http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/18/nyregion/18windmills.html

For example when it comes to energy we have to remember it neither created nor destroyed, in other words it has to come from somewhere. People get confused when they say well electric cars will help us or hydrogen cars will help us. The problem is that to generate the electricity to charge the battery or separate the hydrogen must come from somewhere, usually from burning coal, natural gas, nuclear, or renewables.

We can use the three modes of thinking in regards to ethanol. The scientist says its possible, the engineer says well exactly how much energy density does it have, how much energy does it require to make one gallon of ethanol, how much land does it require, is it scalable? The engineer might even ask the scientist to develop more efficient ways of producing ethanol. The economist says well how much does it cost, is it profitable? How will it effect the price of other products.

We can apply the three modes to renewables, the scientist says it is possible and here are several possibilities, the engineer says how much of each is requires to make a significant contribution to our energy needs. Is our electrical infrastructure able to handle significant increased demands?

Another problem is how are these renewables built? To build a windmill, solar panel, thin film, or the copper for electrical infrastructure requires fossil fuels. To mine the iron or copper requires diesel powered shovels, to transport it requires diesel powered locomotives, to refine it requires electricity from coal, natural gas, nuclear, or renewables. This is a paradox, to build non-carbon based energy sources requires the use of carbon based energy sources. We could use existing renewable installations but it would take much longer and would be more expensive to transfer over to renewables.

The rest of us got what you meant.

Statements such ‘his lawn’,'his car’, ‘his experience on public transportation’ and his experience with 80’s solar technology all points to a very narrow view point.

Americans use 800 million gallons of gas each year – that’s $3.2 billion worth at today’s prices – mowing their lawns, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

I was alluding to this when I was talking about moving away from traditional lawns. They also use huge amounts of water and the pollution factor is also an issue.
To make it clear Mr.Nelson, I was not talking about ‘your lawn’ or your methodologies in the maintenance of your garden per say. I was trying to make the point that by getting rid of them we would save a lot gas, pollute less promote more insects and birds and that this would be better for society. If people wanted to have lawns fine, but there is a movement to get away from this.
There was a time when every house had kitchen gardens and flower gardens. In recent history they were called victory gardens.

Lawns do use more energy than gardens, to dispute this is like belonging to the flat earth society.
I was not talking about your or my personal energy use, it was the broader meaning of energy as in petroleum based products. Such as herbicides, pesticides
and gasoline.

I should move to the burbs and drive everywhere while talking on my cellphone and surfing the net at the same time.

I should never take public transportation because I might catch a cold.

On Y2K I went out partying at Boston’s First Night and watched 2 fireworks displays. Other people cowered. We both lived to tell the tale but I had more fun.

Wow your such a stud! The Rambo for the 21 century!

Really? Where were your details when you were telling me I didn’t know what I was talking about on corn prices and cellulose based ethanol? Oh yea, THERE WEREN’T ANY, just a bunch of “economists say this” and “I think that.”

You’re what my wife calls a WFA (World’s Foremost Authority). That’s someone that believes that they know everything about everything and the rest of us have barely enough knowledge and intelligence to get through the day.

BTW, recall that this is a thread about energy consumption. I’m pretty sure that maintaining a lawn uses more energy than maintaining a garden, but since my wife does the garden I don’t pretend to be an expert on this.

BS. You called cellulose-based ethanol “an elaborate experiment” and “speculation.” Not my idea of confidence in innovation, so I’m not in agreement with you on this.

Besides, you don’t need to have confidence in innovation to believe in cellulose-based ethanol because it’s happeninng NOW.

By the way, have I told you lately that you’re WRONG on corn prices and cellulose-based ethanol?

There was a lot of other stuff flung around, but spin got in my eyes.

Sorry – I was confusing you with Michael. HE seems to have confidence in human ingenuity, and so do I. That’s at least 2 of us.

But anyway, what if your dire predictions are right? What are we supposed to do – just crawl into a hole and pull the dirt in behind us? Store up canned food and wait for civilization to collapse?

On Y2K I went out partying at Boston’s First Night and watched 2 fireworks displays. Other people cowered. We both lived to tell the tale but I had more fun.

What name calling are you referring to?
The only name-calling I see here is from you (e.g., “troll”).

I’m not disputing that we are approaching peak-oil, if indeed, we haven’t already reached it. But so far we seem to be doing just fine, and our oil use has actually declined in the last year according to yesterday’s WSJ.

I don’t know how old you are, but I’m in my 50’s and I’ve seen all sorts of dire predictions made by “experts” ranging from Paul Erlich’s population bomb to Y2K to “the Coming Depression” (in the 1980’s) and yet somehow life goes on. For someone who’s investing in ethanol-from-cellulose you seem to have very little confidence in human ingenuity.

Weeding and feeding is high maintenance compared to a lawn.

My vegetable garden is about 1800 ft^2 (30×60); my lawn is about 4000 ft^2 and I’m sure I spend 2 or 3 times as much time working in my garden as my lawn, so to suggest that lawns are higher maintenance than gardens makes no sense. Granted I don’t have a very good lawn because I don’t use chemicals and I only put enough work into it to maintain mimimal suburban standards so the neghbors don’t come around to complain (and don’t think that doesn’t happen in some places).

The rest of my property (about 38K ft^2) is forest – mainly red oak and some pine – which provides fuel for my wood-burning stove (plus exercise cutting it with a bow-saw).

“Mr. Nelson I have to say your constant argumentative stances on everyones comments are kind of annoying.”
You call it argumentative, but the fact is that detailed facts are the only way to understand complex technical issues such as energy consumption. The devil IS in the details, whether we are talking about using coal as an energy source, or the economics of public transit in sub-urban population-density areas.

If you think that public transit is a viable alternative to the car for most people you need to provide the data to support this claim, not just get upset with people who disagree with you. You are making your comments in a public forum and they are subject to public scrutiny so you have to accept the possibility that if your facts or logic are not very strong then this will be brought to your attention.

Furthermore you need to consider that empirical experience carries legitimate weight. I used to live in Boston and I didn’t even own a car – I used the MBTA exclusively. Now I live in Chelmsford, on Rt 495 and travel mostly by car so I have a direct basis of comparison, and frankly it’s like night and day. The MBTA is very unpleasant for all the reasons I already mentioned. Recently I tried to go to the Fort Point Festival on the Red line from Alewife. Not only was one floor of Alewife CLOSED but when we reached the train platform we were informed that part of the Red Line was closed and they were trying to set up a shuttle-bus alternative! We never made it to the festival!

If proponents of public transit want to encourage people to use it they need to make it a more pleasant, more convenient experience. PLUS they need to control its costs – currently ticket revenue only covers about 1/3 of the MBTA’s operating budget, despite large increases in fares. And higher gas prices have made the trains even more crowded. These factors do not exactly encourage greater endorsement of public transit.

The US peaked in 1970 just as Hubbert predicted in 1956. The North Sea has peaked. The North Slope has peaked. Indonesia is peaking and due to become a net importer. Rue the day that Saudi Arabia peaks. It’s coming…

This fall the rest of the lawn comes up.

My front yard has a row of about a dozen 12 foot sunflowers standing guard.

My garden is very low maintenance, were do you get your information? I have to weed,water and feed it but I don’t consider that ‘high maintenance’.

Some problems with Japanese beetles, but I used some ‘high maintenance’ techniques, I went out at night with a flashlight and killed them.

Mr. Nelson I have to say your constant argumentative stances on everyones comments are kind of annoying.
Is this a kind of therapy for you?
Are you having issues or are you just really a troll?

At the time that report was written they could hardly imagine $3 gasoline, yet since then gasoline has shot past $4 gallon. And the world didn’t cave in. Oil prices on world market shot past $120/bbl and the world didn’t cave in.

Instead people have adapted, and are continuing to adapt.

If “half the things” people worried about with Y2K had come to pass it would have been a disaster, too. But they didn’t. The Hirsch report dramatically underestimates people’s adaptability and ingenuity.

I agree. All the statistics show that people are repidly cutting back on driving and other energy consumption as a result of high fuel prices. The free market works if we just let it. As I mentioned above, right now the government is actually distorting the market in ways that LOWER the price of oil.

I’d like to see the government reduce current tax incentives for oil exploration and DE-commit from our current policy of militarily backing up big oil producing countries like Saudi Arabia.

Oil prices would rise, the general public would squeal like stuck pigs (which is why we won’t do it), but it would provide a FAR better incentive for alternative energy than any tax credits.

Have you tried this, or is this like your suggestion earlier about coal – a good idea in theory?

I already grow two kinds of tomatoes, 2 kinds of squash, basil, scallions, lettuce, raspberries, blueberries, apples and pears. (all organically, incidentally)

Those are in my back yard. Our front yard is a lawn except for flowers around the walkway. We chose a lawn because it’s relatively low maintenance. We don’t use persticides so it just needs watering and mowing, and the clippings get composted.

But the bottom line is that vegetables and flowers are high-maintenance and labor intensive. We’d like a cheap, low-maintenance alternative to a lawn and we’ve actually had 3 landscaping companies to advice us and we’ve stumped all of them. It’s not as easy as you seem to think – have you actually tried it?

I totally disagree. The house I live in now was built around 1980 when there were lots of tax credits for energy efficiency because of the Arab oil embargo a few years earler. So it had solar hot-water pre-heating panels on the roof and a funky water heater designed to use solar energy.

Both of these needed service shortly after we bought the place in 1998 and the companies that made them had long since vanished when the tax credits went away. So there was no source of parts or service and we had to junk them at great trouble and expense.

This is EXACTLY what happens when the government creates market distortions by playing “political games” with tax incentives and other programs.

High energy prices will create all the incentive anyone needs – we don’t need extra tax credits for solar and other alternative technology. Instead, the correct role for the government is to REMOVE the tax credits oil companies get for exploration, and the hundreds of billions of dollars the DoD spends on wars designed to protect oil sources. Those things all artificially LOWER the price of oil, making it hard for alternative energy to compete. In other words, the government is already meddling too much in energy prices.