritium i agree

Spaced Based Solar: Not gonna happen for a long long long time

We have few vehicles so this issue concerns us little. However, we offer our lukewarm support.

What about burning alcohol?

expense, in getting it (ethyl alcohol)

low flashpoint, therefore more dangerous

Hydrogen-based fuel cells are very good ideas as smaller-scale generators, such as for cars. Its only waste product is water. However, it becomes inefficient on the large scale. Nuclear power (both fission and fusion) is probably most viable in the near future, though we will certainly be fossil-fuel dependant until at least 2020 and probably longer.

The solution I think is not to abandon combustion but rather to make it cleaner. Under optimal circumstances, combustion is just hydrocarbon + oxygen -> carbon dioxide + water vapor.

Unfortunately, there is no replacement for fossil fuels for vehicle propulsion that is even remotely close to feasibility.

Electric propulsion potentially would allow the use of non-polluting energy sources, but except for hydroelectric, which is quite limited by the number of practicable sites, no non-polluting energy source will be available in the forseeable future. There is also no prospect for an adequate solution to the battery problem.

Fuel cells would allow clean combustion, but the fuel itself must still be provided. Also, the power to weight ratio of fuel cells is orders of magnitude too small for vehicles.

Synthetic fuels have to be made from something, and they will still cause pollution. Biomass fuels could meet only a small part of fuel needs; the balance would have to come from fossil fuels, or from using other energy sources to electrolyze hydrogen from water. Alcohol, in a piston engine, generates considerable pollution, as do organic esters. Even hydrogen combustion will generate nitrogen oxides - and water, possibly enough to raise the humidity in cities.

As TGM said, the best thing to do is not to look for alternative fuels, but alternative ways of using them. Vast improvements in pollution and fuel economy have already been made, and more are possible. Turbine engines, hybrid electric systems, and continuously variable transmissions, for example, are all much closer to realization than fusion power or even practical fuel cells.

Another option is to use natural gas instead of petroleum as a source of fuel. Gas burns more cleanly and thoroughly than liquid. Safety considerations, however, are nearly as bad as with hydrogen.

I think it is only fair to point out that the proposal does not say to immediately replace fossil fuels with alternative fuels. What it does say is to mandate research into alternative fuels. This research is to be funded by the same who cause the pollution and then it will not cut deep into their profits as the money is taken out only when a profit is made and then only a small percentage. With research alternative fuels will become viable and that is why all nations should support this proposal.

Here is a better idea: pay for the results we want and discourage the results we don't want, with a system of incentives and disincentives, instead of having the government choose how much money will be spent on what, without anyone being responsible for getting results (or for making use of the results, if any).
1. Put a tax on gasoline of forty cents per gallon.
2. Use the proceeds of this tax to furnish a scaled consumer rebate for purchase of vehicles which meet or exceed standards of efficiency and pollution.
3. Worldwide, that's about 100 billion US dollars annually, for around forty million new car/light truck sales, or $2500 per vehicle. But if only one million qualifying vehicles are produced in a year, the rebate would average $100,000 per vehicle - a good enough incentive, we think, to develop the necessary technology.

By increasing the cost of driving "dirty" and decreasing the cost of driving "clean", this will create a demand for "clean" vehicles. The cost to government is nil, and the responsibility for research is shifted from government to corporations (even foreigners!) who will actually profit from it and therefore care about getting useful results. Only results, not methods, are specified: Automakers would be left on their own to find the best way of reducing emissions, whether that is different fuels, different engines, or something else. Those who don't want a share of the action don't have to participate, just as those consumers who are willing to pay the price can continue driving dirty cars.

There have been two pilot projects for alternative vehicle fuels that I know of. In Scotland (the real world, not the NS region I occupy) a form of oil similar to cooking oil was used mixed 4 parts to 1 part diesel. It worked fine in regular diesel powered cars and lorries without any modification to the car. While this fuel isn't the cleanest it was produced by plants, which used up CO2 in their growth and so a carbon balance is maintained. Similarly a scheme in Brazil was used making alcohol from sugar cane. The scheme was shut down by the IMF, because they got scared of what it might do to oil company profits.

well if i can find the article the new bio-fuel cells look promising using bacteria to breakdown electricity and produce electricity.

The problem with bio-fuels is that they cannot be produced at anything like a competitive price. Even if they could, OPEC would let the price of oil fall rather than be squeezed out of the market. Bio-fuels also require large amounts of land for production, which creates its own environmental problems (soil depletion, fertilizer runoff, cutting down rainforests to make room for plantations, etc.). There isn't enough land on earth anyway.

And the bio-fuels still aren't clean.... if you can recycle the CO2 from alcohol combustion by planting crops, you can recycle the CO2 from hydrocarbon combustion by planting crops. Cultivation on that scale just isn't possible.

There was a time when computers were the size of rooms and no one could afford one. What changed that situation? Research. That is all that is being proposed.

Private research, conducted by companies which expected to (and did) realize a profit from it.

Public/private partnerships are nothing new, especially to transportation. It's how great railroads and canals were built. The public received some benefit, and the entrepreneurs got rich.

Ummm, wouldn't the research be private just enforced minimally and wouldn't there be a profit to automobile manufacturers in the long run?

Why a public/private partnership when the "public" has nothing to contribute?
Here's what would happen:
1. The auto industry forks over a little money.
2. Politicians who have nothing at stake decide which of various far-fetched and unpromising alternatives will sound best to their constituents.
3. The money is given to laboratories chosen for the quality of their location in some politician's home district.
4. Researchers who have nothing to gain or lose by their results (or lack thereof) make sure that all the money is spent and that some kind of optimistic report is generated.
5. Nothing is achieved.
6. Proponents blame the lack of achievement on lack of funding.
7. A few billions of dollars later, some laboratory produces an unworkable scheme that no one wants.
8. Liberals whine that no one will use this scheme because they are evil and hate the environment.
9. Millions of dollars are spent on "education" (propaganda) to persuade people to support the stupid idea.
10. Tens of billions of dollars are spent to subsidize "progress" toward the implementation of the stupid idea that no one wants.
11. Government employees working on the program consume more gasoline than the program saves.
12. Liberals declare the program a success and demand more funding to expand it.

And that, bucks and does, is how government works.

You're correct that burning vegetable oils is about as dirty as other hydrocarbons in the amount of CO2 they produce, but they might have fewer impurities, which would produce other gases. To lower NO2 and NO production, you'd need to have the reaction not take place in the prescence of air, simply bottled oxygen.

expense, in getting it (ethyl alcohol)

low flashpoint, therefore more dangerous

How about Whiskey?

i agree with the proposal

and killer do some research http://www.ncpa.org/hotlines/global/gwhot.html
www.globalwarming.net

What if they can't come up with a fuel that works?

One could simply use pure hydrocarbons, but with compressed oxygen, not air. This way, the pollutants produced would be only carbon dioxide and water. The way to deal with carbon dioxide is to plant more trees.

How efficient will it be?

One could simply use pure hydrocarbons, but with compressed oxygen, not air. This way, the pollutants produced would be only carbon dioxide and water. The way to deal with carbon dioxide is to plant more trees.

The problem with that is it burns up fuel too fast. A jet engine and a rocket engine are essentially the same thing except a jet engine uses air whereas a rocket engine has internal oxygen stores. Jet engines operate much more efficiently than do rocket engines. I know that they don't use combustion, but that same logic can be applied to combustion.

Aside from the huge energy cost of obtaining pure oxygen, it's too dangerous. To make it portable enough, it would have to under enormous pressure. Oxygen, even without pressure, is a severe fire hazard.
And of course the energy to isolate the oxygen has to come from somewhere....

*Looks around the room lost and bewildered by the technical jargon.*

Uh... I never took physics... ever.... physics is evil.

EUREKA! I know the answer.... BAN PHYSICS :wink:

In response to the argumetns about the non-viability of alternate sources of energy, why don't governments just make the installation of solar panels in suburbs mandatory and use the various energy source types in conjunction with each other. That way, if one fails, then the other can cover the bases. It could also help the reduction of fossil fuel burning at times of peak energy use.

*Looks around the room lost and bewildered by the technical jargon.*

Uh... I never took physics... ever.... physics is evil.

EUREKA! I know the answer.... BAN PHYSICS :wink:

In response to the argumetns about the non-viability of alternate sources of energy, why don't governments just make the installation of solar panels in suburbs mandatory and use the various energy source types in conjunction with each other. That way, if one fails, then the other can cover the bases. It could also help the reduction of fossil fuel burning at times of peak energy use.

It wasn't just physics, I was using chemistry as well. If you want to ban the study of physics in your country, that's up to you. It'd make you a very easy target, since it would mean you would be restricted to swords/axes, with no bows, while my army has rifles.

The debate is about power sources for cars and other forms of transportation. Having solar panels installed in suburban homes wouldn't do a lot for finding alternatives to hydrocarbons for use in engines.

The main problem is that engines produce nitrogen and sulfur oxides. The nitrogen oxides come from the air entering the engine, and cause the brown colour of smog. That is why I said to use pure oxygen instead of air. The sulfur comes from impurities in the fuel used.

My country does not allow cars, so this problem does not happen. Hoverskids, which have small nuclear reactors to power them, are used instead. The uranium that is mined needs to go somewhere.

Oil is organic. If you squeezed people enough, you'd get oil. They are renewable.

Bump.

Hypermatter works for us, though it requires a lot of high technology to make and store.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Mliêstôlkakûmek(Love all as you love yourself)
Racism-the other stupid ideology
Peace, love, and girls with small waists and really big butts!
http://www.sulucas.com/images/steatopygia.jpg
They say, "You say 'heavy deposit
of fat in the thighs and butt' as
though it were a bad thing."

Our scientists claim that "Godmode matter" is a potentially unlimited and problemless source of energy and could be an easy solution to an infinite range of problems. Unfortunately, they don't seem to be able to synthesize it, nor its low-density form "hypermatter".

bump

Bump.

Possum Prop 45 Alternative Energy Sources

As the world grows, the demands for resources grow as well. Natural resources are in greater demand but the supplies fall very short. Therefore, new energy sources are needed. The UN needs to investigate possible alternatives.

Possum Prop 46 Power to the people

One possible alternative to fossil fuel would be cheap renewable resources. One natural resource that is very plentiful in the Oppressed Possum is children. A factory would be retrofitted with giant hamster wheels. The children would be led into the modified factory and give 5 pounds of chocolate each. From the sugar rush and the caffeine boost, the children should produce more than enough to power each nation and provide excess that can be sold on the open market to other countries.

Ummm, I'm not sure if that's the kind of alternative fuels the proposal is referring to or that would be logically researched.