Similarly, the debate about corn-based ethanol isn't about the inherent virtue (or lack thereof) of biomass -- it's about making sure the fossil fuel inputs from fertilizer production and corn-milling are factored into the calculus.

Actually, I would say that the debate isn't about the inherent virtue (or lack thereof) of ethanol (rather than "biomass"), but about the environmental effects of expanding corn production, about the effects on food markets of diverting corn (or any other food crop) to biofuels, about the life-cycle emissions of the ethanol, and about the subsidies and mandates that prop up its production. Whether or not corn ethanol is a net energy winner or loser is -- or at least should be -- a relatively minor issue. Low-value energy is transformed into higher-value energy (with a loss in energy) all the time. It's what happens to crude oil.

Otherwise, I agree with the main thrust of your argument.

These are only my personal opinions.

I am not a transportation jock, and will defer to those who are on this issue.  But at core, this is a question of policy detail.  The most important first step is to make sure our policies neither incentivize inefficiency or discinentivize efficiency.  CAFE rules definitely pass that test.  GHG policy (if properly structured) do the same.  Which is more appropriate in any given sector is an important detail, but a detail nonetheless.

Small quibble, smaller cars are not a great example of a quality of life issue. Big cars, like big houses are for prestige, having nothing to do with physical comfort. There are a number of small sports cars that have high status as well. People can get their status needs met with a small car, and some day, with a small house.

An example of what you are talking about: triple gas mileage and even oil from coal sands is less environmentally destructive than what we use today.  

In the end, it all comes down to biodiversity. Poison Darts--Protecting the biodiversity of our world

I certainly agree that, of the three choices, the third, efficiency, should be our first and overwhelming focus in the short term, and that we can get a long way by examining policy to make sure it encourages efficiency (or stops encouraging inefficiency).

However! I think it's entirely possible to accept that position and still be categorically anti-coal. Efficiency does not trump all other values in all cases. For example, if I had to choose whether to spend $5 making coal more efficient or $5 accelerating the deployment of wind, I might choose the latter, even if the former produces more net GHG reduction in the short term. Why? Because there are intangibles involved, and long-term considerations. For me it is quite important to degrade the political power and influence of the coal lobby, to loosen the hold Big Coal has on the economic fortunes of poor Appalachians, and to hasten the day when coal fades from the picture entirely. These effects can't necessarily be quantified, but they are real and valuable, and in my mind they create a bias against coal that in some cases will outweigh a more catholic bias in favor of efficiency.

So yes, pro-efficiency, but not always, everywhere, at the expense of everything else.

grist.org

If you're building a spacecraft the expensive cell probably makes more sense, but for most applications it will be the less efficient cell.

The most accurate measuring rod is total cost per unit energy, with all externalities factored in, such as the cost to get into orbit and the cost of damage from emissions.


Things Everybody Should Know About Energy

Moreover, the inefficient use of any resource should be scorned, regardless of how pure and virginal that resource appears.  Low efficiency central solar panels are not as much of a dumb idea as low-efficiency central coal stations, but make no mistake: they are both dumb ideas.

And to be sure, I'm not suggesting efficiency at the expense of everything else.  I'm simply saying that (a) let's make sure we encourage it first and (b) let's be as precise with our rhetoric as we can.

But we should keep in mind that massive regulatory models that we currently live under provide implicit and explicit barriers even to what would otherwise be economically-rational capital allocation, solely by virtue of their efficiency.  A policy objective ought to therefore be to remove any regulatory disincentives to efficiency (like the way we regulate electric utilities, or the Clean Air Act) and only then ask ourselves whether we are satisfied with the subsequent rational allocation of capital.  Because until that happens, the allocation ain't rational.

Sean's comment about people driving smaller cars equating to a lower quality of life sure tells us a lot about his perspective, which is not an environmental one.  People should be driving NO cars, which would provide a higher quality of life for the rest of the planet, and for those humans who still have any sense left.

It show that even if you take the extremely optimistic federal studies at face value, changes in fuel economy cause far more dramatic changes.

http://greyfalcon.net/oilvsethanol2.png

-David Ahlport

...Even if those cars were replaced by horses?

Wolverine wrote: and for those humans who still have any sense left.
google.com/search?q=cars+horses+manure+disease

While the nineteenth century American city faced many forms of environmental pollution, none was as all encompassing as that produced by the horse. The most severe problem was that caused by horses defecating and urinating in the streets, but dead animals and noise pollution also produced serious annoyances and even health problems. The normal city horse produced between fifteen and thirty-five pounds of manure a day and about a quart of urine, usually distributed along the course of its route or deposited in the stable. While cities made sporadic attempts to keep the streets clean, the manure was everywhere, along the roadway, heaped in piles or next to stables, or ground up by the traffic and blown about by the wind. In 1818, in an attempt to control the manure nuisance, the New York City Council required that those who gathered and hauled manure, so-called "dirt carting," to be licensed, also restricting aliens to this type of carting activity. Thousands of loads of manure were gathered on special "manure-yards" to undergo a process of "rotting," and "gangs" of men were employed to overturn the manure and to expose it to weathering. In 1866, the Citizen's Association Report on the Sanitary Condition of the City observed that, "The stench arising from these accumulations of filth is intolerable."

Nineteenth century urbanites considered the stench or miasmas produced by the manure piles a serious health hazard, but cleaning was sporadic at best. Manure piles also produced huge numbers of flies, in reality a much more serious vector for infectious diseases such as typhoid fever than odors. By the turn of the century public health officials had largely accepted the bacterial theory of disease and had identified the "queen of the dung-heap" or fly, as a major source. Inventors and city officials devised improved methods of street cleaning and street sweeping became a major urban expense. Increasingly, however, it became obvious that the most effective way to eliminate the "typhoid fly" (so named by L.O. Howard, chief of the Bureau of Entomology of the Department of Agriculture and a leader in the campaign against flies), was to eliminate the horse.

The problems identified are those of overpopulation, which MUST be addressed in order to fix any significant environmental problems.  The question of which type of transportation is less environmentally destructive in a grossly overpopulated society is meaningless.  Additionally, none of the harms you identified are to wilderness or wildlife.  They are specifically harms to the environment and ecology of human cities.

Of course it's bad to bring too many of any species into an area, and humans are the best example of this by far, as are their factory farms to feed the fanatic meat eaters.  But that doesn't mean that there aren't other methods of transportation, starting with walking and including biking and public transit.  I happen to love horses.  My first horse was my best friend ever.  But horses don't belong in unnatural urban environments and I consider bringing them there to be cruelty.

Horses emit methane and consume grain, generally grown on farms.

Wolverine wrote: that doesn't mean that there aren't other methods of transportation [...] including [...] public transit.

What benefit could there be in replacing the automobile with public transit?

Wolverine wrote: horses don't belong in unnatural urban environments

Welcome to Manhattan.
blogs.villagevoice.com/runninscared/1339670160_f4ba4e3418.jpg

The overpopulation problem, while it may be (I think is) a major problem, is not the result of this evil conspiracy of the nefarious human population.  It's because people have this inconsiderate, but nonetheless understandable and I think eminently reasonable tendency to try and stay alive.  And to procreate.  In fact its the most natural thing about us.  We happen to be better at it than most other species, but I just don't get this extreme anger at the entire human race you put out.  Most people in this world go about their life and have 2 or 3 kids whom they want to love and raise to contribute to this world.  In aggregate this causes problems when you have billions, but who exactly can you fairly be so incensed at over this?

If you're not willing to check out I think you ought to be a bit more understanding of the rest of us that enjoy this life as well.  We're not actually all evil mindless drones in the matrix killing baby seals you know.

Why is it that people equate recognizing gross human overpopulation with blaming people for being born?  I don't blame people for being born, but I do blame them for having more than two kids.  There's a huge difference between being born and breeding.  The solution to overpopulation is not for those of us who recognize the problem to kill ourselves; for one thing, the percentage of us is far too small for that to have even a noticeable effect.  I think people who say that are just advocating the killing of those of us who have identified human overpopulation as the huge problem that it is.  The desire to do whatever you want, including having as many kids as you want, is nothing but selfishness, and the effects are environmentally and ecologically disastrous.

The reason for human overpopulation is clear.  People began overpopulating when they discovered agriculture.  Instead of wisely realizing that they should lower their birthrates to accommodate their newfound lower death rates, they continued to breed without limits.  The root cause of this is the human intellect running wild with no control by wisdom or any spiritual connection to the natural world.  This is a major defect in the human mind, and is likely fatal for most life as we know it.

As to how to solve the problem, it's not that hard.  Start with proper sex education at a young age in school that teaches birth control.  Teaching abstinence is fine, but it should only be one method, and all birth control methods should be taught.  Then, make birth control and abortion free and unrestricted everywhere and to everyone.  Finally, implement a strong carrot-and-stick one-child-family program, like the one that has been extremely successful in China.

Levity aside, am I missing some essential part of your logic?     Energy in the universe is finite.  Therefore any endeavor utilizing energy is unsustainable?  Hey- I'm for not wasting energy needlessly, but it requires superhuman efforts to forget that the numbers are so enormous and humankind's demand so infinitesimally small that the supply is effectively limitless.

Take this nonsense you wrote about solar- It is only one example.  Sure- the amount of solar radiation hitting the earth is finite.  But do you realize how mind numbingly huge that amount of energy is?  Well, it's 3,850 zettajoules per year.  To give you an idea of the enormity of this number, understand that the entire electrical generation of the earth in a year is about 6 one hundredths of a zettajoule.  Get the picture?  And we haven't even started to use any fraction of that number, and we won't for thousands of years even if we waste several orders of magnitude more energy than what we are wasting today.    

In some future epoch maybe we could make a dent in it, but even if we do, it would be premature to start up a cult of puritanical energy anal rententiveness.  We won't have to wait millenia to figure out how to erect mammoth solar energy collectors in space and send it home.  

So please, spare us the sanctimony that our opportunities for growth and expansion have somehow to come to an end, and that our American bias to always strive to expand the frontiers is somehow in need of exorcism.

I agree with your conclusion, but don't follow the logic of how you got to it.  It's stupid to waste any fuel - solar, wind, or coal, regardless of how much of it there is.  Proven coal reserves exceed proven oil reserves - but that doesn't mean that the logic for using coal responsibly is weaker than using oil responsibility.  Your numbers with solar (to the extent you are suggesting that they make it OK to be wasteful with solar) would merely be an extension of this logic.

So we don't disagree that we can grow and expand responsibly - indeed, if you read through the rest of my posts you'll find I make this point repeatedly, and specifically through efficiency.  It is well within the realm of possible futures that we could serve current energy needs with ~1/2 of our current primary energy fuel use, even before we start fuel switching.  But so long as we maintain regulatory barriers to energy efficiency, we won't capture that opportunity with all fuels.  Our future is not one that pits fossil-efficiency vs. solar.  It's much worse: it is one that pits fuel-agnostic efficiency vs. stupidity, with the former being the status quo of an electric and environmental regulatory paradigm that explicitly blocks energy efficiency.

A final point on solar - the amount of insolation is indeed huge, but is well in excess of practical limits - and I'm not simply talking about considerations of land & water, nor even of economically viable solar closer to the equator.  Solar seems as big as it is today in part because it is so trivial in the grid mix today.  If we started covering large swathes of real estate with solar panels, we would find competition arising from other competing uses of that real estate.  Ergo, we better make the most of every watt that hits the planet.  Just as we ought to make the most of every other natural resource we have.

Although I brought up solar as a favorite example, the untapped power resources of ocean and wind (including high altitude) also vastly dwarf our energy demand.  But to return to that particular energy source, I'd like to re-iterate that you are not grasping the magnitude of the power available.  You seem to have the notion that somehow US solar production would need to displace other uses anytime in the foreseeable future.  This is seriously mistaken:

"If we started covering large swathes of real estate with solar panels, we would find competition arising from other competing uses of that real estate."

What uses are you asserting would be displaced for the 250 million acres in Nevada and Arizona deserts now being used to heat sand?  Take a look at the Scientific American article I linked to if you have some doubts about these assertions.  Do the math.  Even if this small fraction of available wasteland were used by low efficiency thin film cells, we would have 40 times the entire electrical capacity of the US.  No Coal, No nukes, no gasoline for cars.  

Sure- there is ridiculous waste in construction today.  If insulation costs 20 cents per watt saved in heating costs, then it is wasteful to spend 50 cents per watt on thin film solar cells in the desert to generate the watt of power.  But what happens when these have been identified and the cost of conserving another watt of heating goes to 80 cents per watt?  

When the cost of conservation is higher than the cost of production, then conservation is more wasteful.   But if you want to beat the prohibitionist drum that it is ever "OK to waste energy", go right ahead.  Let me point out that this activity is in fact an indulgence in puritanical dogma, not sober thinking about energy policy.  

Allow me to pivot from this to make a final observation on the political consequences of this mistaken theme.  Jimmy Carter happens to be one of my heroes, but he erred when he allowed Reagan to take ownership of the theme of infinite American Horizons.  Carter was prescient that we were running up against some hard limits, but if like him we present that as the central message, then we run a campaign not against Reagan or whomever the republican is, but against fundamental American cultural themes such as Manifest Destiny and infinite horizons that are burned into the national psyche.  Ignoring the substantial force of these thmes at your extreme political peril.  If you want to swing the center, you can't fall into the trap Carter fell into.

And if that's the only debate we ever have, we're sunk.  My point is that there is a third option - enhancing the conversion of raw energy to useful stuff - that wins on both fronts, but is under-developed as a policy.  This isn't simply conservation, nor simply end-use efficiency.  It's the whole chain, from resource extraction through conversion.  (An example: the electric industry spends some $3 billion/year on end-use efficiency.  Nothing to sneeze at - but they spend $30 billion/year on fuel, and haven't done anything to increase the efficiency of their conversion, even as they support conservation by their customers.)  

Note also that if we frame in the traditional way, we do have the debate you allude to between traditional fuels and renewables and/or conservation.  But if we take the third framing - which is where all the biggest opportunities are - we get everyone on the same team - after all, everyone (except those who get paid per ton of raw fuel extracted) wins with higher conversion efficiency.

I don't think we fundamentally disagree though about goals or needs.  My point is simply that it's not productive to start a conversation about energy or environmental policy by focusing on fuel.  The first step has to be efficiency.

1. I'm not suggesting that there isn't a lot of energy available from the sun, nor do I dispute the Scientific American numbers.  My point is that any fuel path has externalities which only become evident once that fuel path reaches a certain level of scale.  The environmental consequences of petroleum were insignificant when the industry was limited to a hobby in western Pennsylvania.  Coal soot was seen simply as a price of progress before we started lowering the average altitude of Appalachia.  We've started to see this with wind, which has - in a relatively rapid time frame - gone from being something done by noble Dutchmen for years, which we should learn from into a more nuanced discussion about transmission access, coastal views and bat fatalities.  I'm not suggesting these consequences are on the same order as Nigerian oil riots of course, but simply pointing out that there is a political limit on any fuel path that only becomes relevant once it reaches a certain scale.  Solar as the luxury (and the curse) of being too small to matter right now.  But if you start a path of covering huge swathes of land with PV - and running the wires to connect them to the grid - you will run into those political limits long before you run into technical limits.  Therefore, anything we can do to minimize the footprint of solar per unit of useful, delivered electricity gives us more headroom going forward.

2. We should not lose sight of the fact that ultimately, we cannot drive fossil energy to zero - and therefore, the efficiency there is critical as well.  From steel to silicon to rubber, there are a host of industrial products that need carbon and/or the high temperatures innate to fossil fuel combustion.   Those manufacturing industries have a massive opportunity to lower their Btu use per unit of production which it behooves us to capture.