Re: the light bulb police are coming

[Marc_F_Hult <MFHult@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Thu, 15 Mar 2007 13:17:31 GMT, nobody@xxxxxxxxxxxx (Dave Houston) wrote in
message  <45fb4561.21492078@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>:

>nobody@xxxxxxxxxxxx (Dave Houston) wrote:
>
>>As I've said before,

ROTFL And therefore it was. Because Dave said so ;_)

This is profoundly pertinent to comp.home automation?

>> most of our electricity comes from coal and that is
>>certain to increase as it's both cheap and plentiful. To save the planet we
>>need these coal fired plants to improve their conversion efficiency as well
>>as capture and sequester carbon dioxide (and there's proven technology for
>>capturing 90% of the mercury as well). BTW, this has to be done worldwide.
>
>Today's NYT has a timely article on the first large scale test of carbon
>sequestration.
>
>     http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/15/business/15carbon.html?ref=science

One of the joys of watching kids grow up is experiencing their naïveté and
wonderment, and thinking that they are the first to discover things.

In the mid 1970's we mused about using plate tectonics to sequester carbon in
order to reduce CO2 accumulation.

And good scientists, including those from the OP's home state, of the sort
that the OP slanders with glee, have been earnestly working on this area of
earth science for decades. Indeed, they were greatly disappointed last year
IIRC when their strong proposal for a national geologic sequestration
demonstration project didn't make it.

Here's what I wrote about four years ago in sci.engr.lighting:

On Thu, 04 Sep 2003 15:27:38 GMT, MFHult@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx wrote in
message  <ojmelvk5dlj7u29b4iknoog50r0c8441sv@xxxxxxx>:

	" It helps to remember that the great majority of carbon in the
	earth's crust(limestone, dolomite, marble, coal, oil, natural
	gas, etc ) is a storage	term not directly available to the biosphere.
	And that this carbon has been cycled at least once by biological
	and physical processes driven by solar radiation  (there's that
	pesky source/sink again).

	The mass of carbon in storage in rocks is vastly greater than
	the amount of	carbon in the atmosphere and surface water which
	is in dynamic equilibrium with organic and inorganic carbon in
	the biosphere (vegetation, plankton, peat, marl, etc).

	So "sequestration" is not an obscure or rare process. Natural
	"sequestration" is what has kept the earth from 'overheating' for
	 the last billion years or so.

	In an ideal 'hydrogen economy' folks what insisted on disturbing
 	naturally'sequestered" hydrocarbons (HC's) would return the
	unwanted C to a comparably isolated part of the crust or form and
	use the H ad libitum.

	Smart folks will omit this unnecessary step and use solar radiation\
	directly to make H2 from H20 knowing that if they don't change the
 	earth's	albedo in the process, at least this part of their activity
 	will not contribute to global energy imbalance (AKA "global
 	warming").

	(Is it possible to get more off topic for s.e.l. ? "

IMO, it is even more off-topic for a comp.* newsgroup than a sci[ence].*
newsgroup !

... Marc
Marc_F_Hult
www.EControl.org