Los Angelos, Electric, Not Natural Gas

[Dean Hoffman]

An editorial pushing for an elimination of natural gas in California housing.

[invalid unparseable]

More political insanity. Gas heating is highly efficient. It will take more gas to generate the electricity for heat then if the gas were used to heat directly.

[Scott Lurndal]

The point is to not use gas at all, but rather use renewable energy sources or other clean sources like nuclear.

Fundamentally, one should start migrating away from future scarce resources _before_ they become scarce to avoid the "energy trap".

Warning, the above link assumes one is scientifically literate.

Leaving aside the geographical constraints that subject the Los Angeles basin to frequent weather conditions that, in conjunction with the use of fossil fuels, result in seriously bad air quality.

[trader_4]

So how many nuclear plants has California built in the last 20 years? Last five years? How many will be coming on line in the next 5 years? Meanwhile those morons in Germany are shuttering their nukes and buying natural gas from Putin to replace it.

[Cindy Hamilton]

That's hardly news. The evils of natural gas have been all over the media for some time. Ann Arbor, MI, is talking about pushing for 100% electric in every building in town.

[Ed Pawlowski]

Meantime, what is being done to replace it? Answer: Not enough

Natural gas is being burned off in oil fields to get to the oil. Better to utilize it than burn it off and pollute with no gain.

I live in a hurricane area. If electric goes out I can still light the burners and cook food. I like my gas range.

Yes, eventually we will run out of oil and gas but have a real plan.

[Scott Lurndal]

None, unfortunately. One can hope that the various private entities currently designing and building portable self-contained small and safe reactors make progress in their development efforts.

Closing San Onofre was a mistake, with SCE et. al. unwilling to pay to fix their own errors that led to the shutdown.

I hope they keep Diablo canyon open for years yet.

The geological instability (earthquakes) of much of coastal california does play a role here as well.

All that said, the state does produce a large amount of renewable electricity, particularly during the daylight hours. Including the

10Kw (less usage) that I contribute to the grid - enough that I generated more than I used last year. It's slow, but California is really trying to get off fossil fuels, and for the most part, the residents of the state support the efforts.

[Scott Lurndal]

Indeed. Nobody wants scarcity or deprivation, even it if is only percieved, and not actual. The planning horizon is four years, not fifty.

Better to just leave it in the ground, or use it to create precursor chemical feedstocks (the carbon black in your tires comes from CH4, for example, as do many chemicals used to make pharmacuticals to fertilizer).

Note that if it were cost effective for the extraction companies to capture and sell CH4 instead of flaring it, they would.

My solar panels in conjunction with a whole-house battery allow me to cook food and read at night when the distribution lines are down.

I'm not sure what you're trying to say here. As the link above points out, you can't wait until you run out - that's far too late to avoid massive disruptions.

I read somewhere the other day a prediction that 2.8 billion more world citizens will enter the middle class in the next decade (I'm sceptical of the magnitude of that number, myself) - consider what effect that will have on the price of energy given the much large per-capita consumption as those folks enter the middle class and the four decade long decline in US production[*][**]).

[*] ANWAR is not a solution, just a very short-term bandaid, even if it lives up to the most optimistic reserve estimates. [**] Yes, the fracking boom has temporarily reversed the production curve in the US over the last decade, but that's just a delaying tactic and another short-term bandaid. The US production curve peaked in 1970 (9.64 mmb/d) and did not exceed that until 2018 (10.99 mmb/d); curves on individual wells in the bakken show rather rapid declines with an year or two.

[invalid unparseable]

About half my neighbors have gas but the power company cut off new customers when my house was built. Now in neighboring large development built after me, they are putting it in. Sensible thing to do when it is so available in nearby PA.

[Anton Chigurh]

It's the same idiocy as the push for all electric cars.

Where do those nitwits propose to get all the extra electricity that will be needed?

From the Energizer Fairy maybe?

[Ed Pawlowski]

You have to look long term. Where will ICE cars get gas when oil runs out? I've seen estimates from 40 to 100 years, but it is finite.

It will take time but solar and wind have the potential to give us all the power we need.

We have to figure out how to harness it and that will take time. You seem very shortsighted in that respect.

Solar energy is the most abundant energy resource on earth -- 173,000 terawatts of solar energy strikes the Earth continuously. That's more than 10,000 times the world's total energy use

[invalid unparseable]

Correct and the main problem is governments monkeying with the process thinking they can push it buy legislating it.

[invalid unparseable]

No.

We have been trying for more than a century now with wind and have only really used it much for pumping small amounts of water.

You

Pity it is so intermittent with no real way of storing it. Pity wind pollutes the environment so grossly and is even worse variability wise.

[Marilyn Manson]

Pity that you don't seem to comprehend that people have talked the same way since the dawn of man.

?While theoretically and technically television may be feasible, commercially and financially, I consider it an impossibility, a development of which we need waste little time dreaming" - Lee De Forest, inventor of the vacuum tube.

?Flight by machines heavier than air is impractical and insignificant, if not utterly impossible,? - Simon Newcomb, physicist and Director of the US Naval Observatory.

?Everyone acquainted with the subject (Edison?s light bulb) will recognize it as a conspicuous failure.? - Henry Morton, president of the Stevens Institute of Technology.

?It would appear that we have reached the limits of what it is possible to achieve with computer technology." - John von Neumann, physicist and computer scientist in 1949. On the other hand, he had enough foresight to add: ?Although one should be careful with such statements, as they tend to sound pretty silly in five years.?

I prefer to listen to people like French statesman Chretien Malesherbes... ?We would accomplish many more things if we did not think of them as impossible.?

...Nelson Mandela: "It always seem impossible until it is done."

[invalid unparseable]

Because it has always been true.

Try farting your way to the moon.

And some things like everyone using flying cars never did happen.

We never did work out how to teletransport or move faster than the speed of light either.

Or live forever either.

[T]

Oh wow, what narrow minded thinking.

Heating with electricity required a conversion from natural gas, coal or some such. This conversion has a loss associated with it.

The First Law of Thermodynamics states that energy can be converted from one form to another with the interaction of heat, work and internal energy, but it cannot be created nor destroyed, under any circumstances.

Those familiar with Nuclear energy will find the flaw in the above, but for conventional fuels, it is spot on. An extra power conversion will causing more actual, real pollution.

You see this with the push to electric vehicles (EV's), A.K.A. rolling firebombs. When running, they are pretty close to pollution free (they do create a little ozone). But the narrow minded do not account for where the electricity comes from.

And don't get me started on the pollution and environmental damage creating and disposing of the batteries causes.

The better name for EV's would be:

"Coal powered rolling firebombs"

Same goes with heating your house with electricity instead of gas: "Coal powered heaters".

This is about touchy-feely. One should also look those that stand to gain off the silliness. Any money change hands with the government?

Same with Solar and Wind. Currently nowhere near able to provide for needs. NOT THE MENTION, that they take a LONG TIME to pay back for the conventional power needed to create them. Also they break a lot, lose their efficiency over time and need to be changed, using more conventional fuels to replace. And the pollution in their creations. Does not mean we should not keep developing. Mean we need to be realistic about it.

Gee wiz, I'd love a hydrogen powered car. I can't find or afford the fuel. Pollution free too !!! Should you all be forced under threat of loss of freedom and property to subsidize my car and my fuel because running them is pollution free?

(We won't talk about the carbon monoxide and other pollutants caused by creating my fuel either. Not touch-feely enough. Besides we are trying to talk you into paying for my rich guy car here.)

Here is an idea!!! Let these technologies stand on their own and the government BUTT OUT! No making poor people subsidize rich people's toys. NO WAXING ANYONE'S PALMS!!!! Build a better mouse trap and people will come.

This stupidity has to stop. We need to start following the money.

-T

[T]

Store it as hydrogen. Unfortunately, there is still a bunch of development to make that happen economically.

Hmmm. A solar and find farm creating hydrogen for a refueling station for hydrogen powered cars. Is being done in some places for hydrogen powered trucks.

Now to figure out a way to get all of you guys to pay for my hydrogen powered car. T *MUST* has a free pollution free hydrogen powered car at our expense! It is pollution free!

And your will really free good about your self for helping the environment! DO IT FOR THE CHILDREN!

[T]

Saying out here in Nevada:

If you turn the country on its side, all the nuts, fruits, and flakes will roll to California.

[invalid unparseable]

And with nukes that doesnt matter. And true in spades with 'renewables'

And quite a bit of pollution from the tires wearing.

Only for flagrantly dishonest fools like you.

No, just less than other ICEs.

Completly off with the fairies, as always.

[invalid unparseable]

No he didn't, I did.

Grossly inefficient with an already very inefficient system.

It won't ever be economic compared with nukes.

Not even remotely economically viable.

Makes a lot more sense to generate the hydrogen using nukes and not via electricity either.

No it isn't, just not as bad as a gasoline fueled ICE.