Nuclear Energy Can Save US: Insanity-The Only Word That Fits

Nuclear Energy Can Save US--America�s 100 nukes equal four million barrels of oil per day.

Billions of lives and civilization itself may be at risk from the Global Warming & End of Cheap Oil, Crisis. Rising sea levels and rising oil prices could be the end of civilization as we know it. The problem is so huge that the most powerful answer, many nuclear plants, must be deployed. Currently, America‘s 100 nukes deliver the energy of four million barrels of oil per day. Wind and solar cannot do the job, and may delay the real answer too long. Still, all kinds of clean energy, plus conservation, plus reducing deforestation, will be needed to help the poor half of the world, and for civilization to survive through this century.

Tuesday, December 4, 2007

Insanity-The Only Word That Fits

A recent report, at www.townhallmail.com/raslnam_thukkjkj.html, says that corn ethanol used 6% of the US 2000 corn crop, 20% last year, and about one-quarter this year. Furthermore, congress mandates 7.5 billion gallons of corn ethanol by 2012 (no crop % estimate), and 15 billion gallons by 2022 (i.e. 36 billion gallons ethanol, with 21 billion from scrap stock such as saw grass). (Aside-saw grass technology is now yet proven, but is infinitely better than food as a feedstock. The sacrificed food will not just be corn, but includes other foods that will be left unplanted, crowded out by the corn acreage.)

The Org. for Economic Co-operation and Development says that rising food prices will threaten the nutrition and health of poor people worldwide, and that ethanol production causes greater environmental damage than fossil fuels . A Nobel Laureate, Paul Crutzen concurs; saying nitrous oxide from ethanol causes an increase in greenhouse emissions. Even worse, a Cornell professor, David Pimentel, computes that from start to finish, growing and processing the corn requires 1700 gallons of water for each gallon of ethanol. This is obviously a greater strain on the Earth, than even coal, which is simply dug up, moved, and burned in a power plant.

15 billion gallons of ethanol, equal to about 400 million barrels, is less than 20 days of US oil consumption, and could be produced more sanely by 25, one-gig nukes.

PS: A United Nations spokesman said (10/29/07), that using arable land to grow crops for biofuels is a Crime Against Humanity.

PPS: I believe corn ethanol craze will end before five, or at the most ten, years from now.