78 comments on “Okay…I’m a little scared”

  1. After you have enough money, how much more do you need?
    If you get $25 million from the oil companies, do you ever need more? Would getting $1 billion make any difference in your life than $25 million?
    If you invest $25 million, you can most assuredly make $2 million a year in interest. That’s nearly $40,000 a week in spending money. How much more would you need? I say take the buyoff from the oil companies and shut up and stay alive. Reveal your secret and die “mysteriously” is the other option.

  2. “Please stop for a second and look past Hilton herself and her message and the purpose of this ‘ad’. Because I think you’ve missed the point. :)”
    Hey, Craig!
    I got the point, really. I just can’t stand Paris and all that she represents. :^)

  3. That’s somewhat the issue I have whenever someone touts nuclear energy a “clean, safe” energy source.
    Compared to coal power plants? Well, you can probably see why “clean, safe” is being touted. 🙂
    At some point, we’ll have to choose the hard route or the harder route. Imo, the hard route is going with nuclear power, harder is trying to continue our present course with oil and coal, and that nuclear will be much better in the long run.

  4. Charlie E: “Here in the US, folks saw a few too many fifties B movies, and think this stuff is instantly deadly, and will mutate their children into BEMs, and so, block any attempt to use this great resource. For similiar reasons, they do the same for nuclear power plants in general…”
    You left out freeing Godzilla, creating giant ants and getting the underground kingdoms united against us surface dwellers.
    Charlie E: ”Now, the other stuff isn’t really that ‘hot’, it is at best mildly radioactive. Now, it would be perfectly safe to just about bury it anywhere, because it really ain’t very radioactive”
    No, it wouldn’t be. While it’s not going to shrink any of us down small enough to be subjugated by Baron Karza or land us the lead in a Troma classic, there are effects to be wary of. Even if the levels in the amounts that we’re dealing with now are not considered a major threat to higher life forms such as mammals, there would still be an immediate impact on simpler forms of life such as paramecia, rotifers, amoebas, volvox and nematodes. Once you create issues with them the problems slowly work their way up the chain of organisms.
    Remember the news stories about the five and six legged frogs down in Florida (that are still popping up even if the newness wore off and the news stopped talking about them) from a few years ago? Pollution created issues with the lowest life form on the ladder and those creatures then went on to create issues with the next rung above them. Some aspects of pollution VS radiation don’t equal each other, but some do and radiation has issues that simple pollution doesn’t.
    Now let’s add in the wonders of adding more radioactive waste to the mix at an increasing rate due to the increase in production of that waste. It builds up.
    Let’s try something else for a moment. Is there a drink you drink every day? Let’s say I started putting just a small amount of a toxin in your drink every day. I could put just enough in that it doesn’t constitute a dangerous amount. But the constant exposure may eventually start have an effect on your body. And if I didn’t want to wait a lot of time I could always start to increase the amount of toxin that I introduce to your drink. I may never hit a point where the levels in any single serving qualify as a threat, but the constant exposure to the increasing amount would still have an effect on your body and your health. And if you don’t want to go the poison scenario then you can just think about old lead pipes and your drinking water.
    Craig J. Ries: “At some point, we’ll have to choose the hard route or the harder route. Imo, the hard route is going with nuclear power, harder is trying to continue our present course with oil and coal, and that nuclear will be much better in the long run.”
    Maybe, maybe not. Nuclear may be more effective and efficient than wind, water or solar generated power, but I still believe that those are better options to invest in unless/until we find a better way to deal with the waste materials created by nuclear power. Until that happens we’d simply be substituting one form of pollution for another.

  5. Can someone explain to me why if drilling off shore is the answer as McCain keeps saying it is, the Republicans didn’t support the “Use it or lose it” bill, to force the oil companies to use the 68 million acres of land they already have leases to drill on but aren’t?
    It’s not because more drilling won’t do a dámņ thing, and this is just the oil companies wanting to lock up more land, is it? That can’t be it.

  6. Scavenger: “Can someone explain to me why if drilling off shore is the answer as McCain keeps saying it is, the Republicans didn’t support the “Use it or lose it” bill, to force the oil companies to use the 68 million acres of land they already have leases to drill on but aren’t?”
    I love that question. It’s a fun question because it gets such fun answers. Most of my diehard Hannity/Rush/Fox News friends and coworkers usually parrot their talking points while parroting Hannity’s best smug mode. The answer they give is that the “reliable experts” have said that there’s no usable oil there. The land is all useless.
    Now my next question is the one I’ve never seen Hannity, Fox News or the “reliable experts” from the oil companies answer. If the land has no oil and is completely useless; why not get rid of it and free it up for someone who can do something with it? No one can seem to come up with a logical or reasonable answer for that one. It does create a great look on their faces when their brains lock up and freeze as that thought suddenly kicks the legs out from under their smug stool.
    ~8?)`

  7. Speaking of who is where on what in energy…
    Fact Check’s latest email hit my inbox and covers some of the things that have been said about the McCain energy plan.
    “A McCain ad shows pictures of wind-driven turbines while the narrator says: “Renewable energy to transform our economy, create jobs and energy independence, that’s John McCain.” But, in fact, his energy plan doesn’t specify any new federal spending for renewable energy and says only that he’d “rationalize” existing tax credits to provide incentives. In the past, however, he’s opposed extending such tax credits when paid for by tax increases elsewhere.
    The ad also insinuates that Obama would bring “higher taxes” for “your family,” another in what has become a pattern of misrepresentations of Obama’s tax plan. Obama actually proposes to cut taxes for all but the most affluent families. He wants to restore tax rates to pre-Bush levels only for those making over $250,000 a year.
    The full article with analysis, images and citations may be viewed on their web site:”
    http://www.factcheck.org/elections-2008/wind_power_puffery.html

  8. If the land has no oil and is completely useless; why not get rid of it and free it up for someone who can do something with it?
    Well, the answer is that, even though the land is worthless as a source of oil, the oil companies are still paying money to maintain the leases that would allow them to drill there. Isn’t it so kind of those companies to be basically donating money to the Feds when they don’t get anything out of it? Oh, well. It’s not like that’s unusual. Corporations volunteer to give money to the government (effectively pay higher taxes) all the time. Right?
    More seriously, the oil corps are paying leases for those drilling rights because they see themselves getting some sort of value out of it. Back in the late 80s when I was getting my B.S. in Economics, one of the last courses I took was in Resource Scarcity and the professor was developing a piece of software called OPECGenie to sell to the OPEC nations. His bare-bones description of it was that it was basically a Present Value calculator that let you feed in various assumptions regarding future conditions and it would estimate future oil prices and suggest oil production rates to maximize the Present Value of their oil sales.
    The relevance of that to this argument is that I believe that the oil companies are trying to maximize their profits over time. A barrel of oil at $200 next year is better than one at $100 today. Which brings me too…
    It’s not because more drilling won’t do a dámņ thing, and this is just the oil companies wanting to lock up more land, is it? That can’t be it.
    Speaking only for myself here, but that’s exactly it. As the price oil rises, sites that were previously economically infeasible to drill become money-making ventures. As oil becomes scarcer there’s going to come a point when it becomes politically impossible to refuse to allow drilling, even if we have to use the fat of baby seals as a lubricant. If a company (or cartel) wants to control the amount of production to maximize profits, then the more oil producing land they control, the more they can control the market price to their advantage.

  9. “Let’s try something else for a moment. Is there a drink you drink every day? Let’s say I started putting just a small amount of a toxin in your drink every day.”
    Isn’t that how the Dread Pirate Roberts got started?

  10. Jerry said:
    Now my next question is the one I’ve never seen Hannity, Fox News or the “reliable experts” from the oil companies answer. If the land has no oil and is completely useless; why not get rid of it and free it up for someone who can do something with it? No one can seem to come up with a logical or reasonable answer for that one. It does create a great look on their faces when their brains lock up and freeze as that thought suddenly kicks the legs out from under their smug stool.
    Ah, maybe that “great look on their faces” is them wondering just what exactly that has to do with drilling for oil. 😉
    Or better yet, Im not sure anyone else has the money or resources to start their own drilling company, as Im sure that is what you were referring to.
    As ive read elsewhere (not DC) It has much to do with who owns the land these oil companies are leasing from that determines how much drilling is done. Which brings us back to.. The Federal Government.

  11. Pat Nolan: “Ah, maybe that “great look on their faces” is them wondering just what exactly that has to do with drilling for oil.”
    It has to do with what they’ve been saying about the land for years now and their finances. They won’t dump land that they claim is useless to them.?
    “as Im sure that is what you were referring to.”
    No, I was referring to anyone else who might want to do anything else with that land. Hey, here’s an idea… How about using some of it for wind farms?
    They’ve been holding this land for years now because it had oil under them thar layers of dirt. Or that’s what they used to say. Now their story is that the land is useless. It’s worthless to them because there’s no oil there. Then why keep spending the money? Why keep the land tied up if its worthless and useless to you?
    It almost feels like this is just a game to them. This is almost like dealing with a child who keeps telling you he’ll eat his dinner if you let him have his desert first. You keep giving them their desert first and they keeping leaving a full dinner plate on the table.
    Besides, they claimed that this land had oil on it and that they would be bringing up barrels of oil for domestic consumption just as soon as they could get their hands on it. Well, they got their hands on it and did nothing with most of it. And now they’re the ones claiming that the land is useless.
    So why should we believe them this time? Why should we treat their word like it means anything? What makes their statements about getting in and drilling ASAP any more reliable this year?
    No, no more desert. They asked for the land because it had oil on it and now they want more. No. Drill on the land or use it for something else related to your business or give it up before you get any more land or drilling rights.

  12. Hi Jerry,
    Nice straw man. You took my joke of ‘It could be buried anywhere…” and made it like I was proposing that radwaste be buried ‘just anywhere!” Of course not, you would want to BURY it, not just cover it with a little dirt, but still in a biologically active zone. Any old deep hole, say an abandoned mine would work if the material was encased. There is plenty of natural radioactivity down there, so it will be right at home.
    As for wind farms, I can see a few (thousand?) from my back yard. They are great IFF you have enough wind, and a suitable infrastructure to take the generated electricity to market. However, many of the present farms I see are standing still. The investments were made mainly to get the tax incentives some seem to be so set in continuing/increasing. Once they were built and ran a few years, the actual costs of maintaining and operating the turbines kicked in, and they get abandoned in place. Hey, the builder HAS his money already, paid out of yours and my taxes! Why ruin it by doing expensive maintanance!
    The real world says: If it makes a profit, it will be done. If wind really is a viable money making way of creating electricity, it will happen. If it is just another vote buying scheme, then we are better off not doing it. Same with solar!

  13. Charlie E: “Now, the other stuff isn’t really that ‘hot’, it is at best mildly radioactive. Now, it would be perfectly safe to just about bury it anywhere, because it really ain’t very radioactive (if it was, see the above about USING it…) but instead, they tried to calm folks fears and built Yucca Mountain.”
    Charlie E: “Hi Jerry,
    Nice straw man. You took my joke of ‘It could be buried anywhere…” and made it like I was proposing that radwaste be buried ‘just anywhere!” Of course not, …”
    There’s no straw man there because I didn’t take your “joke” and do anything with it. You could have said that you were for the abandoned mine idea before and the response would be mostly the same. We should find a better way of dealing with the stuff before we ramp up the production of it.
    Charlie E: “Any old deep hole, say an abandoned mine would work if the material was encased. There is plenty of natural radioactivity down there, so it will be right at home.”
    Uhm… Just what are you a “scientist (well, engineer)” of?

  14. Djackio, thanks for your response. What problem do you see with the underground bunkers?
    Jerry, do you have any links for the San Andreas Fault issue? The Wikipedia article on Yucca mentions an issue of earthquakes (one that is addressed by both the DOE in the article, and known tests of the waste containers), but doesn’t mention San Andreas at all, nor could I find such a story on Google. Google Maps, in fact, shows that the Fault and the Mountain do not overlap, and are 300 miles apart.

  15. I’m vaguely reluctant to get into this too deeply… Online Technology vs Green discussions tend to go the way of gay and fundamental religion discussions real fast, where everybody cherrypicks the facts they want to support the position the know is true…
    However, FWIW, and a terrible flashback to too many conversations I had in the 70’s, 80’s and 90’s..
    Nuclear waste – quoting Dr Jerry Pournelle, who is pretty much the number one goto guy on these topics :
    “First, nuclear waste is a non-problem. The simplest method of dealing with them is to encase the stuff in glass (actually make a glass with the waste as ingredients) then take it to the Mindanao Trench and drop it overboard. It will eventually be carried into the depths of the earth where it came from in the first place. End of problem.
    What most people do not seem to know is that while “nuclear waste” is in fact radioactive for thousands of years, after about 600 years the only radioactivity remaining is from the actinides, and those are what caused it to be fuel in the first place; after about 600 years the residuals are less active than the original ores mined in the first place.
    And if we don’t like dumping the stuff in the Deep (where we can’t retrieve it if we suddenly wish we had it) then again make glass of it, and stack it in the Mojave desert. A square mile of the Fort Irwin maneuver area would do for many years to come. If you really doubt the stability of glass (which is pretty near eternal) build a superdome over it. Put a triple chain link fence topped with razor wire around the site with a notice that anyone crossing the line is fair game for the Army, but you’ll probably die before we can kill you. Have a nice day.
    As to renewability of nuclear power, we haven’t tried very hard to find new nuclear resources; and how much you find has always in the past depended on how hard you look. I don’t think that has changed much. Moreover, we have half a dozen breeder techniques for expanding the amount of nuclear fuel, and they are neither as environmentally hazardous nor as expensive (saving legal costs) as petroleum technologies for stuff like oil shale.
    Now: I give you a general principle: given enough energy we can do anything. Electricity is useful. We haven’t worked very hard at finding ways to use it for transportation; we haven’t even looked at how countries with lots of hydro-electric power have done it. Some transport is fairly easy to convert over a 30 year period: railroads, much of long-haul trucking. It requires messenger wires and trolley receptors, but that’s a known technology. Some transport is pretty simple: we already know how to make pretty good electric cars with a range of 100 miles, and most people drive far fewer than 100 miles a day. Those are known technologies; requiring new distribution systems; conversion will take some years, but if you don’t start on something you will never finish it.
    T Boone Pickens is absolutely right: we can’t go on transferring a trillion a year to the middle east. On the other hand, we used to be the creditor nation of the world, as well as the manufacturing nation. We gave that up voluntarily for regulations and a regulatory state. Whether his conclusion, that we ought to convert to wind power, is correct is another matter. It doesn’t look as useful as nuclear, but there are fewer environmental fanatics opposed to wind. I suspect that energy economics is more determined by law suits than by engineering.”
    On nuclear safety; add up all those killed by accidental exposure to radiation, including Chernobyl. Double the number. It is still a very, very small percentage of those killed by accidents and diseases associated with coal mining.
    That’s just looking at nuclear fission plants with readily available ‘off the shelf’ technology.
    Personally, I’m a lot more interested in SBSP (Satellite Based Solar Power) which has been theroetically available and technically thought feasible since the 1970’s. The Japanese space agency are currently getting into this big time, and one set of projections says they can generate 25% of the worlds current electricity use, cleanly and in perpetuity, by 2030. See http://www.pinktentacle.com/2008/02/jaxa-testing-space-solar-power-system/
    Cheers.

  16. Jerry Chandler: They’ve been holding this land for years now because it had oil under them thar layers of dirt. Or that’s what they used to say. Now their story is that the land is useless. It’s worthless to them because there’s no oil there. Then why keep spending the money? Why keep the land tied up if its worthless and useless to you?
    Maybe some of it is because they are able to drill on part of the land leased and other parts are not usable for drilling but then you would think they could adjust leases to accommodate other the uses that you have suggested.
    I just dont believe the oil companies are the evil folks want to paint them as.
    I would think, to follow the “they are in it for the money” mantra you hear from the many, that if they could produce more oil with the land they do have they would because that would bring them untold amounts of yet more of the money that they are supposedly in the business for.

  17. I like the SBSP idea, though I’ll wager that there will be a huge outcry over using “Death rays” and sad stories about birds who had the misfortune of flying too close and ending up as shredded tweet.
    Could this not also be used as a weapon? Wow, what if the giy with the tinfoil helmet was right after all???

  21. Pat Nolan: “Maybe some of it is because they are able to drill on part of the land leased… “
    Then drill there before asking for more land to drill on or playing politics over the coastlines and Alaska.
    On to other matters…
    I’ll also throw in the love for the idea of Satellite Based Solar Power even if I’m a bigger fan of the Earthbound stuff. Just keep frickin Doctor Evil away from them, people.

  22. Sorry, Jerry, my memory farted a bit, and “San Andreas” seaped into my RAM somehow. 🙂
    Thanks for the links.

  23. I recommend the novel “PowerSat” by Ben Bova for an interesting (if fictional) treatise on Satellite Based Solar Power.

  25. Posted by Bill Mulligan at August 9, 2008 05:34 PM
    “I like the SBSP idea, though I’ll wager that there will be a huge outcry over using “Death rays” and sad stories about birds who had the misfortune of flying too close and ending up as shredded tweet.
    Could this not also be used as a weapon? Wow, what if the giy with the tinfoil helmet was right after all???”
    Thanks Bill, two of the “questions everyone asks”… 🙂
    It’s been – God save us – 25 years since I last read through the math on this, back in my days of enthusiastically supporting L5 and thinking we were actually going out there where the answers are, before we pìššëd it all away on treaties and legislation, but, if I recall correctly:
    The rectenna farm for powering the US would be roughly 250 square kilometers – stick it in the Mojave, stick it in Alaska, stick it well away from migration routes. The microwave radiation footprint depends on the wavelengths used, but is almost certainly less than that in most urban centres in the age of wi-fi, cellnets and Bluetooth.
    The math also says it’s really hard to condense the beam enough to produce a weapons grade hot spot from geo-stationary orbit. You’d need something the size of the Death Star to burn a hole the size of a quarter through a piece of steel in about an hour… (Kinetic javellins would be a much better orbital weapon – three meters of teflon/graphite with a nose camera and simple steering vanes at the blunt end. A couple of those through the roof will seriously ruin anyone’s day)
    SBSP does open a can of worms – if your nation’s entire power supply is in orbit you will want to defend it.
    Personally, I wouldn’t mind that can getting opened. Treaties excluding military and commercial development of space are what killed off 99% of what we should have been doing for the last 30 years.
    Cheers.

  26. Thanks Bill, two of the “questions everyone asks”… 🙂
    Well that’s me, voice of the common man, the average Joe, John Q Public…
    Thanks for the information, especially about kinetic javelins. This sounds like a great way for us to utilize our kid’s mad hand-eye coordination skills honed by hours of GEARS OF WAR play.
    here’s a good article on a small company that is apparently doing very well in the search for cheap solar–http://spectrum.ieee.org/aug08/6464

  27. The technology to get out from under OPEC’s oily thumb is already here. Its called flex fuel cars which could run on either gas, ethanol or methanol. There is a flex fuel mandate bill being considered by Congress and the Senate right now. What it would do is have automakers in the States make cars that are flex fuel. Then if America does this then the rest of the world would quickly follow suit. They are already doing this in Brasil where they have these kinds of cars and they have ethanol stations. So if Brasil can do this why can’t we do it here in North America?
    Also please don’t believe the garbage that the oil companies are telling you about using food for fuel. Its a lie. In the U.S. there is only a tiny fraction of the farmland actually being used to grow food the rest which is millions of acres is just lying fallow. They don’t grow food on it because then food prices would be too low so it just sits there doing nothing. Off the coast of California all of the sea weed that grows out there could provide two thirds of the energy required for our cars. Then you have the Gulf of Mexico where you can also grow this stuff on nets. It grows a foot and a half a day! Then you have the Cattails from marshes which can also be used to provide fuel for cars and at the same time you can use the marshes to clean sewage which would then grow more Cattails.
    The technolgy is here we just have to make the effort to use it. In a span of 2-3 years we could be out from under OPEC’s oily thumb.

  28. “Posted by Danny at August 10, 2008 11:25 AM
    So if Brasil can do this why can’t we do it here in North America?”
    Quoting – shamelessly – from:
    http://www.jerrypournelle.com/mail/2008/Q3/mail528.html#Brazil
    ================================================
    Brazilian ethanol
    Dear Jerry,
    RE: Ethanol and Brazil, there seems to have been a little confusion in the discussion with your correspondent “Charlie” in Mail for July 19, 2008. “Charlie” wrote:
    “Re Venezuela: they have a population of about 26 million, in an area roughly twice the size of California. According to the US Census bureau, California has a population of roughly 36 million people; so, very roughly, Venezuela has about 1/3rd the population density of California.”
    Your reply correctly identified Brazil as the country that has switched most of it’s automobile and truck transportation to ethanol fuel. “Charlie’s” numbers may be correct of Venezuela, but they are not the numbers for Brazil.The actual numbers for Brazil, from the CIA World Factbook:
    (https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/
    the-world-factbook/geos/br.html)
    gives Brazil’s population as about 192 million. The land area of Brazil is roughly equal to that of the USA. Their economy is about 2 trillion dollars, and their “motorization” rate is about 200 cars per thousand population. Their labor force is 99 million, or about half of the total population. Unemployment is about 9 per cent. The United States numbers respectively are about 14 Trillion dollars and 800 cars per thousand population. USA employment is roughly proportionally equal to that of Brazil, though with about half the rate of unemployment in the USA as compared to Brazil.
    Based on a population of 192 million. these numbers give Brazil about 40 million automobiles and trucks. America, population about 300 million, has about 240 million cars and trucks; six times as many as Brazil.
    Three-quarters of the fuel used by those Brazilian vehicles is ethanol, produced almost exclusively by fermentation of sugar produced in Brazil from Brazilian sugar cane.
    With a thriving domestic oil industry, Brazil is a net exporter of petroleum.
    So Brazil, with an economy about one-sixth of the USA. and also one-sixth the number of cars and trucks in the USA, runs those cars and trucks without imported oil. One-sixth as large of an economy for Brazil as the USA, and one-sixth as many cars as the USA. So it seems that if the USA scales up the Brazilian effort by a factor of six, and “Voila!” the USA is free of OPEC. No?
    No.
    You need a semi-tropical to tropical climate to grow sugar cane effectively. This rules out all but the southernmost states and Hawaii as candidates for sugar cane production.. Most USA cane is groan in Hawaii, Louisiana and Floria, about 3.7 million aces. Brazil uses about 35 million acres for cane production. To match their effort, you’d need about 220 million acres in cane. There’s probably not enough good land with proper climate for sugar cane in the USA.
    So we can use corn? You need to use twice as many acres in corn to get the same amount of ethanol as sugar cane gets you per acre.(You get about300 gallons of Ethanol per corn acre, about 600 gallons per acre of sugar cane.) So you’ll need twelve times the Brazilian acreage devoted to sugar cane production to equal their effort by using corn. That works out to about 440 million acres. Thats roughly 670,000 square miles. Imagine a million farms, each of 500 acres (that’s a fair piece of land for a family to farm), and each one covered with corn (leaving 60 or so acres for a house, outbuildings and roads). A million such farms, just for ethanol.
    By the way, growing corn is hard, dirty work, even with air-conditioned tractors and combines. My family did it for generations, and I have personal experience. It’s tough. If you own 500 acres of good corn land, you can sell it for about half a million dollars, move to town, buy a house for a hundred thousand, and retire. So you really need to make a good living or really love hot, hard and dirty work if you decide to grow corn.
    In Brazil they pay workers 200 dollars a month to harvest sugar cane by hand. Each worker must manually cut with a machete seven to eight TONS per workday to earn that 200 dollars.
    Try finding ANYone in the USA to do that sort of work at even ten times that pay. I would not grow corn for $2000.00 a month, much less harvest sugar cane.
    You can read about all this at:
    http://www.gronabilister.se/file.php?
    REF=39461a19e9eddfb385ea76b26
    521ea48&art=376&FILE_ID=20060511084611.pdf
    Also, before you harvest sugar cane by hand, you first burn the cane to soften the plants for cutting. This releases so much smoke and flying cinders that the workers must wear special wire mesh goggles to protect their eyes. I can imagine what OSHA and EPA would make of that practice.. The process at American cane plantations is likely mechanized and thus avoids all this, but of course THAT costs money and fuel.
    Oh, and when you burn the cane fields, you release Carbon Dioxide. A lot. How’s that gonna fly with the Greens?
    It gets worse. it was a military dictatorship in the seventies and eighties that decreed Brazil’s switch to ethanol from gasoline. That’s decree as in “Do this or you go to jail without trial, and ho Habeas Corpus.”
    Then again, increasingly, our Congress acts much like a junta, only with less efficiency and accountability. Who knows?
    Bottom line: Brazil is indeed a special case. In spades. The USA could throw out environmental regulations, worker safety, import cheap labor from countries to the south (well, at least we have that part of the infrastructure set up and “working”!) and then scale up what Brazil has done by a factor of six. I’s technically feasible. It’s not gonna happen.
    As you pointed out, given enough energy, we can do anything the laws of physics don’t forbid. Give me enough electricity, and I can make ethanol or anything else that is physically possible. It’s all just physics. (Do remember that Chemistry is a special case of Physics, and Biology in turn a special case of chemistry. EVERYthing is Physics.) This means nuclear power plants CAN indeed provide fuel for nonautomotive, trucks, ships and aircraft. With enough energy you can sling molecules of every variety into any combination possible.
    With enough “cheap” energy you can use “inefficient” reactions to produce fuel or anything else you need. Wealth is energy, energy is wealth,:they’re one and the same thing.
    Sorry to go on at such length about this, but you know how important all of this is, and clarity is vital to rational discussion.
    Petronius.
    ============================================
    Cheers.

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