from
a feeble attempt to justify suvs
“Brown is trying to tap into this liberal outrage, the fashionable
disdain for 4x4s, the transformation of drivers of big cars into hate figures
for those who think we should live simpler, more ethical lives. But something
about this campaign to drive 4x4s off our roads doesn't add up. Campaigners
will say that 4x4s emit more COČ than other cars - that might be true, but
they emit less COČ than some everyday household appliances. According to
research published last year, one cycle of a kitchen dishwasher releases
around 756g of COČ, more than double that produced by a short spin in a
Range Rover Turbo Diesel, which releases 299g per kilometre. Using a petrol
lawnmower for an hour reportedly releases more than 1,000g of COČ. Why are
there no campaigns against 'evil dishwashers'? Does Mayor Ken [Ken Livingstone,
mayor of London] think that people who mow their lawns with petrol-based
mowers on a Sunday morning are 'complete idiots' too? (Actually, he probably
does, come to think of it.)
“London buses, which are seen by many environmentalists
as the best alternative to having too many cars on the roads, emit around
1,406g of COČ per kilometre, more than four times that choked out by the
average 4x4. And to put things in perspective, a holiday for a family of
four to Disneyworld in Florida, with all the travelling and consumption
involved in such an endeavour, apparently releases a whopping 2,415,000g
of COČ. It would take 9,600 miles in a 4x4 to create that much carbon. Now
I know that some greens would like to ban overseas holidays - or certainly
want to see bigger, fatter taxes on cheap flights in order to force more
of us to consider going to the Lake District instead of Disneyworld. But
seriously, if we are going to measure everything we do by how much CO²
we create, then there are worse things than dropping Chloe off at the schoolgates
in a jeep.”
London buses tend
to carry far more people than 4 SUVs.
In the United States, I’ve seen figures that talk
in terms of an arms race. Those in SUV crashes getting less injuries on average
than those in smaller vehicles. SUVs are also a real parking nuisance, among
other things they either stick out sideways beyond other vehicles or are left
on the pavement They also loom over walkways and cars and make road visibility
more difficult. They are not merely innocent toys.
Further, dependence on Middle East oil is a serious problem.
This article is not disinterested, though some of the comparative
figures look interesting.
related material
transportable
fuels
the web address for this article is
https://www.abelard.org/news/energy0601.php#suvs_brown_250306 |
| real
mass usage alternatives to fossil fuels
transport
fuel as oil runs out
From a speech by Republican senator Richard G. Lugar:
“The first step is to admit how grave the problem is. Hopefully,
we will look back on President Bush’s declaration that America is
“addicted to oil” as a seminal moment in American history, when
a U.S president said something contrary to expectations and thereby stimulated
change. Like President Nixon using his anti-communist credentials to open
up China or President Johnson using his Southern roots to help pave the
way for the Civil Rights Act, President Bush’s standing as an oil
man would lend special power to his advocacy, if he chose to initiate an
all-out campaign for renewable energy sources.”
—
“We are seeing Iran and Venezuela cultivate energy relationships with
important nations that are in a position to block economic sanctions. For
decades, we have watched Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states use oil wealth
to create domestic conditions that prevent movement toward democracy. In
Russia and Nigeria, energy assets have offered opportunities for corruption.
In many oil rich nations, oil wealth has done little for the people, while
ensuring less reform, less democracy, fewer free market activities, and
more enrichment of elites.
“Beyond the internal costs to these nations, we should recognize
that we are transferring hundreds of billions of dollars each year to some
of the least accountable regimes in the world. Some are using this money
to invest abroad in terrorism, instability, or demagogic appeals to populism.
”
—
“Even a nation like Ethiopia, which receives the substantial sum of
$134 million in U.S. assistance because it is a focus country of the President’s
AIDs initiative, would see almost all of this offset by a $10 oil price
increase.”
—
“Automakers have a central role to play in improving our oil efficiency.
We are working to close the SUV CAFE standards loophole, and to get more
hybrids and flex-fuel vehicles on the road. A fleet of hybrid, and future
plug-in hybrids, that run on E85 could reduce our oil use by 10 million
barrels a day.”
—
“It is time for the oil companies to make E85 available to the consumer.
If these companies do not take advantage of the incentives Congress has
provided, I would be in favor of legislation mandating that they install
E85 pumps in appropriate markets.”
An extremely interesting speech by the senator, giving
evidence that the American government are remarkably aware of the current
problems being caused by the foolish use of fossil fuel and the failure over
decades to take appreopriate action.
Yet throughout the speech, there is only one minor use
of the word 'nuclear', the only real large-scale alternative to fossil fuels.
Yet there is a lot of unrealistic Pollyanna nonsense about being saved by
bio-fuels.
plutonium
is part of the solution, rather than a problem
extracts from The Nuclear Energy Option by Bernard L Cohen
“Deriving 100 times as much energy from the same amount of uranium
fuel means that the raw fuel cost per kilowatt-hour of electricity produced
is reduced correspondingly. In fact, the fuel costs per unit of useful energy
generated in a breeder reactor are equivalent to those of buying gasoline
at a price of 40 gallons for a penny! Instead of contributing 5% to the
price of electricity as in present-type reactors, the uranium cost then
contributes only 0.05% in a breeder reactor. If supplies should run short,
we can therefore afford to use uranium that is 20 times more expensive,
for even that would raise the cost of electricity by only (20 x .05 =) 1%.
How much uranium is available at that price?
“The answer is effectively infinite because it includes uranium separated
out of seawater. The world's oceans contain 5 billion tons of uranium, enough
to supply all the world's electricity through breeder reactors for several
million years. But in addition, rivers are constantly dissolving uranium
out of rock and carrying it into the oceans, renewing the oceans' supply
at a rate sufficient to provide 25 times the world's present total electricity
usage.2 In fact, breeder reactors operating on uranium extracted from the
oceans could produce all the energy humankind will ever need without the
cost of electricity increasing by even 1% due to raw fuel costs.”
—
“The link between nuclear power and the proliferation of nuclear weapons
is a weak and largely insignificant one.”
—
“ It was estimated in 1977 that a crude facility to produce material
for a few bombs could be put together and operated by five people at a cost
of $100,000. A plant capable of longer-term production of material for eight
bombs per year could be built and operated by 15 people, half of them engineers
and the other half technicians, at a cost of $2 million.”
—
“It is not difficult to understand why these nations are unwilling
to trust their very survival to the mercy of Arab sheiks or the whims of
American presidents for the indefinite future. They desperately want some
degree of energy independence, and reprocessing technology is the key to
the only way they can foresee of ever achieving it.”
—
“One of the most disturbing aspects of the proliferation problem is
the utter lack of information on it that has been made available to the
American public. I doubt if more than 1% of the public has any kind of balanced
understanding of the subject. Based on the little information provided to
them, most people have a distinct impression that our use of nuclear power
adds substantially to the risk of nuclear war.
“This impression has been cemented by the tactic of anti-nuclear
activists to tie nuclear weapons and nuclear power together in one package,
purposely making no effort to distinguish between the two.”
Regarding a Princeton student who designed a nuclear
bomb:
“Phillips was being called by media people so frequently that he
had to have a separate telephone installed in his dormitory for that purpose.
His professor told me that he himself had been contacted by many newsmen,
but they never printed what he told them — they only trumpeted that
Phillips had designed a workable bomb.”
—
“There have been numerous statements in newspapers, including our
university paper, that any college student could design a nuclear bomb.
In reply, I published an offer in our university paper of an unqualified
A grade in both of the two courses on nuclear energy that I was teaching
for any student who can show me a sketch of a workable plutonium bomb together
with a quantitative calculation showing that it would work. My offer has
been repeated about 10 times over the last 15 years. Three students turned
in papers, but none of them had as much as 5% of what could be called a
design.”
—
“[To build a nuclear bomb] requires people capable of carrying out
complex physics and engineering computations, handling hazardous materials,
arranging electronically for a hundred or so triggers to fire simultaneously
within much less than a millionth of a second, accurately shaping explosive
charges, attaching them precisely and connecting the triggers to them, and
so on.”
On the toxicity of plutonium:
“There were about 25 workers from Los Alamos National Laboratory
who inhaled a considerable amount of plutonium dust during the 1940's; according
to the hot-particle theory, each of them has a 99.5% chance of being dead
from lung cancer by now, but there has not been a single lung cancer among
them.”
—
“[...] In response, I offered to inhale publicly many times as much
plutonium as he said was lethal. At the same time, I made several other
offers for inhaling or eating plutonium — including to inhale 1,000
particles of plutonium of any size that can be suspended in air, in response
to "a single particle . . . will cause cancer, " or to eat as
much plutonium as any prominent nuclear critic will eat or drink caffeine.
My offers were such as to give me a risk equivalent to that faced by an
American soldier in World War II, according to my calculations of plutonium
toxicity which followed all generally accepted procedures. These offers
were made to all three major TV networks, requesting a few minutes to explain
why I was doing it. I feel that I am engaged in a battle for my country's
future, and hence should be willing to take as much risk as other soldiers.”
—
“It is 5,000 times more dangerous to inhale plutonium than to eat
it, and eating plutonium is about equal in danger to eating the same quantity
of caffeine. Thus, if I were to do what the writer said I offered to do,
I would be taking (1,000 x 5,000 =) 5 million times greater risk than Nader
would be taking in eating the caffeine — I would surely be dead. Actually
I offered to eat (not inhale) the same amount (not 1,000 times as much)
of plutonium as he would eat caffeine, giving us equal risks. My offer to
inhale plutonium was a completely separate item, intended to point out the
ridiculousness of his statements about the dangers of inhaling plutonium.
How a national correspondent can interpret my quote as he did, and how an
editor can then fail to understand the difference when it is pointed out
to him, is beyond my comprehension. Nevertheless, it is people like them,
rather than the scientists, who are educating the public about radiation.
”
—
“In summary, a pound of plutonium dispersed in a large city in the
most effective way would cause an average of 19 deaths due to inhaling from
the dust cloud during the first hour or so, with 7 additional deaths due
to resuspension during the first year, and perhaps 1 more death over the
remaining tens of thousands of years it remains in the top layers of soil.
This gives and ultimate total of 27 eventual fatalities per pound of plutonium
dispersed.”
—
“I have been closely associated professionally with questions of plutonium
toxicity for several years, and the one thing that mystifies me is why the
antinuclear movement has devoted so much energy to trying to convince the
public that it is an important public health hazard. Those with scientific
background among them must realize that it is a phony issue. There is nothing
in the scientific literature to support their claims. There is nothing scientifically
special about plutonium that would make it more toxic than many other radioactive
elements. Its long half life makes it less dangerous rather than more dangerous,
as is often implied; each radioactive atom can shoot off only one salvo
of radiation, so, for example, if half of them do so within 25 years, as
for a material with a 25-year half life, there is a thousand times more
radiation per minute than emissions spread over 25,000 years, as in the
case of plutonium.”
On safety regarding plutonium:
“I am often asked why such tight regulations are imposed on plutonium
releases if they involve so little danger. The answer is that government
regulators are driven much less by actual dangers than by public concern.”
—
“The difficulty with this system is that the public interprets very
elaborate safety measures as indicators of great potential danger. This
increases public concern and perpetuates what has become a vicious cycle
involving all aspects of radiation protection — the more we protect,
the greater the public concern; and the greater the public concern, the
more we must protect.”
related material
replacements
for fossil fuels—what can be done about it?
transportable
fuel
nuclear power - is nuclear
power really really dangerous?
the web address for this article is
https://www.abelard.org/news/energy0601.php#mass_usage_alternatives_200306 |
| bush
coming into the open over energy - first steps
“This morning, I want to speak to you about one part of this initiative:
our plans to expand the use of safe and clean nuclear power. Nuclear power
generates large amounts of low-cost electricity without emitting air pollution
or greenhouse gases. Yet nuclear power now produces only about 20 percent
of America's electricity. It has the potential to play an even greater role.
For example, over the past three decades, France has built 58 nuclear power
plants and now gets more than 78 percent of its electricity from nuclear
power. Yet here in America, we have not ordered a new nuclear power plant
since the 1970s. So last summer I signed energy legislation that offered
incentives to encourage the building of new nuclear plants in America. Our
goal is to start the construction of new nuclear power plants by the end
of this decade.
“As America and other nations build more nuclear power plants, we
must work together to address two challenges: We must dispose of nuclear
waste safely, and we must keep nuclear technology and material out of the
hands of terrorist networks and terrorist states.
“To meet these challenges, my Administration has announced a bold
new proposal called the Global Nuclear Energy Partnership. Under this partnership,
America will work with nations that have advanced civilian nuclear energy
programs, such as France, Japan, and Russia. Together, we will develop and
deploy innovative, advanced reactors and new methods to recycle spent nuclear
fuel. This will allow us to produce more energy, while dramatically reducing
the amount of nuclear waste and eliminating the nuclear byproducts that
unstable regimes or terrorists could use to make weapons.
“As these technologies are developed, we will work with our partners
to help developing countries meet their growing energy needs by providing
them with small-scale reactors that will be secure and cost-effective. We
will also ensure that these developing nations have a reliable nuclear fuel
supply. In exchange, these countries would agree to use nuclear power only
for civilian purposes and forego uranium enrichment and reprocessing activities
that can be used to develop nuclear weapons. My new budget includes $250
million to launch this initiative. By working with other nations under the
Global Nuclear Energy Partnership, we can provide the cheap, safe, and clean
energy that growing economies need, while reducing the risk of nuclear proliferation.
“As we expand our use of nuclear power, we're also pursuing a broader
strategy to meet our energy needs. We're investing in technologies like
solar and wind power and clean coal to power our homes and businesses. We're
also investing in new car technologies like plug-in hybrid cars and in alternative
fuels for automobiles like ethanol and biodiesel.
“Transforming our energy supply will demand creativity and determination,
and America has these qualities in abundance. Our Nation will continue to
lead the world in innovation and technology. And by building a global partnership
to spread the benefits of nuclear power, we'll create a safer, cleaner,
and more prosperous world for future generations. ”
the web address for this article is
https://www.abelard.org/news/energy0601.php#nuclear_bush_200206 |
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