Reply #128: Um, Johnny. The ethanol subsidy's size was listed by the EIA. [View All]

[NNadir]

I have told you - not that you can comprehend it - that energy is energy. I have explained many times that the world is moving to DME - which will outstrip ethanol in a matter of years by a factor of ten. Many times I have explained this conception here, often by direct reference to the scientific literature and not by "appeal to authority arguments."

Maybe they don't teach about "appeal to authority" arguments at the Corn Grower's Association, so I'll link - as I always must do to address the unyielding need of the anti-nuclear position to appeal to logical fallacy:

Here are some operative points on this type of poor argument that applies to arguments like "Professor Wang at Cornell says ethanol is really cool," or "That NRDC says nuclear power is really, really, really, really, really, really bad." From the files explaining weak thinking and weak argument I offer the following about the "Appeal Authority" placing in bold the parts that characterize almost every post that I bother to read of yours:

An appeal to authority may be inappropriate in a couple of ways:

It is unnecessary. If a question can be answered by observation or calculation, an argument from authority is not needed. Since arguments from authority are weaker than more direct evidence, go look or figure it out for yourself.

Now, Johnnyboy, I did some direct calculation in the last post. I often ask those who argue for instance, that so called "nuclear wastes" are "dangerous," to produce a case of a person injured or killed by the storage of spent fuel. They can't. This would constitute a case of direct observation.

Now, let's see how your claims stock up about the vast tragedy of the Yankee Rowe decommissioning, which you claim is a financial burden:

You write, citing a popular reference and not a site with any authority: " The figure continues to rise; the owner's latest guess is $375 million- ten times what it cost to build the plant. Other estimates go as high as $500 million."

Am I to take this as evidence that you, Johnnyboy, believe that a nuclear plant costs $37.5 million to build? This is direct calculation Johnnyboy. If this is your misapprehension, let me correct you. Or are you ignoring inflation here, Johnnyboy in a deliberate misrepresentation that assumes your readers are stupid? (Sorry, Johnnyboy we're not as fucking stupid as you think we are.) Most of the more than 200 nuclear power plants now under construction, on order or proposed will cost around $2 billion dollars.

Now, let's assume that your higher made up figure magically proves correct, that it costs $500 million to restore the Yankee Rowe site to a pristine state. If I show you a removed mountain stripped out for coal, will you have from any of your dubious sources a discussion of how much it would cost to replace the mountain to the state in which the strip miners found it? Or is this just another case of the pro-coal anti-nuclear lobby not giving a flying fuck about what coal does?

Let's directly calculate Johnnyboy. No authorites. Just you and me and data.

Here is the data on the operating history of Yankee Rowe:

During its 32-year operating history, the Yankee plant generated over 34 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity, and had a lifetime capacity factor of 74%.

The Yankee Rowe plant was permanently shut down in October, 1991. The decision was made to dismantle the plant when a low-level radioactive waste site was available and return the site to a green field condition, During late 1993 and early 1994, the four steam generators, the pressurizer, and reactor internals were removed and shipped to a low-level radioactive waste disposal facility in Barnwell, South Carolina. Decommissioning is expected to be completed by the end of 1997, although Yankee's 533 spent fuel assemblies will continue to be stored on-site until a national high-level waste storage facility or repository is built for commercial spent fuel from U.S. nuclear plants.

http://www.nukeworker.com/nuke_facilities/North_America/usa/NRC_Facilities/Region_1/yankee_rowe/

So, the plant produced 34 billion-kilowatt-hours over 34 years. That comes to less than 0.015 cents per kilowatt-hour to restore the plant to GREENFIELDS status.

Do you have an account of a strip mine ever being restored to Greenfields status at such a cost. Oh, I forgot, your moral position is "I don't give a fuck about coal," right Johnny boy?

Now I have already pointed out, in my previous post, that the NRDC does not consist of nuclear engineers, nor do you know any nuclear engineering, having demonstrated already poor calculational skills.

Another part of the "Appeal to Authority" logical fallacy:

The "authority" cited is not an expert on the issue, that is, the person who supplies the opinion is not an expert at all, or is one, but in an unrelated area. The now-classic example is the old television commercial which began: "I'm not a doctor, but I play one on TV...." The actor then proceeded to recommend a brand of medicine.

It is unfortunate that there is any environmentalist who fails to recognize the enormous environmental benefits of nuclear energy, but for some, sadly, the environmentalism consists of the repetition of certain elements of dogma, and not fact.

The authority is an expert, but is not disinterested. That is, the expert is biased towards one side of the issue, and his opinion is thereby untrustworthy.
For example, suppose that a medical scientist testifies that ambient cigarette smoke does not pose a hazard to the health of non-smokers exposed to it. Suppose, further, that it turns out that the scientist is an employee of a cigarette company. Clearly, the scientist has a powerful bias in favor of the position that he is taking which calls into question his objectivity.

http://www.fallacyfiles.org/authorit.html

The next time you appeal to authority, like "Dr. Wang" or whatever, or "NRDC" one would hope you would refer to the fallacy files, but then again, it is very likely you would have nothing to say then. Teaching you about rational argument is tantanmount to teaching a rabbit how to play the piano: Success is just not likely.

(I will note also that you have poor reading skills, having failed to apprehend the direct statement of the size of the ethanol subsidy from the EIA site, which was still more than 0.50 gallon. The EIA, of course, Johnnyboy is the government - the folks who subsidize the folks who pay out on behalf of the membership of the Corn Growers Association.)

The fact is, Johnny boy, that energy is energy. It is measured in joules. I don't know if they teach this at the Corn Grower's Association, but it's basic science, Johnny boy. You may wish to distract attention that as a source of energy your little highly subsidized project would need 408 billion dollars to match nuclear energy's energy output, but the matter is easily addressed by comparing how much it would cost to equal gasoline's output Johnny Boy, since you don't understand the basics of energy.

You say that ethanol is a motor fuel, though, and so let's explore that. Again, by direct calculation, you, me and EIA data. Let's pretend for a minute that you're not making numbers up (although I don't really believe that) and that the ethanol subisidy is now only $0.16/gallon, down from the $0.50+/gallon subsidy of the late 1990's:

Here is the barrels per day used for gasoline in the US in 2005:

http://tonto.eia.doe.gov/dnav/pet/pet_cons_psup_dc_nus_mbblpd_a.htm

The figure is 9,125 thousand barrels a day. There are 365.26 days in a sideral year, but we'll round down, because your skill with calculation is clearly limited. A barrel is 42 gallons. Multiplying 42 X 9,125,000 X 365, we see that the US burned 139 billion gallons of gasoline. "Only" 0.16/gallon you say? In order to supply just one year's worth of gasoline - something the Corn Grower's Association will never actually do, no matter how much money they rape us for - we see that $22 billion dollars per year is required. That mind you is just the subsidy not the cost of the ravaged landscape, the fertilizers and pesticides pouring into the rivers, creating oceanic dead zones, the land dried up and blown away.

I contend, and have provided lots of scientific references to support my claim, that DME can be made synthetically by hydrogenation of carbon dioxide. I note that many tens of thousands of PhD level nuclear engineers are working on the problem of the thermochemical production of hydrogen via nuclear energy, and there is every reason to expect they will solve it.

Here would be an example of a scientific reference that can be found on the internet for those willing to pay: http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/klu/catl/2001/00000072/F0020001/00301199

Here is another: http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/cgi-bin/abstract/76507118/ABSTRACT?CRETRY=1&SRETRY=0

You will avoid this and offer us more moonshine, Johnnyboy, but the fact is that the entire planet doesn't give a fuck what you and your friends think. The new nuclear plants are coming, and coming in vast numbers. The power of ignorance to stop them is over. It is probable that a lot of people may die from global climate change before they come on line - not that any of you coal boys give a rat's ass about that - but most rational people recognize that the nukes are the best shot we have.

The fact is that this nonsense about CAN and WILL is no different than the exact same bullshit I was hearing as a young man in the 1970's. You're full of rich fantasies, and bullshit. Here's some news for you: Jimmy Carter was promising big things from ethanol fuel. It didn't just start with the recent activities of the Corn Grower's Association. If you could deliver, you would have done so a long time ago. If it's so damn easy why is it always promises and never deliveries? Why has the production of renewable fuels declined in percentage terms in the last 14 years? Because you're as full of shit as people spouting the same crap thirty years ago were.

0.2 exajoules, that's all you've got for all this dancing, whining and crying. Here's a fucking bloodstained clue for you pal, the fucking global climate change crisis isn't going to happen after you've raped us for $30 billion a year in ethanol subsidies. It's happening NOW. Nuclear power has been around for 50 years. If nuclear energy received $30 billion a year in subsidies, it would have cost $1.5 trillion dollars, in subsidies alone.

Now, as it happens, I favor trillion dollar purchases of nuclear power plants, annually world wide, because nuclear power works. It's demonstrated on an exajoule scale. It exceeds all other non-greenhouse gas producing energy combined as shown in the energy chart, including all your pet bullshit forms about which you prattle so easily.

Instead of talking about nuclear energy - a subject about which you know precisely zero - why not produce ethanol, rather than talk about it? I'm sure we'd all love to hear about your results rather than your promises.