Brian Schweitzer on 60 Minutes last night
Posted by Super G on February 27, 2006 - 1:53am
Topic: Alternative energy
Tags: brian schweitzer, coal liquefaction, coal-to-liquids, fischer-tropsch [list all tags]
After having tackled tar sands and climate change, 60 Minutes took on coal liquefaction:
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.We've discussed Mr. Schweitzer and the Fischer-Tropsch method before: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.
- Montana could supply the whole US with fuel!
- Brian Schweitzer replies
- A Discussion with Governor Brian Schweitzer
To be honest, my biggest fear is that 60 Minutes will overplay the value of FT-ing all that coal. It's inarguably a valuable and needed resource, but it's just as clearly only a step in the larger transition away from fossil fuels, and even at that one we'll have to manage and use intelligently to minimize the environmental impact.
But all things considered, I would much rather that the US had that coal and have to deal with the issues surrounding its use than not have it at all.
Look out your window, people. This is what those "interesting times" we've all joked about for years looks like.
- What is the EROI (Energy return on Investment)
- What is the scalability/timing of the source?
- And, often overlooked, what is the environmental/ecosystem cost of scaling the source (sometimes this is included in EROI)
For energy liquids, Hisrch and Bezdek concluded FT Coal to Liquids was the only source that was scalable but that it needed a long lead time. Anecdotal evidence from Powder River Basin is that coal infrastructure is currently maxed out (not enough rail, coal cars, employees, etc.) It will take a huge amount of lead time to really ramp up CTL in the US - Sasol in South Africa has been doing it for decades and is producing about 100,000 barrels per day.Ive posted this before but it bears repeating. Of great concern is the impact on greenhouse gas emissions in a world where rapid climate change becoming less of a fringe idea. A good chunk of the GHGs we emit from driving are just from the choice to drive, irrespective of the fuel - however, as the following chart shows, the MARGINAL greenhouse gas emissions from FT technology vs Saudi crude oil refining (purple segments) are a magnitude of 5 times. (source - Ciferno and Marano 2001 report commissioned by DOE)
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Systems dynamics work that measures the tradeoffs between energy, climate, food and water will be increasingly important. Case in point, geopoets comment about water needs trumping drilling rights in Oklahoma. Liebigs Law of the minimum is fundamental. (second paragraph on link)
We are not going to have a mass aha moment.
More and more of us are going to slowly start sliding below the poverty line without knowing why. We will have more Katrina's, more government screw ups. Soon it will like situation "normal". Very boring the way these things evolve.
The revolution will not be televised
I liked Stuart's description of the kind of leadership we need; perhaps Schweitzer is closer to it than any other politicos. We will see if he is forthright in his description of the true extent of the problem.
Consider this recent EnergyBulletin.net article by David Orr:
http://energybulletin.net/13177.html
key point:
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In other words, we have better ideas than we're implementing," Orr said. "One of the problems we have is we hear this stuff, and it doesn't really affect us on a bottom level."
He elaborated, saying that if he was to pull out a gun or perform some other physically violent action, it would ignite a proactive response in the crowd. "Something would kick in with you," Orr said. "It doesn't really kick in with verbal things."
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He is basically saying our brains are not wired to react until a crisis erupts, but this is a sub-optimal strategy for Peak Everything.
By definition, detritovores will not give up their addiction to detritus easily-- Dieoff.com and Matt Savinar's book & LATOC website are the best 'verbal cattle prods' I have found to shock us addicts into action. Everyone must realize the only way out is to go 'cold turkey', anything less will be woefully insufficient.
One of my ideas to shock people into energy sensibility is deliberate temporary city-wide blackouts combined with vehicle use moratoriums. The President, Governors, and Mayors could preannounce the time and plans. Let's take Phx for example.
The target time would be when the weather would not impose a health hazard by being too hot or too cold. Everyone would get copies of books like Matt's "The Oil Age is Over" or Heinberg's "Powerdown" to read during the daylight hours. The "Humanure Handbook" and other positive ecological paradigm shift reading would be given to everyone too. Basic goal is for everyone to relax, read, and discuss the books.
Emergency services would still continue to protect health and home, and anybody hungry would get MREs. The cops and National Guard would be stationed everywhere to help people, give out ice bags and drinking water, and prevent violence by thugs. Driving a motor vehicle would be forbidden unless it was an emergency, but bicycling, walking, and visiting with friends and neighbors would be lavishly encouraged.
No energy at home for five days would give everyone a good idea how delightful a Powerdown could be: BBQs galore, lots of parties, millions of people pedaling delightedly to and fro, no stress, and no shopping! Our tax dollars during this trial blackout period would refund any loss of normal income from employment paychecks so nobody would be financially deprived. Plastic solar-heated water bags, just like what campers now buy and use, would be given to everyone for showers or PTAs. Add all kinds of public displays on ways to conserve, and townhall meetings to discuss next steps etc.
Turn everything back on, then move the Guard to the next city and repeat. In a very short time, with adequate Media coverage: the entire country would be fully aware of what Peakoil means and what we must proactively do to change.
Bob Shaw in Phx,AZ Are Humans Smarter than Yeast?
Bob Shaw in Phx,AZ Are Humans Smarter than Yeast?
Informing the public is the first step. I spend much of each week going from church to church offering to show "The End of Suburbia." Some are willing to see it, some are not. The ones who do often ask to see it again. Each time the crowd grows.
I can't emphasize enough how important informing the general public will be in the preparations phase. They need to feel that their particular ball team, whether it is the Democrats or the Republicans, are the originators of the idea. If possible, they should believe that their belief in this scenario adheres to some part of their tenets. For instance, Roscoe Bartlett R-Maryland, obviously is a Republican and he is interested for reasons that dovetail neatly with both his political philosophy and his experience as a scientist. Perhaps by appealing to the basic tenets of fiscal conservatism, conservatives will find it fits within their worldview and become motivated to action.
I wouldn't think one would need to show the potential Democratic political alignments, but, from their current involvement, you might think that they have even less concern than the Republicans. Perhaps they do need education and may be more difficult due to their tendency to fragment into interest groups each with its particular bailiwick.
All in all, information, practice, and direct demonstration as totoneila suggests is a beautiful thing.
Great post.
I have all the equipment, though most churches these days seem to be really hip to the audio-visual experience and have great systems. I set up a date, usually on the slowest night, but that sometimes changes on the second showing. I offer to stand up before the crowd and answer questions as best I can. I keep a crib sheet with all the notes I need for all the various topics that may arise. (The most frequent topics are, of course, the technological savior types, i.e. "What about bio-diesel?") The next question is the timing. They want to know. This year? Next year? When? I tell them the time to prepare is now. I cite the Hirsch report at this point. If you wait for it to happen, it will be more difficult to ameliorate.
It is mostly a job of salesmanship, patience, and love.
I have been showning "The End of Suburbia" to groups of wacky newagers.
This is about peak oil. We are not discussing peak electricity here because we are not going to have peak electricity. We are not running out of coal, wind, or solar. There is some dispute about whether we are running out of uranium fuel and I am not certain that we are, but if we are, we can always build fast reactors of various kinds. Oil (mostly diesel fuel for trains, trucks, and ships) is a very, very, small part of the electricity budget for coal, solar, wind, and nuclear.
But your response is classic and no doubt comes from taking offense at anything far removed from a conventional toilet. Relax and realise that conventional sewage systems are tremendously wasteful. Whether the energy comes from oil, natural gas, coal, or nuclear, it still doesn't make sense to treat a resource that could largely replace conventional fertilizers as a waste product. Perhaps worse, the "waste" often becomes a dangerous pollutant.
The thinking behind sawdust toilets (eliminating unnecessary waste) is the same thinking that is going to help us weather peak oil and peak energy shortly thereafter.
But I disagree with the original comment that sawdust toilets can be used on a large scale. Composting toilets perhaps, but not sawdust toilets specifically. There just isn't enough sawdust for millions of people to use nearly a 5-gallon bucket of the stuff each week.
A GREAT advance in civilization !!!
In New Orleans, water is very plentiful and low energy cost (see Mississippi River). Central sewage treatment allows for large scale biodigester/biogas. In Austin, 100% of their sewage solids are mixed with leaves/tree dust and sold as
"Dillio Dirt".
As a Southern boy, I learned that handling human waste, even slightly, was a great way to spread worms.
We can improve our central sewage processing, but let the people in Phoenix shit in a bucket ! I will happily flush away :-)
I think many people are like Wkwillis, horrified at the thought of Humanure. They will be among the first wave of the predicted 30 million migrants heading to the American Northwest of Seattle and Oregon so they can enjoy the 'luxury' of a flushing toilet. But by then, all those new migrants will so overstress the sewage systems of Portland and Seattle-- it will be a pathogenic life and death issue.
Bob Shaw in Phx,AZ Are Humans Smarter than Yeast?
Lets start with the first of his three mistakes.
A GREAT advance in civilization !!!
In New Orleans, water is very plentiful and low energy cost (see Mississippi River). Central sewage treatment allows for large scale biodigester/biogas collection. In Austin, 100% of their sewage solids are mixed with leaves/tree dust and sold as "Dillo Dirt" for gardening.
As a Southern boy, I learned that handling human waste, even slightly, was a great way to spread worms.
We can improve our central sewage processing, but let the people in Phoenix shit in a bucket ! I will happily flush away :-)
Thxs for responding. You are correct in suggesting composting toilets as the better alternative to a plastic bucket. The plastic bucket would just be for the temporary blackouts to acculturate the masses into the need for a professional humanure system.
An excellent interrim step to save water would be if people would use camping toilets like those in this link:
http://www.jacksons-camping.co.uk/general/toilet.htm
Most houses have easy access to home sewer cleanout openings-- they could dump their wastes there. We don't want to go through a situation like that illustrated in the following link:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/society_culture/industrialisation/seven_wonders_04.shtml
or http://tinyurl.com/pi24
Excerpt:
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Bazalgette's London sewers
In the summer of 1858, while the Great Eastern was being fitted out for her maiden voyage, London was in the grip of a crisis known as the 'Great Stink'. The population had grown rapidly during the first half of the 19th century, yet there had been no provision for sanitation.
'... sewage was everywhere, piling up in every gully and alleyway ...'
Three epidemics of cholera had swept through the city, leaving over 30,000 people dead. And sewage was everywhere, piling up in every gully and alleyway, in the cellars of houses in poor districts - and even seeping through cracks in floorboards.
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Jay Hanson has talked long and hard about how subsequent generations will not have access to general knowledge and past history. He believes most of the past tragedies will repeat themselves over and over again as ignorance will be the norm. Education is very energy-intensive!
http://dieoff.com/page181.htm
excerpt from Jay's classic "Requiem":
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It really will be back to the good old days! Shouts of "BRING ME HIS HEAD" will ring through the land, slaves, scalps, souvenirs and trophies of all sorts, ... exciting possibilities limited only by our ingenuity.
The good news is that recycling will finally become fashionable! We will see feral children mining the dumps for plastic to burn (Pampers) so they can heat the hovels they are forced to live in. The strongest kids will set traps for fresh meat -- rats -- while the weaker kids will eat anything they can cram into their mouths (old shoes, styrofoam peanuts, newspaper soup). Pandemics will sweep the world, punctuated every so often by explosions as abandoned and rotting nuclear facilities blow up. Leaking dumps and tanks will spew PCBs and radioactive hazwaste into the feral food chain spawning surprising new shapes for young mothers to enjoy nursing.[55] Toxic chemical fires, blowing garbage and trash, genetic mutations, filthy water, cannibalism ...
As the Easter Islanders say: "The flesh of your mother sticks between my teeth".[56]
The situation will be especially serious for a short time because the population will keep rising due to the lags inherent in the age structure and social adjustment. Then mercifully, the population will drop sharply as the death rate is driven upward by lack of food and health services.[57] Trapped in obsolete belief systems, Americans won't even know why their society disintegrated.
A hundred thousand years from now -- once the background radiation levels drop below lethality -- a new Homo mutilus will crawl out of the caves to elect a leader. Although we have no idea what mutilus might look like, evolutionary theory can still tell us who will win the election. He will be the best liar running on a platform to end hunger by controlling nature.
How could it be otherwise?
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Bob Shaw in Phx,AZ Are Humans Smarter than Yeast?
The next step before modern sewers is to mostly enclose the gutters. Better, but it still makes for some funky living!
Why wouldn't they dig a little hole somewhere and bury it? Could you please explain more? Too lazy or ignorant to the health risks? No place to dig in an urban setting, etc? Do they have any knowledge of composting and so on? Clue me in if you can? Thxs.
Bob Shaw in Phx,AZ Are Humans Smarter than Yeast?
In some parts of China, the honey pots are considered to be valuable, and you can get someone to pay you for the privilege of picking yours up. In other parts, everyone poops down by the river...
I helped put in a few water wells in Nepal, and one of the problems that we had was that folks just wouldn't believe that they could be hurt by something they couldn't see. We laugh at that, but the Western culture went through the same thing, and it took many years for us to internalize ideas like microorganisms. So, I got a microscope from a school in a city and took it to a village. Then I showed the kids slides starting with big objects and going down to microorganisms. This worked for the kids, but the adults still thought that I was crazy, and they didn't want me to talk to their kids anymore - I was making them crazy too...
Well, no, but in that case, the solution was not pooping in a bucket. That was the problem. The solution was a modern sewer system.
But my water supply and sewage system still does not run on diesel, gasoline, or JP-4.
Thxs for responding, same to the others posters in support of humanure. Your posting is a perfect example of mental resistance to providential behavior change-- this is exactly what will be so dangerous as we go postPeak. Would you prefer humanure, or would you prefer to having your residence surrounded by fresh raw sewage for you to wade through?
May I suggest you google websites & images of sewer system infrastructure-- huge iron castings and electrical pumps, millions of tons of required chemicals, millions of miles of pipe and electrical wiring-- sewage engineering is a very difficult, highly technical profession. This will all be unsupportable postPeak. We normally don't consider this complexity when we flush a toilet.
Please google declining Zimbabwe to read about overflowing sewage surrounding houses and standing in the streets, cholera outbreaks, etc as they cannot afford the sewage system upkeep. There are numerous postings in the archives of the forum Yahoo:AlasBabylon carefully detailing this. Here is a horrific recent CNN link of the Zimbabwe sewers being clogged by abandoned newborns:
http://www.cnn.com/2006/WORLD/africa/02/17/zimbabwe.fetuses.ap/
Please read about how terrible London was before modern sewage treatment linked here:
http://www.swopnet.com/engr/londonsewers/londontext1.html
If you study all this info--I think you will readily agree that humanure recycling is the best behavioral change we can make for the future.
Bob Shaw in Phx,AZ Are Humans Smarter than Yeast?
I worked with the NYC-DEP to make a video about the newest water tunnel (#3) supplying the 5 Boroughs, and the first point that they made to me, was.. "People turn that knob, and expect that water will come out, while 600 feet down, we hardly know how that system has weathered the decades, and have no or very little opportunity to 'shut it off' and inspect or maintain it"
So even if the example was just your toilet, I think you're also being asked to realise that the things that are as completely unquestioned at the water in your pipes could easily affect or be affected by any of the other systems that we also expect to continue 24/7. The DEP engineers let me know that if the water supply went down in any part of the city, that major parts of Manhattan would have to be evacuated. No water would kill a number of Electrical Power Plants, most Residential buildings below 6 floors are purely gravity fed, Firefighting would be out, Hospitals, etc. These systems are often highly interdependant, and we do ourselves a disservice by not having figured out our dependencies and found workarounds.
Graywater systems and Methane Digesters for medium to big residential buildings could make a big difference.
Bob
ps Great Bumper sticker on a Logging Truck..
"Hate Logging Trucks? Try Plastic Toilet Paper"
got corn cobs?
The current population can be supported by either Tunnels #1 & #2 OR Tunnel #3. Gravity feed from Upstate New York, pure, clean water is readily available without any power input for the first few floors (very little of the Bronx, Brooklyn, Staten Island or Queens is above the gravity feed limits of fresh water).
A massive undertaking, and clearly sustainable (with cutbacks during prolonged droughts). New, low water consumption toilets will reduce the impact of droughts as they becomr more common.
A bit of good news !
BTW, tunnel friction will drop with the addition of #3, gravity water pressure will increase and less energy will be required for pumping up high rises.
'Clearly Sustainable' - Somewhat sustainable. Ask the farmers in Putnam county or farther up in the Berkshires. They feel NYC gets what it wants what it takes, which is a LOT of water. And a few towns up there were sacrificed and submerged for the Reservoir system that feeds it all.
Also, as fine as it is, it's still one of several umbilicals keeping people alive in that city. I felt that directly when I went down into Shaft 21b in Redhook. 500 feet into 'Granitic Gneiss', I think it's called, and some of the hardest rock ever mined, so they told me, and I knew that a handful of huge air and waterpumps were pretty much responsible for keeping me/us alive down there. This was a place you couldn't scratch your way out of, and you just had to trust that complex system while you were in there. But you are in that situation anyhow. Food Supplies, Water, Power, Building Materials.. how many of these flows can we find local substitutes for? How much water do we keep handy, and how long would we be able to make it last? (Me, about 6gals plus the toilet tank and the baseboards)
The nitrogen should be recycled, and doubtless will be. But this is something that is best done at the sewage treatment plant, rather than individually.
Far better than eliminating water and sewer systems would be encouraging people to conserve, particularly in areas where water is scarce. In fact, we should probably be discouraging people from moving to areas where there is already a water shortage. Some of the plans out there - building hundreds of miles of pipeline, hundreds of feet deep, to supply the growing suburbs in the southwest - are just goofy.
Thxs for responding. The best way to make people conserve water and save energy is to make everybody hand-carry all the water they wish to use. Every urban & suburban neighborhood should install a clean water tap about every 600ft or so, carrying a five gallon plastic jug this far is not a big deal, but it will make people carefully consider their water usage. To protect human health, we will eventually plug everyone's home sewage system with concrete to prevent the spread of pathogens. Business will spring up to haul urban humanure to the community gardens and rural areas.
Please read my recent posting on how our sewage infrastructure will gradually become unsupportable postpeak. People vastly underestimate the energy required for maceration pumps, high pressure sewage lines, and other details; to repeatedly lift sewage to maintain adequate scour rates so downhill flows can be maintained to the treatment plants. Valves and other castings can be large enough to walk inside. Treatment plants generally cover large acreages to perform the many required steps to render sewage safe to handle. Out of sight, out of mind-- until it starts backing up and overflowing into your house.
Hopefully, cities will be proactive on this issue before it becomes a health risk. Unfortunately, I feel it is more likely we will wade through sewage like the Zimbabweans and many other countries because we chose to ignore the obvious. How much sewage mixed in with the floodwaters in hurricane Katrina?
Bob Shaw in Phx,AZ Are Humans Smarter than Yeast?
I don't think that's reasonable. Heck, the ancient Romans didn't hand-carry water. Why should we?
Waste of resources. There's a lot more we could be building. We don't need to build an entire water system just to teach people lessons.
Far better to let price show people the "true cost." If people have to pay for their water, they'll conserve.
Maybe the rich will not...but the rich will not conserve anyway.
I don't think we'll have the central government left to do that, if it comes to that. Besides, many people are already living off the grid with respect to water and sewer. They have wells, and septic fields.
It's an interesting thought, though. Right now, "town water and sewer" is a selling point for houses. That might not be the case in the future.
Bob Shaw in Phx,AZ Are Humans Smarter than Yeast?
I am no expert here, but I would refer you to the writings of Jared Diamond and Joseph Tainter on social complexity theory in Dieoff.com. Their books go into much greater detail. Real short--What goes up, eventually comes down.
Bob Shaw in Phx,AZ Are Humans Smarter than Yeast?
Agreed. My point is that there was NOTHING inevitable about the decline and fall of the Roman Empire at the time or in the way it happened--and nothing in the books you cite nor their bibliographies that asserts that it was.
I believe the notion of "inevitablility" in history is a dangerous fallacy, the fallacy of fatalism: "Oh it was all God's will." Or: "It was the inevitable working out of dialectical materialism." To which I respond, "Bushwa!"
In Diamond's excellent analysis he looks closely at the major factors that contribute to the collapse (or conversely the long-term survival) of various societies, and it is impossible to praise that book too highly, because he makes it clear that people and organizations and institutions and beliefs and technologies and wars and diseaseas, among other factors, are all involved with how well societies do over time.
Intuitively, one might have expected the Roman Empire to collapse first in the eastern (Byzantine) part because the East was more overpopulated, more deforested, had more eroded soil, a longer history of severe ethnic and national conflicts, and so on. But that did not happen. Why not? Because of particular historical happenings. My reading of history suggests that there was nothing inevitable about the path of the decline in the West, but one can make a case for a run of bad emperors, beginning with Commodus, who failed to do the constructive things that more effective earlier ones had done.
Is modern Western society "inevitably" going to go down the tubes because of Peak Oil? If so, let's start the orgies . . . .
the average city dweller as well as slave had to get all their water from public spots such as fountains.
Getting enough water is not an important issue here. Quite frankly dumping untreated sewage into the Mississippi would not have a measureable effect on water quality due to dilution (and no one downstream anyway). Cisterns could supply water for flushing & even potable in any case. We average a bit over 5 feet of rain/year.
I see MAJOR ADA issues in your water every 600' idea. My elderly parents would have to pay someone to haul (on a wheeled convenience carrying, say 250 gallons at a time if hand pulled, more if on a human powered trike, much more if motorized).
I will let you desert dwellers poop in a bucket, I will continue to flush.
May I suggest you google the history of NYC's water supply? Typhoid and cholera outbreaks were the norm. Additionally, google the epizootic equine outbreak of 1873 that killed off all the horses--humans took their places everywhere in a desperate struggle to maintain the urban infrastructure. Shortages of everything led to a depression.
Bob Shaw in Phx,AZ Are Humans Smarter than Yeast?
A settling pond, sand filter and a little chlorine is all that is needed (and the chlorine is just to be safe).
You did not address my public health concern about the spread of parasites (worms) due to the handling of human feces. This was a major public health issue a 100 years ago !
You maybe entirely correct as to the flow volume and sewage history of the ole Miss. I claim no professional sewage expertise, just wanting to make everyone aware of possible problems and potential solutions. Obviously what will work best in one locale may not be suitable or workable in another. Cheap energy and resources allowed the luxury of great similarities in sewage design nationwide. This will change postPeak, value of water will be a key determinant.
As to the parasite problem from waste handling-- I claim total ignorance of this issue. Perhaps you could post some instructive links for everyone to read. That is what is so great about forums-- the quick spreading of crucial info.
Bob Shaw in Phx,AZ Are Humans Smarter than Yeast?
http://www.niaid.nih.gov/factsheets/roundwor.htm
Note advice to wash hands after using bathroom. How much water will be used after handling human manure ?
As for volume of Mississippi, think of a mile wide river, a 100' deep and flowing as fast as you can run.
That statement is somewhat misleading.
The problem with conventional sewage gathering and treatment systems is that a valuable resource (bodily waste) is mixed with all kinds of dangerous stuff (household cleaners, road-way run-off, industrial waste effluent, etc.) as well as valuable potable water. This makes it very expensive and energy intensive to recycle the nitrogen, potassium, and potash. So the mixture ends up being treated as waste. If the bodily waste were instead sequestered (preferably without additional water), it could be safely composted and then used as fertilizer. Cradle to Cradle, by William McDonough and Michael Braungart, links this idea to much broader applications than municipal sewage.
Composting toilets are a very simple technology to safely divert a valuable resource from becoming part of the waste-stream.
I've lived "off the grid," and we still had flush toilets and running water. Water was collected in a cistern on the roof, and gravity-fed through the plumbing. It ended up in an open cesspool on our property. If it didn't rain for awhile, we'd flush every other use.
I greatly appreciate all the input from members. I am glad most of us are not reluctant to discuss this topic.
My residence in Phx is small with a small backyard-- my backyard is approx. 30 by 75 feet, and walled with a seven foot high solid brick fence for privacy. I piss in the backyard all the time, with no bad effects noticed, to save water. Pick a different spot every time, been doing it for years.
Obviously, I cannot use the front yard for the same task unless I am willing to get arrested.
Speaking of bathroom habits: has anyone tried to figure out when Peak-Toilet Paper will occur? Nooooooooo!
Bob Shaw in Phx,Az Are Humans Smarter than Yeast?
It's only good if it hurts, isn't it?
Some do. Most don't.
"The main problem is the concentration of heavy metals, but there are ways of solving that."
Possibly the best way to solve the heavy metal concentrations in composted sewage is to not mix everything up in the first place. It certainly seems a low-energy solution. And you reduce the number of trips people to the Borg to buy bagged fertilizer.
Toilet use accounts for approximately a third of the water use in the average north american home. Composting toilets could reduce that to nothing. A potential one-third reduction seems pretty significant to me and it is almost without cost.
Don't get me wrong, this isn't a technology that will single-handedly save the world. But it sure seems like it could contribute a huge savings to many households. And let me be clear, it really doesn't stink. Proof: I used a sawdust toilet in my house for a year. I am still married.
As for off-grid housing, maybe it's just because of the climate I'm in, but I have yet to see an off-grid house that didn't feature a composting toilet. I guess I'm just on the wrong side of the Rockies.
That's probably it. Water simply isn't an issue around here. Many houses here have their own wells and septic fields; probably most, in fact. Water shortages have never been an issue here. (Though I suppose it might change with global warming.) Even with several drought years in a row, we've never had to impose water restrictions.
I think sawdust is more likely to be in short supply than water. That's what they make wood pellets out of, isn't it?
The first one is heavy metals, its slowly being worked on and the local levels are now in manny Swedish towns in a range where some advocate banning artist oil paints with cadmium since brush cleaning is a notisable contributor. The biggest problem have been and still are runoff water with dust from car traffic and waste water from various industrial processes, often small shops. It takes years and millions to separate sewage from runoff water when its built with old standards, it takes years to inform companies about standards, measure where the problems are and enforce standards. But sometimes someone figures out something brilliant. For a while we had mercury dogs sniffing out mercury in drain traps and so on in schools at dentists and so on.
The second problem is the yuch factor. The heavy metal problem stopped the sludge use as fertilizer on the fields, the yuch factor is hindering use as fertilizer even if the heavy metal levels are lower then for mined and procesed fertilizer. While this was controversial due to heavy metals our farmers included no sewage sludge in their own quality certifications and now they get PR problems if they reverse it. I think this will solve itself when fertilizer gets more expensive, after all people eat saussages. :-)
Another thing I think will come with time and higher prices is urine separation. It is quite popular with our greens to try to introduce it and they have sometimes managed to make it code in some municipials but only where it were easiest to enforce due to the way the laws are written, in sparse houses with individual sewage treatment. It would make more sense in apartment houses. I think it will be retrofitted when the urine is valuble enough.
As for the yuck factor...some sewage treatment plants here are producing fertilizer, and people are using it.
Just think of the energy saved by power holidays. It might be popular enough to repeat it, say once a quarter. People could use a week off from work once in a while! We work too much the way it is. Your idea gets my vote!
Yeah, but will the top dogs allow this to happen? Overconfident deer generally get quickly trapped, then cut down by the elite wolfpack. Although, I sure would like to see Roscoe Bartlett convince his citizens in Baltimore to give it a try. Time will tell if it could snowball nationwide from there.
Bob Shaw in Phx,AZ Are Humans Smarter than Yeast?
Energy Fasting can be a real reminder of what opens up when the switch goes off. The electronic music, tv, video games. It really is incredible to see what a group of people do when the gadgets disappear. Happened to me by accident the first time. Was with a small film crew in the Maine woods, Lakeside cabin, and a storm killed our lights, killed the VCR, the Laptops, the Boombox, the Nintendo. Silence. Some of the Crew had brought some goofy, plastic 'musical instruments' for someone's birthday, and we all hung out on the porch, making up songs, talking, whatever. I was an electrician, and snuck away to the basement and tripped the Fuse box, so when they brought the power back, our cabin stayed dark. It was a great evening, which had started with everyone facing their gadgets, looking out at the walls, and it became all of us sitting around, looking IN at each other and being much more connected. I knew the service was back up, but waited until people were solidly headed towards bed, in case a premature 'PowerUp' would get the all-night movies and games going again, and make the people turn towards their corners again. And look at me. I'm typing this instead of going to sleep with my wife. Alas.
How did I "rough it"? I used a candle for light, a battery-driven boombox for tunes, and used an ingenius if wasteful way to chill beer. I merely ran the sink at a trickle to let ground temp chill the water to chill the cans of beer in the sink!
I once read about a person who owned a rural cabin and a car. Like me, he did without the power company. At first, he used 12 volt stuff in the cabin, added a second battery to his car to catch power, and normal commuting charged the battery pack. He later added solar or wind or both to said cabin.
Moral of our tales? Sure, it's not easy to go with less or without. It's a case of "when the going gets tough, the tough get going"! If you know about energy, MacGyver-like creativity can go a LONG ways. That's how the Cubans do it.
invented the light bulb, telephone, plane, is
that they happen globally.
like some kind of psychokinesis.
As in-
One of my ideas to shock people into energy sensibility is deliberate temporary city-wide blackouts combined with vehicle use moratoriums. The President, Governors, and Mayors could preannounce the time and plans. Let's take Phx for example.
this is exactly the remedy for SOC's(Self Organized Critical Systems-a controlled burn, if you will.
It must be done. Or we will experience General Conflagration.
http://www.snopes.com/pregnant/blackout.htm
Bob Shaw in Phx,AZ Are Humans Smarter than Yeast?
Putting all this in place is a pipedream and I wonder what Brian is smoking.
If you want to talk about coal gasification as a better use for coal, I'd be willing to do that.
I'd be all for CAFE standards, increased efficiencies, more rapid transit, if anyone was actually willing to do any of them starting right now. I'll take what I can get.
faq
Synthetic fuel technology works by heating coal into gas in a contained reaction requiring no external energy. This first step is known as coal gasification, and is used widely around the world to create other forms of energy and industrial products. The gas is then cleansed of sulfur, mercury, arsenic and other toxins, as well as greenhouse gasses, and then distilled into a synthetic form of crude oil which can be refined on site to create any liquid fuel. The resulting fuels burn dramatically cleaner than petroleum-based fuels and can help America reduce emissions.
And we'll get 10-1 from cellulosic ethanol. And Saudi Arabia has 260 billion barrels. And methane hydrates will be commerically scalable. And there is enough sunlight hitting the earth for 100,000 times our current power needs, etc etc.
Click to enlarge
On the other hand if he gets the project started, there's nothing to stop Montana four years from now to use the gasifier output to make methane or even fertilizer if they desire.
That's the crux of the matter. And I must confess, I need to research both of these subjects more in-depth. If anyone else on TOD could shed some light on these subjects, that would be a good thing. When you say "pollution-free", are you talking about sulfates, mercury and such or are you talking about CO2? I will be looking around for this information. I don't want to come off as someone who knows all the answers--because I don't. So, this gives me something to look into.
I do know this in so far as I have been looking at future natural gas supplies in the US--coal gasification figures basically nowhere in the equation. It's all conventional gas production, unconventional gas production (eg. deep gas), LNG and that planned pipeline from Alaska. Since natural gas is our biggest shorter term problem in my view, it's interesting that coal gasification does not show up in the projections. Since this process is expensive and most companies (like XCEL where I live) are required by law to provide gas the cheapest way possible, that might explain it. But at some point, it's got to become price competitive with some of the wild-assed schemes I've been looking at to supply the US with gas.
best, Dave
Based on the information from WMPI's proposed plant in Pennsylvania (waste coal to diesel, 5,000 BPD go to ultradirtyfuels.org for more) there will be some sulfur dioxide, etc. Mercury it seems is very tricky to get out of gas streams, too.
Then of course, since matter is neither created nor destroyed by this process, you've got the problem that all the crap that's in the coal (trace metals, sulfur, etc) has to come out somewhere. If you take it out of the gases, then you've got to store liquid or solid wastes somewhere. Lots of them. Will they leach? Where will we put it all? Questions yet to be answered, here in Montana, anyway.
And then there's the CO2....
Check out www.northernplains.org, which has analyzed how the F-T coal to diesel process plays out in Montana, there are references to a bunch of cites.
On F-T for synthetic natural gas -- they make this oxymoronic fuel at a plant in Beulah, ND, thanks to you and I, the American taxpayer. We subsidized them first with a price guarantee, but that was insufficient. The plant went bankrupt a year after it opened. DOE took it over, and then sold it to Basin Electric for less than a nickel on the dollar. Basin Electric bought it because it had built a power plant to provide power to run the gasification plant, and stood to lose 7& of its market. It's not clear if this would be replicable in the real world, enough to make a dent in natural gas supplies anyway.
So for alternatives to natural gas -- the best bet right now (next to insulation and caulking) is wind. That sounds funny, but wind is perfect for backing off the most expensive electricity, natural gas. We have an excess of natural-gas fired electric power plants, which were relatively (to coal and nuclear) cheap to build but which are expensive to operate, worse now that the price of gas has skyrocketed. This makes wind, which is less reliable than coal plants -- although maybe not IGCC plants, we'll see -- more valuable, since natural gas plants are easier to back off when the wind is blowing, and easy to turn on when it's not.
So if we build a lot of wind, we save a lot of gas.
Then we need to grow crops that need less anhydrous ammonia -- made from natural gas. More switchgrass, less corn. And more nitrogen fixing plants, including lots of oil seeds (suitable for biodiesel).
One recent estimate of gas to liquids (i.e. plants under construction and others planned in Qatar) -- $20,000 construction costs per daily barrel of capacity. At the Governor's energy symposium in Bozeman, MT in October, Sasol's representative said that Coal to Diesel was roughly twice as capital intensive as gasification (or GTL). If you do the math, we've got a ways to go to raise that money.
As far as Bush with the switchgrass, what's needed is to genetic-engineer a cellulose-cracking bacterium that also brews up ETOH (booze) like brewer's yeast. The F-T process is off-the-shelf technology unlike the cellulose-cracking yeast. An alternative is to crack cellulose into glucose or fructose for normal yeast to use, "syn-food".