Ezra Klein talks sense on CFLs:
I'm not really sure how I feel about the light emitted by energy savings bulbs (so far as I can tell, the main problem is that they burn out really quickly), but I'd really prefer to purchase them in a world with carbon auctions. If it turns that I do love the soft glow of carbon-chewing, incandescent bulbs, I'd like to be able to simply pay the extra cost and buy them. Alternatively, I can decide to go with the environmentally friendly, cheaper option. But one nice effect of actually factoring the carbon into the price is that I can make the choice effectively carbon neutral -- I can pay more for my incandescent bulb and also pay for the carbon in it, or pay less for my CFL bulb and save due to its low carbon footprint. As it is now, if I want to go with incandescent, my only option is to screw over the environment and free ride on the externalities. There's no real way to sin responsibly.
The environment doesn't care if you use more efficient lightbulbs, or make more judicious use of less efficient ones. Regulatory solutions that mandate efficiency often have significant rebound effects: because they lower your expenditure on electricity or gas, you drive more frequently or leave more lights on. That can eat deeply into the gains from the regulation; I've seen estimates for CAFE standards as high as 50%, but 20-30% seems more likely. (CAFE standards also, ironically, put more cars on the road; manufacturers sell subcompact cars cheap to people like teenagers who otherwise might not be able to afford a car, because they increase the average efficiency of the fleet).
A tax, on the other hand, makes people better off by letting consumers choose whether they want to use more efficient bulbs; turn on fewer lights; or to cut their carbon consumption somewhere else. But efficiency regulations are easier to pass because the non-cash costs are invisible (until people realize their new lightbulbs are horrible, by which point the incandescent manufacturing industry will be dead as a doornail.) And Pigovian solutions don't satisfy the expressive desire for a political statement, as Bryan Caplan notes:
Non-economists are much more anti-market than economists. If we told them that the economic way of thinking is consistent with (or better yet, justifies!) their anti-market prejudices, we'd be more popular.But is this an intellectually sound way to bridge the divide between economists and non-economists? I think not. If we explain the concept of externalities properly, non-economists will continue to give us the cold shoulder. Here's why.
1. The concept of externalities relies entirely on economists' standard notion of willingness to pay. If people are willing to pay to preserve a rare species of monkey, there may be an externality. If no one cares, there's no externality. The upshot is that the concept continues to slight non-economists' concerns about fairness, intrinsic value, equality, etc.
2. If an externality exists, the economically efficient solution is normally a tax or subsidy. That's it. But non-economists are usually looking for an excuse for government to ban or nationalize. At minimum, non-economists want to use hands-on regulation - not just add a tax and say "OK, problem solved."
Someone who uses an externalities argument to justify e.g. existing (or stricter!) EPA regulation doesn't really understand the argument.
The difference between "hands-on regulation" and taxation is the reason I prefer Barack Obama to Hillary Clinton. I do not pretend that Obama is perfect, but he is much less likely to favor increasing regulatory authority; his solutions tend to focus on transparency and simple rule changes rather than massive new apparatuses for extending state power.
I agree regarding Obama. I think it's clear the differences between his and Hillary's healthcare plans, despite both their shortcomings, make it evident which one has at least given credence to the combined effects of mandating demand and price ceilings on supply. I.E. you can't have your cake and eat it too.
In regards to this lightbulb situation; First, I hope the nuclear power onus might soon be dropped, releasing the pressure to fix the problem on the consumer end. The carbon is not "in" the lightbulb itself, it's in the amount of energy it uses. I also feel that the illegalization of their manufacture is a joke, and we have surpassed the ludicrous heights reached when Jimmy Carter spouted platitudes equivocating using less heat and A/C with a kind of virtuous asceticism. I hope that some enterprising black market manufacturers will continue making those warm looking bulbs. Anyone who's seen the alternative will know, our homes will soon all look like hospital waiting rooms.
CFLs require far more energy to produce than traditionals, and release far more toxic substances into the environment upon disposal (although some of this is offset by trace toxic substances released when coal is burned). They are also heavier and therefore more expensive to ship, require denser packing materials during shipment, and actually consume up to twice as much current as what the meter reports due to an interesting thing called power factor.
How is a US carbon tax really going to account for all this, especially considering how many of these externalities are born by the Chinese? More important, what carbon tax-setting bureaucrat is going to be knowledgeable enough to incorporate all of this and then be able to respond rapidly to technology changes?
People -- myself included -- are already switching to CFLs when it makes sense to do so. My folks' living room, for example, is lit by two shaded lamps and happens to be pleasantly brighter for less money when those lamps are equipped with two "90W-equivalent" 2700K CFLs as opposed to two 60 or 75W incandescents. A globed fixture over the basement stairs, OTOH, had a tendency to destroy "60W-equivalent" CFLs and is now back on a 40W incandescent.
Lumping an arbitrary carbon tax on top of the incandescents is just another premise for feeding the Tax Beast without producing an objective net-positive for the environment.
Megan,
I agree with you ENTIRELY about individuals being allowed to make their own choices. That's why it pains me so much that you don't care for compact fluorescent lights.
I have been a follower of this blog since you started it. I also happen to work for the largest online supplier of lighting supplies in North America. I suspect that you haven't been using the RIGHT cfl lamps...
In all seriousness, contact me at my email listed , and I would be THRILLED to get you some complimentary samples of compact fluorescent lamps that you will actually LIKE.
actually consume up to twice as much current as what the meter reports due to an interesting thing called power factor.
No problem. Coming soon: federally mandated capacitor yards behind every home.
Finally, some sense on the topic. I'm tired of seeing, "Hey, you can waste energy however you want, but you must do it in the most efficient way possible! ... for the environment!"
But while Barack Obama has shown understanding of the economic equivalence of cap-and-trade and carbon taxes, and how one is more transparent; and, still better, has Austen Goolsbee (sp!) as an advisor, I'm skeptical about Megan_McArdle's claim that this will actually translate into solutions that restrain government power and give people more choices in attempts to control externalities.
Oh, and just to put it out there where smart people read: aren't all chemical reactions reversible? That is, can't we combine CO2, H2O, and energy in the right conditions to get octane and O2? If so, wouldn't that be a great way to eliminate oil importation and the carbon footprint of auto usage, all without changing the infrastructure? That is, use nuclear power with carbon sequestration to manufacture octane, that would then be used to fuel cars.
What am I missing?
aren't all chemical reactions reversible?
Non-nuclear reactions are reversible, but the most stable state is the one with the lowest energy (and therefore the strongest intermolecular bonds). Returning to the unstable state requires putting that energy back into the reactants in order to dissociate those bonds. In the case of complex molecular structures such as hydrocarbons, more work may be required to get them to recombine into the desired form.
That is, use nuclear power with carbon sequestration to manufacture octane, that would then be used to fuel cars.
The big hurdle being, nuclear power. By the time we have significant baseload coming from that, the question of gasoline cars will have been made irrelevant by fuel cell technologies -- simply use electrolysis to dissociate seawater, then use more electricity to compress or liquefy the gasses.
can't we combine CO2, H2O, and energy in the right conditions to get octane and O2?
I've often wondered why we don't pursue this as well.
Making the transition to an H2 infrastructure has certain advantages, like less pollution (not CO2 "pollution", but stuff like NOx) being generated when burning H2 than when burning hydrocarbons. On the other hand, transition to an H2 infrastructure is hugely expensive.
It seems like producing hydrocarbons from non-carbon generating power sources (nuclear, wind, etc.) would be a cheaper intermediate step to a hydrogen based economy even if producing hydrocarbons is more expensive than producing H2 because of the infrastructure expense.
What would be the argument against, say, imposing a massive tax on incandescent bulbs, rather than banning them? And what, given the likely results of such a tax, would be the difference between doing that and banning them? A tax on incandescent bulbs but not CFL bulbs, just like a tax on carbon fuels but not other kinds of fuels, would be a Pigovian tax intended to factor in externalities.
And, given the staggering uncertainties involved in estimating the ultimate dollar costs of carbon consumption, on what basis could one make any meaningful determination of how high to set such a tax? 5%? 1000%? Plausible scenarios could justify either level.
I would like to see just one economist, once, investigate the perfectly obvious positive externalities associated with absolute bans, rather than Pigovian taxes. Here's an example: On December 15 2007, Vietnam absolutely banned riding motorbikes without a helmet. They enforced the ban effectively; helmet wearing went from about 15% to about 99% in a single day. As a result, a market in fashionable motorbike helmets which had never before existed was created, in the space of 3 months leading up to the ban; and the public's fashion sense was completely transformed, such that wearing a fashionable helmet, rather than going helmetless, became the elite, privileged behavior. Imposing a Pigovian tax to reflect the public health costs of massive head injuries would not have had the same effect.
The difference between taxes and bans is that bans, when enforceable, can completely transform the market. Pre-ban calculations of the costs of externalities become irrelevant because demand is so dramatically altered after the ban that the pre-ban calculations are no longer meaningful. What, for example, was the market demand for catalytic converters before they were mandated on every car? What was the market demand for cleaner air?
(CAFE standards also, ironically, put more cars on the road; manufacturers sell subcompact cars cheap to people like teenagers who otherwise might not be able to afford a car, because they increase the average efficiency of the fleet).
I have a feeling there's an economic impossibility lurking in there somewhere. There either is or isn't a market for cheap subcompact cars for teenagers. Without CAFE standards, this market demand is going unmet? Why?
brooksfoe: A ban (if enforced) is effectively an infinite tax on an activity. To be efficient a Pigouvian tax needs to be set to the difference between private and social cost of the activity. This means a ban will be overkill, lowering efficiency. From an efficiency standpoint the "transformative" power of bans is a bug, not a feature.
Mandates are also a blunt instrument, catalytic converters are a good example, who cares how emissions are lowered? Put on a converter, buy a cleaner car or drive less, it doesn't matter. Catalytic converter mandates were a way of privellaging Amercian cans over some of the smaller Japanese cars that had cleaner emissions, making a converter unnecessary. A Pigouvian tax ensures you reduce externalities in the most efficient way.
Without CAFE standards, this market demand is going unmet? Why?
Potentially, those cars are loss leaders serving to make the sale of much more expensive and inefficient luxury cars possible under the law.
Possibly not, of course.
Obama supports the old "comparable worth" concept in employment law. Don't kid yourself--he knows better, but he's perfectly willing to advocate ridiculous ideas for votes. That's democracy. In particular, that's the Democratic party.
Person: If you can manage to get that reaction to work, there's a prize waiting for you in Stockholm.
In all seriousness, though, CO2 reduction and hydrocarbon formation would require all sorts of new breakthroughs in organometallic chemistry. Not saying it hasn't or can't be done, but making it cost/energy efficient would be a mighty bear.
Nevertheless, I've always thought that Gore's weird CO2 offsets were disingenous. If you really, really want to offset CO2, buy yourself some canisters. Gore's house is big -- he could probably store a few flights' worth indefinitely.
aren't all chemical reactions reversible?
Non-nuclear reactions are reversible
This is not correct, many chemical processes are not reversible. Generally the word "irreversible" is used to describe reactions that do not proceed under equilibrium conditions. This is a little different from how reversible is being used here, where you can apply energy to reverse the reaction. Even when applying energy however, many reactions are not reversible, consider the burning of a piece of wood. How would you recombine the ash and CO2 to form wood?
That is, use nuclear power with carbon sequestration to manufacture octane, that would then be used to fuel cars.
The big hurdle being, nuclear power. By the time we have significant baseload coming from that, the question of gasoline cars will have been made irrelevant by fuel cell technologies -- simply use electrolysis to dissociate seawater, then use more electricity to compress or liquefy the gasses.
What? Nuclear power is the easy part, its already up and running. We could build more power plants at our regulatory whim. The hard part is catalyzing the carbon source (I assume you were thinking CO2 and H20) to form the appropriate molecular weight hydrocarbons.
How would you recombine the ash and CO2 to form wood?
There's an unbelievably efficient device for doing just that. It's called an acorn.
But if you go that route you'd be a crunchy environmentalist, not a technological-messianic libertarian.
Technological messianism is yet another fashion in which libertarians often resemble Communists.
brooksfoe,
I think he had in mind something that didn't take 60 years, but plant all the trees you want.
As to Person's question, we may use nuclear to dissociate water into hydrogen and oxygen in order to provide liquid/gas fuels, but there is little point to using it to produce hydrocarbons. You not only have to supply the energy of combustion to reverse the reaction, but also a very large negative entropy component as well- there are far more efficient uses of energy.
bp: Yes, I didn't distinguish thermodynamic and chemical reversibility, because I thought it was clear I was referring to chemical reversibility. I accept that combustion is not thermodynamically reversible: if you burn, and then recreate the original reactants, the entropy of the universe will be greater than at the start, and you will have less energy than before.
To get the reverse reaction to happen is a matter of making the so-called "Gibbs free energy" favor the reverse, which is a matter of setting the environmental temperature and pressure conditons right, which is feasible for large batch operations in a chemical plant.
I would *think* there would be more research by this point about how to manufacture hydrocarbons from CO2 and a large energy source. I mean, there's South Africa, which suffered a boycott and had to make oil from coal. Oil from nuclear would have certainly had utility for them, and for any other country under a boycott -- perhaps the Soviet Union too?
Anyway, since brooksfoe, our superintelligent liberal is here, maybe he could answer the question: let's say it is possible to cheaply reverse combustion and make octane, and the supply of nuclear energy is effectively unlimited if you keep recycling the spent fuel (i.e. we release the restrictions on it). Again, to review, the benefits are:
-Complete energy independence.
-No oil money for corrupt regimes, at least not from the US.
-Zero carbon footprint from driving, since you're only releasing to the atmosphere, carbon that was taken from it to make the fuel.
-Complete safety, because you can locate the nuclear plant arbitrarily far from populated areas.
So, if this were possible, brooksfoe and other liberals, would you gladly support this and lift all restrictions on carbon fuels?
To be efficient a Pigouvian tax needs to be set to the difference between private and social cost of the activity.
This presumes that such costs have a fixed and knowable value. But a value, as Bryan Caplan astutely notes in the comments Megan cites, is simply what people are willing to pay for something. Such values are transformed by changes in tastes and, well, values. And these can be driven by legislation. In July 2007, the value of my motorbike helmet in Vietnam was so negligible that I could leave it unattended on the sidewalk. On December 13 2007, I did so, and it was stolen. Its value had risen to something like 9 dollars - the cost of the fine for being caught without a helmet.
But that's not the important part. In July 2007, one might have termed the need for everyone to wear helmets a "cost" -- the number of riders who would not otherwise wear helmets, times the cost of a helmet. In January 2008, though, even if the law were scrapped, probably only 30% of riders would go back to riding without helmets; the others, and especially those who have now bought expensive and fashionable helmets, would continue wearing them. A desire for fashionable helmets, the private value of those helmets, has been created out of thin air. In other words, the gap between the private value and the social value of wearing helmets has been drastically reduced because of a change in taste driven by social and market response to a ban.
"aren't all chemical reactions reversible?"
(no, but that isn't the important part here)
Burning fuel isn't just a chemical reaction. You can probably get a reversible reaction from methane and oxygen (and CO2 and H2O) in a chamber, but once you start burning it in the atmosphere, you are introducing massive amounts of entropy - you've scattered your reaction products, literally, to the four winds. You now need to introduce more energy to reduce the disorder you've introduced - you need to gather the CO2 and other waste products from the atmosphere.
Njorl... Let's try this one more time:
First, (re)read the distinction between chemical and thermodynamic reversibility.
Second, (re)read what the proposal actually is. I'm not proposing to burn something, and then reverse the direction of the reaction to make it into octane. That would be stupid. The proposal is to take nuclear fuel as the energy source, and CO2 from the atmosphere via sequestration (and water or H atoms from wherever), and store them as octane, in a chemical reaction that is the reverse of combustion. Yes, stuff must be taken from the atmosphere, but it's not waste product, it's just, er, part of the atmosphere at this point.
You may now commence storming off, using my rudeness as a distraction from your responding to a proposal no one made.
Quote from Wired News:
"Researchers at Sandia National Laboratories in New Mexico have found a way of using sunlight to recycle carbon dioxide and produce fuels like methanol or gasoline.
The Sunlight to Petrol, or S2P, project essentially reverses the combustion process, recovering the building blocks of hydrocarbons. They can then be used to synthesize liquid fuels like methanol or gasoline. Researchers said the technology already works and could help reduce greenhouse-gas emissions, although large-scale implementation could be a decade or more away."
http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/news/2008/01/S2P
Yes, to an extent, no.
All reactions go both ways, and allowed to will reach an equilibrium state where the rates of reaction in both directions are the same. The rates of most reactions are best modeled in the form:
r = k [A]^n[B]^m
Where r is the rate, [X] is the concentration of a reactant, m and n are empirical constants related to the details of how the reaction occurs, and k is an empirical constant that depends on the reaction and the temperature. The reason for this is that one of the major theories of reaction kinetics (Collision Theory) is that rates of reaction are controlled by the rate at which reactants of sufficiently high energy states collide with each other, which will be governed by the concentrations and temperature. There are more complicated models (especially when the reaction isn't occuring in a homogenous medium and you take catalysis into account), but it will be sufficient to note that the rate of the reaction will monotonically increase with concentration of reactants in almost all cases.
The consequence of this is that we can cause a reaction at equilibrium to start going either way by reducing the concentration of the products of the reaction we desire. Let's take the example of a generic ester formation reaction:
R-COOH + R'-OH <-> H2O + R-COO-R'
Where the R's are a non-reactive organic group. If the boiling point of water is lower than that of the reactants, we could reduce the water concentration by evaporating it away, slowing the right-to-left version of the reaction and allowing us to get more of the ester. The catch is that the lower the concentration of something, the harder it is to selectively remove it. In the example above, the evaporate would contain more water that the solution, but also some of the reactants, and the lower the level of the water in the solution, the lower its concentration in the gas phase as well, and the more reactants that would leave in that phase. So, in addition to the cost of the energy to remove the water, our waste water contains some of our reactants, which we would need to spend more energy to separate out further (when practical) or discard as part of the waste stream.
In the case of the oxidation of a hydrocarbon, you will have several multi-step reaction pathways between H(CH2)nH and O2 and H2O and CO2, and the equilibria strongly favor the more oxidized states, so the concentration of the products of the reaction we want to happen will have to go even lower from a very low equilibrium level, so it would be very difficult and energy intensive to reverse the reactions, in this case to the extent that it would be practically impossible.
That said, it's not impossible to make hydrocarbons from CO2 and H2O. Plants produce fatty acids (which are just hydrocarbons with carboxylic acid groups on the end) from CO2 and water, but it's a complicated process involving a different set of reactions than combustion with many, many intermediate reactions, catalysts (a catalyst effectively makes the k's bigger for both directions of the reaction), and separations of products and the amount of usable energy that can be derived from the plant oil is miniscule compared to the total energy that goes into the process. Using this process is more or less the idea behind biodiesel, which I don't think has much legs as an alternative fuel except as a use for waste streams (such as cooking oil) because of the low overall efficiency of fatty acid formattion, but we'll see where the technology goes.
I don't see what the issue is. The demand for subcompacts does have price elastisity, so the amount of them on the road will depend on their price and it should be ok to assume P~=MC for subcompacts, since it's a competitive sector. Consequently, when the marginal cost of a subcompact goes down, the number of them sold goes up. Fleet standards raise the marginal costs of vehicles above the target and lower the marginal cost of vehicles below the target, since selling below target vehicles enables you to sell more above target vehicles. Depending on the production functions and demand curves (for example if demand is relatively inelastic for above-target vehicles), it is quite possible that a larger number of total vehicles could be sold as a result of fleet efficiency standards, potentially even enough to offset the reduction in emissions from improved fleet efficiency.
This actually points to another problem with mandate vs cost internalizing regulations. With costs internalization, you only need to figure out one thing - the costs of the externalities of the behavior. With mandates, you need to understand all the relevant demand and production functions before you can predict what will happen.
I'm not so certain why you are so optimistic about Obama beyond that you really like your old professor (which I also don't understand since you disagreed with almost everything he said in the podcast)
Any particular reason you are sure that this politician is going to buck the trend and actually do what he says?
Person, if pigs had wings, would you and other conservatives support calling them pigeons?
We now return to the discussion of whether in some circumstances bans may have advantages which Pigovian or Pigouvian or Pigeonian taxes do not.
MattXIV: fair enough, though I simply find it hard to believe the effect could possibly be that large. The price reductions for compact vehicles would have to be huge to result in so many more being purchased, and the losses (or lower profits) sustained on those vehicles seem unlikely to be made up by tremendous demand for gas-guzzling expensive cars over fuel-efficient expensive cars. It seems vastly more profitable to shift the fleet from Suburbans to Cadillacs. In any case, car ownership in the US is so high it just seems unlikely there's much room for expanding the ownership base. Most of those increased sales of new compacts to teenagers would be substituting for used cars, not creating new car owners.
Finally: "With costs internalization, you only need to figure out one thing - the costs of the externalities of the behavior." The problem is, what do you do when you have no idea what the costs of the externalities are, and only know that they're very bad and potentially very big? Again I come back to helmet wearing: can you really put a price on a massive head injury? We actually have no idea whatsoever what the costs of the externalities of carbon consumption are. We just know they're probably very, very high. OF COURSE an economy-wide carbon tax would be better; but the Bush administration is not proposing an economy-wide carbon tax, while congressional leaders are proposing super-high efficiency targets for light bulbs. Given the situation, I recommend passing what's on the table.
MattXIV: Thanks for the reply. My concern wasn't so much with literally reversing the combustion reaction itself; the goal, phrased to a higher level of generality, is to:
combine atmospheric CO2 with some widely-available H, to make octane, and fuel it by an effectively unlimited, clean power source
H2O easily fits the bill for the H, and nuclear for the energy source. And, of course, keep in mind, the octane is only intended as an energy storage medium, which is different from the "biofuel" movement, in which the fuel source specifically must be biological sources and not nuclear.
brooksfoe: How about we return to my demonstration that your real concern is not with some *environmental*, *ooh we're gonna die* externality, as with a "personal dislike" externality?
Person,
The difficulty I pointed out, the entropy introduced by releasing the products into the atmosphere, is exactly analagous to the step in your process where you extract CO2 from the atmosphere. It would be an enormous undertaking to do it on a scale necessary to be useful. CO2 in the atmosphere, while problematic, is not concentrated. It is 0.04%. The energy necessary to get the CO2 out of the atmosphere into a useful concentration would make the process worthless. Carbon sequestraion techniques are of dubious value even when employed at the site of combustion, where CO2 concentrations can be made arbitrarily close to 100% without too much difficulty.
Njorl: Tell that to the carbon sequestration plants that have already been set up.
"Njorl: Tell that to the carbon sequestration plants that have already been set up.
"
How much are they being subsidized? Pay enough, and you can get anything done. The question is, is it worth the money?
No, it's not worth the money. Because even if gasoline was made this way, and it turned out to be even cheaper than gasoline is now, *and* would no longer have net carbon emissions or depend on global crude oil prices, *and* end foreign oil dependence, *and* be completely safe ... enviros would generate a reason to oppose it.
Good point.
Sensible discussions of costs and benefits have no place in the modern environmental "movement." Unfortunately, a large number of people have hijacked the idea and taken it as a religion of sorts. So you can show that a Hummer has a smaller environmental footprint than a Prius or that buying new cars for people driving clunkers is an incredibly cost effective way to reduce pollution, and you'll be ignored.
It would be nice if environmental policy was driven by logic, but since politicians ultimately implement the policies and they respond to voters regardless of how sensible they are, we're doomed to silly things like bans on incandescent lightbulbs, water restrictors on shower heads, and CAFE limits that exempt half the vehicles out there.
buying new cars for people driving clunkers is an incredibly cost effective way to reduce pollution
1. Environmentalists do think encouraging people to replace old clunkers with new cars is a very good idea.
2. So you're totally opposed to the government using tax money for humanitarian or social goals because it distorts the market, except for you think maybe the government should start buying people new cars??? You've gotta be kidding me.
So you can show that a Hummer has a smaller environmental footprint than a Prius
No, you can't. When you make claims that are transparently ridiculous, don't be surprised that people don't take them seriously.
"The energy necessary to get the CO2 out of the atmosphere into a useful concentration would make the process worthless."
WTF?
Tell it to APD, et al..
http://finance.yahoo.com/q?s=APD&
http://www.airproducts.com/search/search.aspx?Query=merchant+gases+carbon+dioxide&SearchOption=ES
MEH,
Those links don't say anything pertaining to this discussion. Now if you had cited this:
http://www.lanl.gov/news/releases/archive/02-028.shtml
I might need to do some arguing. It is much more pertainent, and much more likely to contradict my assertions. I was pleasantly surprised by it, though I haven't scrutinized it severely yet.
" Dubey and his colleagues' method differs because it works on a dilute stream of CO2 in the atmosphere as opposed to capturing more concentrated forms found in power plant exhausts..."--from lanl.gov link, above..
it's interesting that the .gov thinks like that..if they captured the 'concentrated' stream from the power plant--the latent heat provides for enough electricity to capture even more than co2, without the additional footprint of their 'works on dilute stream' Plant site(s)...
also, www.pollutionengineering.com :
10. Hey, That’s Your Mercury
A generation ago, mercury was considered so harmless that children were at times allowed to play with it in science class. Only recently have scientists agreed that it is the methylated form that accumulates in fish that is toxic. Since that revelation, states and federal officials have moved to control mercury.
But how can the regulators know where the mercury is coming from?
Helping that fight is a new technology that can use mass spectrometry to measure mass-dependent fractionation of mercury. This year, scientists at Rutgers University and the University of Michigan have found a way to use isotope ratios to fingerprint mercury found in fish. The hope is that their process will become so ubiquitous that tracking a mercury source will be as common as using Carbon13 testing.
http://www.pollutionengineering.com/CDA/Articles/Cover_Story/BNP_GUID_9-5-2006_A_10000000000000230691
Here is a Hummer vs. Prius article.
http://www.digg.com/environment/Prius_Outdoes_Hummer_in_Environmental_Damage
It may be wrong but it's not an absurd comparison. Choose a more efficient gasoline car and the comparison is a lot more apt.
This is an interesting article:
http://www.caranddriver.com/reviews/hot_lists/car_shopping/green_machines/carb_throws_a_hail_mary_regulation_feature/(page)/1
I can't find a link online, but long ago, when California first started the ZEV mandate, Car and Driver did some calculations and, using the most optimistic estimates for cost and pollution reduction, figured out that it would much cheaper to simply stop a certain number of gross polluters (using those laser pollution detectors), sieze their cars, and replace them with brand new cars (they chose a Cadillac STS). The new cars would pollute a lot less than the old ones and end up meeting the optimistic goals of the ZEV program for much less money.
And given the utter failure of anyone to meet CARB's ZEV mandate (the mandate has been extended and watered down) and the huge amounts of money that have been sunk into it, giving away the Cadillacs would have actually, you know, worked. No new technology was required and the benefits would have been immediate. And the program would have been pretty popular with the winners of the new cars...
But a lot of environmnetalism is about grandstanding and making gestures, not getting results.
RE: the Livermore Lab work
It makes sense the military would be interested in this.
Image a large boat with a few nuclear reactors on board. That same boat might want to supply fuel to its accompanying escort ships without returning to port while on an extended cruise.
Might be handy to generate diesel fuel out of thin air with one of those reactors.
This article:
http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/02/13/federal-lab-says-it-can-harvest-fuel-from-air/
claims the process could produce fuel at $4.60 a gallon. Interesting.
Not Livermore Labs, Los Alamos rather. Mea culpa.
Wow ... in the link Michael_Pierce posted, they're planning to do exactly what I suggested, and claiming exactly the same benefits.
People sure steal my ideas quickly now, don't they?
*Now* do you want to comment, brooksfoe?
Hey, Person:
I just saw the link from Insty. This is GREAT news, assuming it will work. IMO, it ranges from "really cool" to "this is completely frickin' awesome".
Shows I can't even be a chemistry pundit and I am one.