I wonder how this will be spun.....

[cj001f]

Can you say 'Seattle-centric'? I thought Boeing provided jobs state-wide? Everett? Auburn? Renton? Fredrickson? Those tax-breaks were primarily doled out by the State. aka: a lot of non-Seattle residents.

Sorry = money not diversifying WA's economy

 

The commercial airline business will go down again, Boeing will lay people off again. Why not invest in something not tied so directly to economic trends? It's smart business.

[foraker]

how about another stadium?

[j_b]

I am curious about the subsidization argument.

 

"TAX SUBSIDIES

The federal government provides the oil industry with numerous tax breaks designed to ensure that domestic companies can compete with international producers and that gasoline remains cheap for American consumers. Federal tax breaks that directly benefit oil companies include: the Percentage Depletion Allowance (a subsidy of $784 million to $1 billion per year), the Nonconventional Fuel Production Credit ($769 to $900 million), immediate expensing of exploration and development costs ($200 to $255 million), the Enhanced Oil Recovery Credit ($26.3 to $100 million), foreign tax credits ($1.11 to $3.4 billion), foreign income deferrals ($183 to $318 million), and accelerated depreciation allowances ($1.0 to $4.5 billion).

 

Tax subsidies do not end at the federal level. The fact that most state income taxes are based on oil firms' deflated federal tax bill results in undertaxation of $125 to $323 million per year. Many states also impose fuel taxes that are lower than regular sales taxes, amounting to a subsidy of $4.8 billion per year to gasoline retailers and users. New rules under the Taxpayer Relief Act of 1997 are likely to provide the petroleum industry with additional tax subsidies of $2.07 billion per year. In total, annual tax breaks that support gasoline production and use amount to $9.1 to $17.8 billion.

 

PROGRAM SUBSIDIES

Government support of US petroleum producers does not end with tax breaks. Program subsidies that support the extraction, production, and use of petroleum and petroleum fuel products total $38 to $114.6 billion each year. The largest portion of this total is federal, state, and local governments' $36 to $112 billion worth of spending on the transportation infrastructure, such as the construction, maintenance, and repair of roads and bridges. Other program subsidies include funding of research and development ($200 to $220 million), export financing subsidies ($308.5 to $311.9 million), support from the Army Corps of Engineers ($253.2 to $270 million), the Department of Interior's Oil Resources Management Programs ($97 to $227 million), and government expenditures on regulatory oversight, pollution cleanup, and liability costs ($1.1 to $1.6 billion)."

 

then it goes on about protection subsidies, externalized cost (health, environment, ...), protection subsidies, etc ...

 

http://www.bemidjistate.edu/peoplenv/realprice.htm

 

i can't vouch for the accuracy of the analysis but it gives an idea.

[cj001f]

how about another stadium?

Or spend the $3 billion on the roads that employers say they need to lure more workers?

[Peter_Puget]

If the US economy tanks the third world would suffer as well. What would be the consequences of such a recession? Who knows? At the very least thousands probably millions would die as a result of reduction in health services. Didn’t the last significant world wide recession proceed WWII?

 

likely scenario if we sit on our hands and do not invest in alternative sources of energy to minimize fighting over the last bit of cheap oil. the choice isn't between millions dying from rapid global warming versus millions dying from the economy tanking, but how do we avoid the coming crises (climate and peak oil) that'll result from business as ususal. there is no real evidence for emissions caps resulting in poor economic performance. a number of corporations and nations have already significantly reduced their energy use and emission release: they are leaner and more successful.

 

If a firm/country adopts measures making them more efficient than competing firms they will enjoy higher profits and attract capital with ease compared to their competitors who will of course be driven out of business if they do not change. The market rewards those who adapt well and ignores those who do not. Why bother with official standards if those who have adapted them before the fact voluntarily are leaner and more successful?

[mec]

how about another stadium?

 

Key Arena is next

[j_b]

If a firm/country adopts measures making them more efficient than competing firms they will enjoy higher profits and attract capital with ease compared to their competitors who will of course be driven out of business if they do not change. The market rewards those who adapt well and ignores those who do not. Why bother with official standards if those who have adapted them before the fact voluntarily are leaner and more successful?

 

my understanding is that much of what has been done thus far consists of less energy consumption which is a win-win proposition; however, emission reductions demand investing in R&D and retooling which in some industries will result in unfair competiton (at least in the short term) if some companies do what they are supposed to do (reduce emissions) while others go to Tombouctou to avoid emission control. case in point is the cement industry which contributes huge quantities of C02, the technology to reduce emissions exists but everybody is scared of being priced out of the market by those who'll relocate to Wasteland, Inc. if some firms reduce external costs (environmental damage, public health, etc ...) by decreasing pollution it doesn't make sense that those who do nothing keep passing the buck to the public and be rewarded by capturing a higher market share for being bad public citizens. the only way to ensure fair competition and reach emission caps, imo, is regulation and/or some kind of carbon tax (you can go to tombouctou if you want but we'll charge you for external cost you cause). moreover, we don't have 20years to start facing the problem so waiting for the dinosaurs to wake up isn't something we can afford. these are some of the reasons but they are others.

[Peter_Puget]

If a firm/country adopts measures making them more efficient than competing firms they will enjoy higher profits and attract capital with ease compared to their competitors who will of course be driven out of business if they do not change. The market rewards those who adapt well and ignores those who do not. Why bother with official standards if those who have adapted them before the fact voluntarily are leaner and more successful?

 

my understanding is that much of what has been done thus far consists of less energy consumption which is a win-win proposition; however, emission reductions demand investing in R&D and retooling which in some industries will result in unfair competiton (at least in the short term) if some companies do what they are supposed to do (reduce emissions) while others go to Tombouctou to avoid emission control. case in point is the cement industry which contributes huge quantities of C02, the technology to reduce emissions exists but everybody is scared of being priced out of the market by those who'll relocate to Wasteland, Inc. if some firms reduce external costs (environmental damage, public health, etc ...) by decreasing pollution it doesn't make sense that those who do nothing keep passing the buck to the public and be rewarded by capturing a higher market share for being bad public citizens. the only way to ensure fair competition and reach emission caps, imo, is regulation and/or some kind of carbon tax (you can go to tombouctou if you want but we'll charge you for external cost you cause). moreover, we don't have 20years to start facing the problem so waiting for the dinosaurs to wake up isn't something we can afford. these are some of the reasons but they are others.

 

So I guess what you are saying is that your earlier comment (re leaner meaner) turns out not to be correct after all. I will agree with that. There will be costs imposed in any soulution. Cost in general are very difficult to quantify. First of all we need to calculate the value of the heating effect we avoid. This is very much in dispute. Doesn't the study first shown here project a less significant human impact that ones created just a few years ago? At what point do we have the knowledge to make a good choice?

 

 

In any event your suggestion of a tax on output is moving closer to a better solution than say the idiotic Kyoto targets.

[selkirk]

so what you recommend producing the hydrogen with? Wind, Solar etc are great, but again, very limited overall capacity. In addition, if were talking using methane to produce hydrogen, how much more efficient, and how much cleaner (ie. tons of CO2 per year) is it? Electrolsis would be relatively clean, but how efficient?

 

Nuclear is certainly no silver bullet, and it to will have some limited life span. I somehow doubt that the supply of fissible materials available is effectively limitless. And ok, so it's 70% efficient, in large part due to waste heat. I'd be willing to venture a guess that given a litle thought that waste heat could be put to good use in some fashion.

 

As for the others..dangerous, radioactive waste, etc? well, the long term waste storage is an issue, but in all reality at least we have it completey contained, we know where all th polution is going, and what's it's doing. We just need a good place to store it. As for dangerous? How so? I rather doubt we'll ever see another catastrophic meltdown like Chernobyl, that was a combination, of very poor reactor design, coupled with the actions of morons. (The Operators were actually seeing exactly how long they could continue to produce power while they were actively draining the cooling fluid. And in thos reactors there was only one cooling loop instead of the standard 2 utilized in most Western Designs)

 

Three Mile Island? (as memory serves the actual amount of radioactive materialy released into the environment was relatively small. ) Are there any other incidents of note? (as memory serves there was a fire at a British reactor in the 50's? that was a bit ugly, but again, a technology in it's infancy.)) In general the containment systems in modern reactors work pretty damn well. How does this compare with XXX number of tons of CO2, SO2, etc released from fossil fuel plants?

 

It isn't a panacea either, but it's immediately available, extremely portable so your not losing energy due to transmission, and can be operated just about anywhere regardless of location. (SO it has the advantages of fossil fuel tech. with lower transportation costs, and more contained waste products. gets my until we find something with an equal energy production capacity that's cleaner and more sustainable)

[AlpineK]

The main thing that went wrong at 3 Mile Island was shitty human factors engineering. The controls for the plant were very poorly designed so when they had a problem it got totally out of hand.

 

In terms of economic impact if we sign on to Kyoto or try some other measure the biggest loser is going to be the coal industry. They know that, and that's why the Western Fuels Association (the coal industry) has funded so much bullshit science trying to stop the talk of climate change.

 

There are a lot of very bad economic impacts. Just think how much every port city will have to spend to deal with higher sea levels. The current models show that Seattle and other NW cities will have to vastly increase the size of water reservoirs. Internationally the Insurance industry is going to get hit with a lot more claims due to, "freak," storms. Whole areas of Africa will stop being able to support any type of agriculture...the list goes on.

 

Anyway I'd be willing to sign up for more nukes if some conservatives would sign up for higher CAFE standards.

[KaskadskyjKozak]

In terms of economic impact if we sign on to Kyoto or try some other measure the biggest loser is going to be the coal industry. They know that, and that's why the Western Fuels Association (the coal industry) has funded so much bullshit science trying to stop the talk of climate change.

 

Interesting. Then why is it that all we hear about are the evils of "big oil"? What about beating up "big coal" for a while??

 

There are a lot of very bad economic impacts. Just think how much every port city will have to spend to deal with higher sea levels.

 

That's why you guys on the left care so much (look at the blue-red map - blue-staters congregate around ports and ocean fronts).

 

Anyway I'd be willing to sign up for more nukes if some conservatives would sign up for higher CAFE standards.

 

I'm for higher CAFE standards as long as they are reasonable and fair. Nuclear waste scares the s**t out of me though.

[j_b]

So I guess what you are saying is that your earlier comment (re leaner meaner) turns out not to be correct after all.

 

err, no. i said some corps/countries had made changes and it turned out for the best (i.e, Dow chemical, 2nd largest chemical corp cut its emissions by 60% and has seen lots of growth). i also said that regulations were necessary to make sure that fair competition be possible (you are for fair competition, right?). corps that reduce emissions are reducing expenditure to public funds allocated for remediation (among other things), those that don't reduce emissions are not assuming their share of the cost of doing business. i don't want corps to pay for everything, i am not against corporate welfare (as long as we are clear that it is just that). i just want the public to have a say in the choices that are being made since the public is assuming a significant fraction of the costs.

 

I will agree with that. There will be costs imposed in any soulution.

 

there are already costs today. paid out by us in healthcare, environmental remediation, water shortages, etc ... the matter is to make sure we can minimize these costs.

 

Cost in general are very difficult to quantify. First of all we need to calculate the value of the heating effect we avoid. This is very much in dispute. Doesn't the study first shown here project a less significant human impact that ones created just a few years ago?

 

not that i am aware of. the impact could also be much greater than what is expected.

 

At what point do we have the knowledge to make a good choice?

 

yesterday.

[cj001f]

I somehow doubt that the supply of fissible materials available is effectively limitless.

It is, with breeder reactors. The US doesn't like breeder reactors because there are groups who want fissile material for "other" uses, so this requires higher security (countries like France are willing to provide this security). Fusion power (if it ever gets off the ground) would produce a limitless supply of energy. But with every science project budget cut it's day gets farther away.

[Fairweather]

Here is a good read with some basic information on the subject:

 

http://www.argee.net/DefenseWatch/Nuclear%20Waste%20and%20Breeder%20Reactors.htm

 

Nuclear Waste and Breeder Reactors - Myth and Promise

 

In my earlier articles on nuclear power, I reviewed how fissile Uranium-235 drives a nuclear reactor, and how Uranium-238 participates in the process by transforming into Plutonium-239, which is fissile like Uranium-235. This phenomenon of nuclear physics lies at the heart of a conceptual blueprint by which the United States once and for all can end its energy dependence on fossil fuels and the unstable Third World nations who export petroleum.

 

Two significant obstacles stand in the way of an energy-independent United States: (1) Finding a solution to the immense amounts of dangerous and highly-radioactive spent reactor fuel already on hand, and (2) Implementing reactor designs that generate electricity while creating more useful nuclear fuel.

 

In order to see how this can be done, it's first necessary to review some basic physics: Plutonium-239 produces significantly more energy than Uranium-235. And the process continues to produce the additional isotopes Plutonium-240 and 241 and 242. This raises an interesting question.

 

Can we take these fuel rods that contain all this Plutonium, separate out the Plutonium and whatever Uranium was not used, and make more fuel rods? You bet. In fact, we actually end up with more fuel after the process than what we started with. Why is this not being done?

 

Plutonium is used in atomic bombs - the fact that it's pure Plutonium-239 that makes an atomic bomb work, and not the other three isotopes, apparently didn't matter, because in 1977 President Jimmy Carter signed an executive order that banned the reprocessing of nuclear fuel in the United States. The rationale was that the Plutonium could possibly be stolen, and terrorists might be able to use it to make atomic bombs.

 

Never mind that in the real world, it is essentially impossible to separate out the Plutonium-239 from the other isotopes in sufficient purity to use it for bomb making. The British tried it, the Russians tried it, the French tried it, and we tried it, but nobody did it very well, even though we had the best scientists and all the money in the world to throw at it.

 

If you try to make a bomb with such a mixture of Plutonium isotopes, forget about it - it won't work, ever. We're talking about the laws of physics, Greenpeace notwithstanding. Unless you have pure Plutonium-239, your bomb will fizzle. So throwing away all that valuable nuclear fuel to prevent terrorists from making a bomb that won't work anyway is just plain dumb.

 

How do we get the Plutonium-239 for our atomic bombs? We built reactors fueled with Uranium-238 whose only job is to create Plutonium-239. These systems are some of the best-guarded plants in the world. Our weapons grade Plutonium is safe. And we use the stuff over and over and over, as necessary, to keep our supply of weapons grade Plutonium up to date and available.

 

Can we do the same thing to produce nuclear fuel? The answer is a resounding Yes!

 

This type of reactor, called a Breeder Reactor, actually produces more fuel than it consumes. A reactor designed to use a mixed Plutonium fuel is basically the same as the Uranium reactor we have already discussed. However, the neutrons that sustain the reaction contain more energy - they are commonly known as "fast" neutrons.

 

In order to regulate the internal neutron flux, the primary coolant typically is one of the light metals like Sodium. Since Uranium-238 is one of the more abundant elements in the Earth's crust, Breeder Reactors make it possible to have an essentially unlimited source of fuel for nuclear reactors - which means an unlimited supply of electricity.

 

At its best, the Breeder Reactor system produces no nuclear waste whatever - literally everything eventually gets used. In the real world, there actually may be some residual material that could be considered waste, but its half-life - the period of time it takes for half the radioactivity to dissipate - is on the order of thirty to forty years. By contrast, the half-life for the stuff we presently consider nuclear waste is over 25,000 years!

 

Imagine a transformed energy landscape, where there is no nuclear waste problem, no power shortages, a safe and inexhaustible supply of inexpensive electricity. France has constructed and used Breeder Reactors like this for many years. So have the British and the Japanese. So why not the United States?

 

We invented the technology but then made a political decision back in 1977 that has accomplished nothing but to create immense piles of long-lived, highly radioactive material that we cannot use for anything, and worse - we must safely store for more than its half-life of 25,000 years.

 

The first thing we need is to identify the location and related technology that can safely isolate thousands of tons of spent nuclear fuel for 25,000 years - which is a longer time than all of recorded human history. Will our descendents 25,000 years from now even be able to read a sign that says: "Keep Out!"

 

The scientists - not the ones who made the stupid 1977 decision - but the ones who have to carry it out, have solved part of the problem. Researchers have developed a glass strengthened with a boron complex that appears able to withstand at least 10,000 years of abrasion with little erosion. For now, they encase the nuclear "waste" in borated glass beads, and then embed these in hardened concrete inside steel drums, and store them in pools of water.

 

The United States has several thousand of these drums just waiting for the politicians to decide into which hole in the ground they will eventually be moved.

 

It is tempting to believe that our society will progress sufficiently that one day it will finally decide to make practical use of this valuable resource. Unfortunately, our scientists did a pretty good job with the borated glass and concrete encapsulation. It may turn out to be cheaper to refine new nuclear fuel than to undo what we have created.

 

The final irony is that there is a much better way to dispose of spent nuclear fuel if we really don't want to keep it around. We tend to think of the solid earth as just that, although anybody San Francisco or Los Angeles can tell you that it just isn't so.

 

Our planet's crust consists of a multitude of individual large pieces called tectonic plates. These plates are constantly moving around the surface of the planet, jostling and rubbing one another, and sliding over and under each other. For example, when the plate upon which the Indian sub-continent rests bumped into the Asian plate, the resultant crumpling formed the Himalayan mountain chain. The Western Pacific plate slides under the Asian plate, forming the Marianas Trench, the deepest spot in the ocean. These forces are enormous, surpassing by orders of magnitude anything else on this planet.

 

As one plate subducts under another, the entire plate edge is forced deep into the bowels of the Earth where it, and everything on and in it, is totally transformed into the stuff that makes up the Earth's mantle. This transformation results from tremendous pressure and from heat, caused in part by the pressure and by radioactive substances contained within the Earth. The Challenger Deep in the Marianas Trench in the Pacific is nearly 36,000 feet deep, over seven miles of water.

 

If we were to drop the thousands of borated glass encased drums of so-called nuclear waste into the Challenger Deep or some other fast-moving subduction zone, within a few hundreds or thousands of years the material would be pulled deep within the Earth's interior where it would be completely and utterly dissipated and destroyed.

 

If there is one long-term "lesson learned" from the recent span of history that includes the 1973 OPEC oil embargo, the 1990 Iraqi invasion of Kuwait and Operation Desert Storm, and our current war against terrorists, it is that the United States must become energy independent.

 

We have a staggering nuclear waste problem created by a political decision that we could solve simply by reversing that original decision. We also have a perfectly viable way or resurrecting clean and safe nuclear power simply by making the political decision to develop it.

 

There is no compelling reason to delay shifting our dependence from fossil to nuclear fuel, and redirecting our nuclear focus to Breeder Reactors. We have the ability to control our own energy destiny if we only have the courage to renounce past executive errors and to embrace viable new technologies.

[selkirk]

I somehow doubt that the supply of fissible materials available is effectively limitless.

It is, with breeder reactors. The US doesn't like breeder reactors because there are groups who want fissile material for "other" uses, so this requires higher security (countries like France are willing to provide this security). Fusion power (if it ever gets off the ground) would produce a limitless supply of energy. But with every science project budget cut it's day gets farther away.

 

Fusion is a great idea, but hasn't it been perpetually "20 years out, with sufficient funding?" Breeder reactors are certainly a great idea, but as memory serves i think France only has 1(???), and we developed one down at the INEEL but the work was discontinued. Certainly makes good sense to me. Politically though it's a hard sell. A lot of people are terrified of radiation, and nuclea waste, and with area's like Hanford and Chernobyl they have reasonable cause.

 

One of the funiest things I had heard was that while Germany is very green, and very anti nuclear power, they can't produce enough electricity. So they end up buying it from France which is producing most of it with nukes

 

As for limitless, only until we run out. Until we start tapping fusion directly out the sun or another star with a multi-billion year life span, there are only finite amounts of anything available. Eventually it'll run out or our energy usage will increase or.....

[Dru]

From this week's Economist article, "The Axis of Oil"

James Woolsey, a former director of the CIA, envisions a geo-green coalition of “tree-huggers, do-gooders, sod busters and cheap hawks” pushing for energy independence. The oddest couple of all—Jerry Taylor of the libertarian Cato Institute and Dan Becker of the deeply verdant Sierra Club—have just issued a joint call for a radically different energy policy: a market-based, “zero subsidy” energy bill. If such coalitions really spring forth, then American energy policy, and the Axis of Oil, would be turned on its ear.

 

The Sierra Club getting into bed with the Cato Institute! I expect j_b and Peter Puget will want to kiss now.

[Dr_Flash_Amazing]

The Sierra Club getting into bed with the Cato Institute! I expect j_b and Peter Puget will want to kiss now.

 

Ooohhhh...oily eco-sex. Rrrrooowwwwrrrrrr.

[j_b]

From this week's Economist article, "The Axis of Oil"

James Woolsey, a former director of the CIA, envisions a geo-green coalition of “tree-huggers, do-gooders, sod busters and cheap hawks” pushing for energy independence. The oddest couple of all—Jerry Taylor of the libertarian Cato Institute and Dan Becker of the deeply verdant Sierra Club—have just issued a joint call for a radically different energy policy: a market-based, “zero subsidy” energy bill. If such coalitions really spring forth, then American energy policy, and the Axis of Oil, would be turned on its ear.

 

The Sierra Club getting into bed with the Cato Institute! I expect j_b and Peter Puget will want to kiss now.

 

hell, no! subsidies (under many different forms: R&D, tax breaks, infrastructure, etc...) have always existed and always will be necessary, especially for strategic sectors. I am not against subsidies, i am against the demagoguery of pretending that business doesn't get them whereas the little guy would constantly suck the teet of the state. As long as we have a say on the way business affects society via regulations, etc ... subsidies are fine by me.

 

anyhow i fully expect PP to have the coodies.

[Peter_Puget]

1 -J_B is just being silly in his response to myy last post in this thread ==> sums it up!

 

2 - Energy independence come close to demagoguery I was sad to see it emphasized by many otherwise respectable types. By the way Canada is out largest supplier - why aren’t we worried aboot them!

 

3 - Subsidies? Sugar industry is a perfect example of tax payers and customers getting ripped off! Just say no.

 

4 - I first got coodies when I was 3 years old!

 

5 - Here's an article for Jim - link

 

Haven't read it but I printed it off.

[Jim]

Quickly breezed it - interesting article on US vs European work habits and the connections (or lack thereof) between labor unions, protestant work ethic, cultural values and percieved tradeoffs.