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A Reality-Based Rant on Energy Efficiency and Greening

INTRODUCTORY NOTE:

Science doesn't care WHAT YOU BELIEVE or WHAT YOU FEEL.

There is virtually no disagreement that it is a worthwhile goal to improve the relativly poor (30%-ish) thermal efficiency of the contemporary spark-ignition Internal Combustion engine that powers the vast majority of vehicles on this planet, and further, to seek more efficient powerplants and "renewable" energy sources such as jet fuel produced from bacterial activity.

The emerging PC emphasis on "green" racing provides an excellent opportunity to develop new ways to increase the thermal efficiency of piston engines. One such system (currently used in Formula-1 racing) is the use of a second turbine in the exhaust stream (downstream of the turbocharger) to extract otherwise wasted thermal energy from the exhaust stream and store that energy in a number of different ways, including a KERS-like flywheel, or, as in Internal Combustion-electric hybrid vehicles, to run a generator which charges the battery system.

Those systems have enabled the F-1 engine developers to achieve over 50% real thermal efficiency, a phenomenal accomplishment, given the thermodynamics of the IC process.

That type of recapture system increases the overall thermal efficiency of the powerplant in a REAL sense, as opposed to the imbecilic notions that:

1. Electric cars which recharge by plugging into wall sockets somehow get their energy for free, and
2. That the wall-socket-recharging process is somehow "GREEN", despite the fact that almost ALL the electricity in the US is generated by the combustion of fossil fuels, and nearly 50% of that amount comes from burning COAL, and
3. That the overall recharging-from-wall-socket process is an efficient use of energy.

The self-proclaimed "scientists" who promote such nonsense conveniently overlook the combined effect of the following serial inefficiencies:

1. The thermal inefficiencies of burning fossil fuels to drive the generators,
2. The thermal and mechanical inefficiencies of the turbines that drive the generators,
3. The electrical and mechanical inefficiencies of the generators themselves,
4. The step-up and step-down transformer-conversion losses,
5. The transmission losses from the source (generator) to the destinations (wall sockets),
6. Battery recharging losses,
7. Battery discharge losses to drive the vehicle motors,
8. The losses from converting electrical energy into kinetic energy through the vehicle motor-and-transmission systems.

And then there is the huge environmental (and financial) impacts of MINING the megatons of lithium and other toxic materials for the BATTERIES that make these these EV's possible, and then the environmental and financial impacts of DISPOSING of all those toxic materials when the batteries die.

These heavy-thinkers also conveniently overlook the fact that that a huge percentage of available electric energy in the developed world comes from the combustion of hydrocarbon and coal-based fuels, producing huge amounts of the carbon dioxide with which they are so obsessed.

AND IF, in fact, there was a wholesale transition to electric cars, the existing electric supply system would collapse. The supply system would be completely incapable of serving that drastic increase in demand, and therefore would produce widespread blackouts and brownouts (already being experienced in various science-and-reality-challenged areas such as California).

ALSO, by the way, carbon dioxide has been known by educated, rational scientists to be a gas that is essential to life. Humans (and animals) inhale oxygen and exhale CO2. Plants, through the process of photosyntheses, absorb CO2 and return oxygen to the atmosphere. That natural cycle between humans / animals and plant life is what allows us both to survive. 

Now, however, in classical, mindless "progressive" doublespeak, CO2 has been reclassified as a "pollutant", thereby enabling the EPA bureaucracy to regulate everything from automobiles to gas stoves, washing machines, lawn mowers, air conditioning and just about every appliance you touch. These same progressives conveniently ignore the well-established scientific fact that the MAJOR greenhouse gas is......ready?.......WATER VAPOR, and that the greenhouse effect of water vapor dwarfs the miniscule effect of CO2.

In point of fact, it should be noted that there is zero substantiated proof of a causational relationship between carbon emissions and global warming. All the claimed "scientific evidence" is based on correlation, assumption, and fatally-flawed "climate models" that cannot accurately predict short term weather, never mind climate. There is also no proof whatsoever that "man-made climate change" has any effect on global weather patterns and "bad weather."

Beyond the lack of relationship between CO2 levels and temperature levels in the past, global temperatures rose and fell for hundreds of millions of years without any human influence. The Earth has been, in the past, FAR warmer than today, all without any input from oil based energy and human activity.

And today, CO2 levels are actually far lower than they have been for the majority of the Earth's history.

Taking the lunacy another step forward, many of the PC-Save-the-Planet types are working to destroy one of the absolute-greenest, most-efficient sources of elecricity ever devised --- hydroelectric. They actively block approval of any new hydroelectric dam construction, and are working diligently to have several of the currently-active and highly cost effective dams torn down.

And regardless of the advances made in nuclear energy and waste storage (as well as progress in the development of a reactor that can run on radioactive WASTE), these self-appointed-but-massively-ignorant-"authorities" continue to block nuclear energy, which IMHO (and as mentioned in a recorded statement by the founder of the Sierra Club), is the real source of the world's future energy needs.

In fact, the German government has been diligently decommissioning and dismantling their nuclear powerplants, with the complete decommissioning targeted for completion in 2022. It will be very interesting to see how many Germans freeze to death in the following winters.

So, while these "thinkers" are aggressively promoting the switch to electrical vehicles (cars, trucks, airplanes) they are at the same time working to eliminate all the efficient and productive means of producing electrical energy.

These are the same kneejerk self-anointed cognoscenti (St. Greta of Thunberg, et al) who are in favor of absurd alternative sources that provide part time power at random times during a day, which at best satisfy only a small fraction of the nearly-constant demand. Such random sources include windmills and solar farms, which, BTW, are economically unjustifiable, therefore require massive government subsidies.

While on the subject of "greenery", it is interesting to note that, in addition to blatant and wholesale manipulation of the basis-data with which they support the religion of "Anthropogenic Global Warming", coupled with widespread demonizing and extortion (both financial and professional) of "non-conforming" scientists, the worshippers at the altar of AGW have apparently missed the basic scientific fact that complete combustion of ANY hydrocarbon (Yes, Saint-Greta, Ethanol, C2-H5-OH, is a hydrocarbon) produces carbon dioxide and water.

And yet, ethanol has been decreed to be enviro-friendly, thereby justifying immense subsidies from the government-delusionals to enable the production of ethanol from corn. Those subsidies persist, in the face of undeniable evidence that the net energy balance of corn-sourced ethanol is a BIG NEGATIVE.

It is mathematically demonstrable that the net energy extracted from ethanol by an IC engine is substantially LESS than the sum of the energy required to:

1. plant, cultivate, fertilize, and harvest the corn (farm vehicles)
2. Transport the harvested corn to the conversion site (road vehicles)
3. Convert the corn into ethanol (large amounts of heat energy - detailed HERE), and
4. Transport the ethanol to the fuel blending site (rail and road vehicles).

Further, there is also no mention of the huge economic impact on the nation's food supply from the diversion of corn crops into ethanol production. And corn-ethanol promoters conveniently ignore the huge impact that the production of ethanol from corn is having on the entire water table in the nation's midwest, a major source of our food.

If the government-braintrust was actually SERIOUS about effectively using ethanol to be an efficient biofuel, they would abandon corn-sourced ethanol and allow / encourage the production of ethanol from sugar cane, a policy being followed in Brazil with great effectiveness, but outlawed in the US because of massive political corruption and massive bribery by the sugar industry.

If you are TRULY interested in factual material about this left-wing-manufactured "climate crisis", take a look at some real science such as is clearly presented and thoroughly documented and referenced in Gregory Wrightstone's book INCONVENIENT FACTS.

For further informative, logical, scientific reading, I recommend CLIMATE CHANGE - THE FACTS by Alan Moran, and UNSTOPPABLE GLOBAL WARMING by Fred Singer and Dennis Avery.

 

ADDITIONAL TECHNICAL ARTICLES

The following is an excerpt from an article by JIM RICKARDS (attorney, investment banker, prolific author on finance and precious metals, and consultant to The Pentagon, DOD, and other agencies).

Why EVs Will Never Take Off in The U.S.

There has been a flood of articles recently pointing out the scam of electric vehicles, windmills, and solar modules as solutions to the so-called climate alarm and CO2 panic gripping the world.

There are specific, technical answers to most of the hysterical claims of climate scammers. .......The best answer of all is that there is no problem to begin with.

The whole climate alarm industry is a lie, starting with flawed models, rigged data, and hysterical repetition of the same baseless claims that have been floating around for twenty years. Climate change is real and has been for hundreds of millions of years based on evidence from ice cores and other hard data. Ice Ages have been followed by shorter warming periods. Even within the warming periods, some periods are cooler (such as the Little Ice Age from about 1350 to 1850 AD).

These changes are caused by solar cycles, volcanoes, ocean currents including subduction where warm flows are pulled under colder surface water to produce rapid cooling in certain regions. None of this has anything to do with CO2, which is a trace gas with little or no effect on the climate. 

None of this is man-made, although humans have shown great adaptability during past periods of climate change, such as the end of the last Ice Age about 10,000 years ago. After the last Ice Age, sea levels rose 400 feet. Today, the alarmists faint that sea levels are rising about 7 inches every 100 years (and have been since before the invention of automobiles).

If there’s no real man-made climate problem, why the hysteria about internal combustion engines and the need to push electric vehicles (EVs)?

It seems that EVs also get government subsidies on fuel emission standards that cost taxpayers $27,881 per vehicle. The rise of EVs is causing electricity prices to rise because of all the charging stations. That puts another $11,833 per vehicle over 10 years of costs on the taxpayer’s back.

What’s worse is that EVs don’t even reduce emissions. Since EVs are charged with electricity, which comes from coal and natural gas fired plants, total CO2 emissions actually go up. That’s not to mention the amount of electricity and water that are needed to mine the lithium, cobalt, nickel, copper, and other rare earths that are needed to build the car batteries.

Then after the batteries are used up (after about eight years), those poisonous chemicals have to be disposed of, and no one has worked out a practical disposal plan.

Few know that the first electric vehicle was invented in the 1830s. Practical models were first produced in the 1880s and 1890s. The period of 1900 to 1910 was the golden age of electric vehicles in the U.S.

Why did it not last? Why did the electric vehicle die out? The answers then are the same as today – lack of battery chargers, limited range, and high price. The best path for EVs today is the same one the industry took in 1910: eliminate subsidies, shut down the industry, and go to improved internal combustion engines.

Unfortunately, we should not expect that to happen soon. It will take ten years or more to shut down the scammers, grifters, and con men behind the EV industry.

AND ONE MORE THING:

HERE IS A VIDEO that clearly illustrates the stupidity and hypocrisy of the advocates of doing away with fossil fuel-based energy - and products - while yammering on their heavily-petroleum-dependent cellphones.

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The following is an edited reprint of a 2022 article by Denet Lewis, an innovator, developer of new technologies, and the person upon whose life the movie "Race to the Sun" was based.

The Embedded Cost of "GREEN"

What is a battery? I think Tesla said it best when they called it an Energy Storage System. That's important!

Batteries do not make electricity – they store electricity that has been produced elsewhere, primarily by coal, uranium, natural gas-powered plants, or diesel-fueled generators. So, to say an EV is a zero-emission vehicle is not at all valid....in fact, it's idiotic.

Also, since more than twenty percent of the electricity currently generated in the U.S. is from coal-fired plants, it follows that twenty percent of the EVs on the road are coal-powered, right? AND since forty percent of the electricity generated in the U.S. is generated from Natural Gas, it also follows that forty percent of the EVs on the road are natural gas-powered, right?

It is well known that it takes the same amount of energy to move a five-thousand-pound gasoline-driven automobile a mile as it does an electric one. The only question again is what produces the power? To reiterate, it does not come from the battery; the battery is only the storage device, like a gas tank in a car.

There are two orders of batteries, rechargeable, and single-use. The most common single-use batteries are A, AA, AAA, C, D, 9V, and lantern types. Those dry-cell species use zinc, manganese, lithium, silver oxide, or zinc and carbon to store electricity chemically. Please note they all contain toxic, heavy metals.

Rechargeable batteries only differ in their internal materials, usually lithium-ion, nickel-metal oxide, and nickel-cadmium. The United States uses three billion of these battery types a year, and most are not recycled; they end up in landfills. California is the only state which requires all batteries be recycled.

If you throw your small, used batteries in the trash, here is what happens to them.

All batteries are self-discharging. That means even when not in use, they leak tiny amounts of energy. You have likely ruined a flashlight or two from an old, ruptured battery. When a battery runs down and can no longer power a toy or light, you think of it as dead; well, it is not. It continues to leak small amounts of electricity. As the chemicals inside it run out, pressure builds inside the battery's metal casing, and eventually, it cracks. The metals left inside then ooze out. The ooze in your ruined flashlight is toxic, and so is the ooze that will inevitably leak from every battery in a landfill. All batteries eventually rupture; it just takes rechargeable batteries longer to end up in the landfill.

In addition to dry cell batteries, there are also wet cell ones used in automobiles, boats, and motorcycles. The good thing about those is, ninety percent of them are recycled. Unfortunately, we do not yet know how to recycle single-use ones properly.

But that is not half of it. For those of you excited about electric cars and a green revolution, I want you to take a closer look at batteries and also windmills and solar panels. These three technologies share what we call environmentally destructive embedded costs.

Everything manufactured has two costs associated with it, (a) embedded costs and (b) operating costs. I will explain embedded costs using a can of baked beans as my subject.

In this scenario, baked beans are on sale, so you jump in your car and head for the grocery store. Sure enough, there they are on the shelf for $1.75 a can. As you head to the checkout, you begin to think about the embedded costs in the can of beans.

The first cost is the diesel fuel the farmer used to plow the field, till the ground, harvest the beans, and transport them to the food processor. Not only is his diesel fuel an embedded cost, so are the costs to build the tractors, combines, and trucks. In addition, the farmer might use a nitrogen fertilizer made from natural gas.

Next is the energy costs of cooking the beans, heating the building, transporting the workers, and paying for the vast amounts of electricity used to run the plant. The steel can holding the beans is also an embedded cost. Making the steel can requires mining taconite, shipping it by boat, extracting the iron, placing it in a coal-fired blast furnace, and adding carbon. Then it's back on another truck to take the beans to the grocery store. Finally, add in the cost of the gasoline for your car that took you to the grocery store.

A typical EV battery weighs about a thousand pounds, about the size of a travel trunk. It contains twenty-five pounds of lithium, sixty pounds of nickel, 44 pounds of manganese, 30 pounds cobalt, 200 pounds of copper, and 400 pounds of aluminum, steel, and plastic. Inside are over 6,000 individual lithium-ion cells.

It should concern you that all those toxic components come from mining. For instance, to manufacture each EV auto battery, you must process 25,000 pounds of brine for the lithium, 30,000 pounds of ore for the cobalt, 5,000 pounds of ore for the nickel, and 25,000 pounds of ore for copper. All told, you dig up 500,000 pounds of the earth's crust for just one battery.

Sixty-eight percent of the world's cobalt, a significant part of a battery, comes from the Congo. Their mines have no pollution controls, and they employ children who die from handling this toxic material.

Should we factor in these diseased kids as part of the cost of driving an electric car?

I'd like to leave you with these thoughts. California is building the largest battery in the world near San Francisco, and they intend to power it from solar panels and windmills. They claim this is the ultimate in being 'green,' but it is not! This construction project is creating an environmental disaster. Let me tell you why.

The main problem with solar arrays is the chemicals needed to process silicate into the silicon used in the panels. To make pure enough silicon requires processing it with hydrochloric acid, sulfuric acid, nitric acid, hydrogen fluoride, trichloroethane, and acetone. In addition, they also need gallium-arsenide, copper-indium-gallium-diselenide, and cadmium-telluride, all of which are highly toxic.

Silicon dust is a hazard to the workers, and the panels cannot be recycled.

Windmills are the ultimate in embedded costs and environmental destruction. Each weighs about 1690 tons (the equivalent of 23 houses) and contains 1300 tons of concrete, 295 tons of steel, 48 tons of iron, 24 tons of fiberglass, and the hard to extract rare earths neodymium, praseodymium, and dysprosium. Each blade weighs 81,000 pounds and will last 15 to 20 years, at which time it must be replaced. Each windmill requires many gallons of oil for lubrication that may need replacing from time to time. We cannot recycle used blades. Sadly, both solar arrays and windmills kill birds, bats, sea life, and migratory insects.

There may be a place for these technologies, but you must look beyond the myth of zero emissions. I predict EVs and windmills will be abandoned once the embedded environmental costs of making and replacing them become apparent. "Going Green" may sound like the Utopian ideal and are easily espoused, catchy buzzwords, but when you look at the hidden and embedded costs realistically with an open mind, you can see that "Going Green" is more destructive to the Earth's environment than meets the eye, for sure.

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The following is a 2022 article by Ronald Stein, an engineer who, drawing upon 25 years of project management and business development experience, launched PTS Advance in 1995. He is an author, engineer, and energy expert who writes frequently on issues of energy and economics.

 

Time For Transparency On The Embedded Costs of "GOING GREEN".

The worldwide movement toward the electrification of everything, from intermittent electricity by industrial wind and solar farms, to more electric vehicles, the political actions are supportive of jumping onto the green train, most-likely not knowing there is a darker side of green technology, associated with environmental degradation, humanity atrocities, and other embedded costs for materials.

A recent report by the International Energy Agency (IEA) notes: “A typical electric car requires six times the mineral inputs of a conventional car and an onshore wind plant requires nine times more mineral resources than a gas-fired plant”.

• Nickel: A major component of the EV batteries, is found just below the topsoil in the Rainforests of Indonesia and the Philippines. As a result, the nickel is extracted using horizontal surface mining that results in extensive environmental degradation: deforestation and removal of the top layer of soil.

• Lithium: Over half of the world’s Lithium reserves are found in three South American countries that border the Andes Mountains: Chile, Argentina and Bolivia. These countries are collectively known as the “Lithium Triangle”.

• Cobalt: The Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) produces 70% of the world’s Cobalt. While there is no shortage of environmental issues with its Cobalt mining, the overriding problem here is human rights: dangerous working conditions and the use of child labor. Cobalt is a toxic metal. Prolonged exposure and inhalation of Cobalt dust can lead to health issues of the eyes, skin, and lungs.

• Copper: Chile is the leading producer of the world’s Copper. Most of the Chile’s Copper comes from open pit/strip mines. This type of mining negatively affects vegetation, topsoil, wildlife habitats, and groundwater. The next three largest producers of copper are Peru, China, and the infamous Democratic Republic of the Congo.

For the last few decades, policy has been dominated by ideological pipe dreamers that the world can survive and prosper with intermittent and unreliable electricity generated from breezes and sunshine, and to-date they have succeeded in wrecking livelihoods inflicting shortages, inflation, and undermining national security. It’s time to look again at fracking, at nuclear, and focus on conservations, improving efficiencies, and adaptation. It’s time to get serious about climate and electricity.

The non-existing transparency of human rights abuses and environmental degradation occurring in developing countries with yellow, brown, and black skinned people are obscured from most of the world’s population. Both human rights abuses and environmental degradation are directly connected to the mining for the exotic minerals and metals that are required to manufacture wind turbines, solar panels, and EV batteries.

An electric vehicle battery does not “make” electricity – it only stores electricity produced elsewhere, primarily by coal, uranium, natural gas-powered plants, and occasionally by intermittent breezes and sunshine.

So, to say an EV is a zero-emission vehicle is not at all valid as 80 percent of the electricity generated to charge the batteries is from coal, natural gas, and nuclear.

1. Since twenty percent of the electricity generated in the U.S is from coal-fired plants, it follows that twenty percent of the EVs on the road are coal-powered.

2. Since forty percent of the electricity generated in the U.S is from natural gas, it follows that forty percent of the EVs on the road are natural gas-powered.

3. Since twenty percent of the electricity generated in the U.S is from nuclear, it follows that twenty percent of the EVs on the road are nuclear-powered.

For a pleasant and educational Fireside Chat on Energy Literacy between Ronald Stein and avid Environmentalist Nancy Pearlman, check out Nancy’s Environmental Directions 30-minute YouTube interview “ED 2298 Ronald Stein Clean Energy Exploitations” for discussions are about the messages in the Pulitzer Prize nominated book “Clean Energy Exploitations – Helping Citizens Understand the Environmental and Humanity Abuses That Support Clean Energy“.

To make the embedded costs of going “green” transparent to the world, the book highlights how Asians and Africans, many of them children from the poorer and less healthy countries, are being enslaved and are dying in mines and factories to obtain the exotic minerals and metals required for the green energy technologies for the construction of EV batteries, solar panels, wind turbines, and utility-scale storage batteries.

America could promote sustainable mining in those developing countries to restoring the land to a healthy ecosystem after the mine closes and by leaving surrounding communities with more wealth, education, health care, and infrastructure that they had before the mine went into production. Like the mining in America, the mining in developing countries must be the objective of corporate social responsibilities and the outcome of the successful ecological restoration of landscapes.

America’s obsession for green electricity to reduce emissions must be ethical and should not thrive off human rights and environmental abuses in the foreign countries providing the exotic minerals and metals to support America’s green passion.

And before we get rid of crude oil, the greenies need to identify the replacement or clone for crude oil, to keep today’s societies and economies running with the more than 6,000 products now made with manufactured derivatives from crude oil, along with the fuels to move the heavy-weight and long-range needs of more than 50,000 jets and more than 50,000 merchant ships, and the military and space programs.