Media sweep

[TheDrake]

Top stories by web portals as fodder for some new conversations about media or the stories within. I haven't processed my own thoughts on this, so no opinion yet. In some cases, I altered titles for brevity or context. I also picked my stories with a grain of salt from among those visible based on layout and prominence.

MSNBC: what to expect from the debate, Clinton leading in battleground states, six people corroborate Trump accuser

CNN: Big losses for ISIS, Michael Moore's anti-Trump film, No the election can't be hacked

FOX: Pressure builds on Trump as red states turn purple, attacks on GOP offices spread to three states, Al-Baghdadi hiding in Mosul

NPR: 4 Things to watch in the last debate, European Probe will attempt to land on Mars, Police van rams protesters in Phillipines

Breitbart: Bill Clinton accuser goes public, Trump will win the third debate, Democrats bus dumps human waste in street

Huffington Post: Hill's burden, crush Trump, Trump Nosedives in Texas, Taco Trucks Create Wall Outside Trump Hotel

Blaze: Sotomayor: I used to want to hit Scalia with a baseball bat, To be white is to be racist said by HS teacher, Clinton campaign requests spouses not shake hands

WND: Physicians detail evidence of [Hillary's] Parkinsons Disease, Hillary Fixer arranged sex for her with men and women, New questions about break-in at Juanita Broaddrick's home

BBC News: Thousands flee mosul, Meteorite death or Clinton/Trump, Vegas prepares for final stand

Arab News: Daesh car bombs and mortars slow Iraqi advance on Mosul, 72-hour Yemen Truce welcomed, Saudi prince executed for killing fellow citizen

The Guardian (UK edition): Home office rules out unethical dental checks, Huge increase in Britons seeking citizenship in EU states, Trump and Clinton face fear and loathing at third debate



----

Dishonorable mention: redstate.com has a post, Is American Democracy in It's Waning Stages? -- no but American Literacy might be.

My only click: The BBC story on Meteorite death, I think I'll post that separately.

Disqualified: NY Times baffling front page has a left column on elections, center column is from the magazine, and right column has opinion pieces. I couldn't find a top stories section.

[D.W.]

I was just complaining to a friend that I had no idea there was even a Mars lander mission in the works until hearing about it minutes before it lands...  Yay, American political news cycles!   

[TheDeamon]

This caused a brief sweep of my own that uncovered a "nanospike" technology that Oak Ridge National Labs was developing as part of a multi-stage carbon sequestration process can actually turn carbon in room temperature water into ethanol in one step, which may make it one of those "accidental discoveries" for the history books. It also uses very common elements(carbon, copper, and nitrogen), so building them at scale may be very possible. Of course, it uses electricity as well, so we'll have to see what the energy efficiency is when they upscale.

http://phys.org/news/2016-10-nano-spike-catalysts-carbon-dioxide-ethanol.html

Which then sent me on a green science kick. Got a good laugh out of discovering a study finding land use change, in the form of planting one kind of tree over another in managed forests may account for up to 6% of the warming attributed to CO2, due to the darker albedo of the favored tree types.

[TheDrake]

I favor any of the technologies that remove carbon from the air. It avoids any guessing games about the sources of the rise of carbon, while acknowledging that rising CO2 is a bad thing. If you can recover the carbon in the form of fuel, so much the better.

[TheDeamon]

I favor any of the technologies that remove carbon from the air. It avoids any guessing games about the sources of the rise of carbon, while acknowledging that rising CO2 is a bad thing. If you can recover the carbon in the form of fuel, so much the better.

If it can be more cost competitive to produce that way than by way of turning corn in Ethanol, I'm going to be all for it in a big way. Of course, that may return more arable land to actually producing food, but at the cost of us converting most of our drinkable water into Ethanol. I'm not so sure that's a rational trade.

That the process can work without needing to use any of the "rare earths" and produces a fossil fuel alternative that has a greater energy density than any battery tech we currently have is a major plus in its favor currently, IMO.

It is still ultimately a energy loser as we'll get less energy out than we put into it, for somewhat obvious reasons for people with any kind of Science background. But on the other hand, the energy expenditure for extracting Petrol is nearing(and in many cases has surpassed) the amount of energy we get out of it as an end product. So anything that helps even out the energy exchange on that front, and possibly accelerates getting transportation into a "carbon neutral" state of operation is one I'm not adverse to.

Particularly since one of the first steps to making that happen means building up the power grid to the point where transitioning to an all electric vehicle fleet then is something that won't break the power grid, should it become able to out-compete the CO2->Ethanol converters. Short term though, battery tech is the sure thing, medium term, should these converters prove viable, Battery Powered Electric Vehicles are going to become steaming turds in much of the world(only possible exception is regions with poor air quality). Long term, battery tech would need to progress to the point where its energy density exceeds ethanol and has some means of being quickly recharged(comparable to the time taken to refuel an ethanol/petrol vehicle) before most people will bother with a fully electric vehicle.

At this point, I don't think it's unreasonable to suspect that ethanol as a staple fuel source might just be with us for as long as there is a human race, although its uses may increasingly become niche over time as other power sources become available.

The "other thing" of interest here is their use of a nano-scale structure to catalyze a somewhat complex reaction. They were expecting that process to take several steps, and instead it happened in one. It is possible that after they figure out the specifics of how/why it worked for this, they may be able to build comparable nano-scale converters/filters for other worthwhile substances as well. THAT could get really interesting. Particularly if they can do it with minimal to no use of the "rare-earths."

Imagine if they could find a converter that processes either seawater or brine and creates a "usable byproduct" out of that feedstock, which potentially provides (marginally) cleaner water for the next stages to process. Although it doesn't need to be a seawater application specifically, but if they could apply it target other trace elements commonly found in various water sources(or wastewater treatment facilities), there could be some other follow-on applications that happen outside of energy.

[Seriati]

If it can be more cost competitive to produce that way than by way of turning corn in Ethanol, I'm going to be all for it in a big way. Of course, that may return more arable land to actually producing food, but at the cost of us converting most of our drinkable water into Ethanol. I'm not so sure that's a rational trade.

You realize turning corn into Ethanol is no where close to the best use of land.  Sugar cane for instance would be way better for ethanol production.  We turn corn into Ethanol because it let politicians give a gift to farmers while making the eco fanatics happy, not because it's actually a good idea.  Sugar cane grows better outside our borders.

But I mean honestly, even a terribly inefficient process can make sense if we can use excess power from a clean source to do it.  Better batteries or direct application of the electricity may be better.

[TheDeamon]

But I mean honestly, even a terribly inefficient process can make sense if we can use excess power from a clean source to do it.  Better batteries or direct application of the electricity may be better.

Batteries do not produce electricity. So "Where would the electricity come from?" is a moot counter in all of this. About the only real argument to be made, and there is no data at present to draw conclusions, is in regards to the efficiency of this process when compared against batteries.

Which means we need to remind people that batteries also have "efficiency issues" of their own, both in initially charging(a lot gets lost in "waste heat"), discharging(again more "waste heat"), and simply storing(as batteries tend to lose their charge slowly over time, some types of batteries faster than others). Which isn't to mention energy density, where Ethanol currently is "more energy dense" than any battery tech on the market today. Ethanol still has its own issues(including evaporation), but once produced and if properly stored, it is going to have a much longer shelf-life than any battery alternative currently available.

This also isn't to bring in the "rare earth" issue as it pertains to batteries and other high technology items. This Ethanol production methodology potentially allows us to devote more of those rare earths to our personal electronics rather than our transportation sector.

And as regards to transportation specifically, direct application of electricity is a challenge we're likely to be a long ways away from finding a way to apply(aside from fixed transit applications). Which makes something like this potentially highly disruptive, if, and these are big ifs:
1) It can scale.
2) It can prove to be cost-competitive with other alternatives.

[Seriati]

But I mean honestly, even a terribly inefficient process can make sense if we can use excess power from a clean source to do it.  Better batteries or direct application of the electricity may be better.

Batteries do not produce electricity. So "Where would the electricity come from?" is a moot counter in all of this. About the only real argument to be made, and there is no data at present to draw conclusions, is in regards to the efficiency of this process when compared against batteries.

Sorry that was short hand.  I view ethanol production, with its inherent inefficiencies as nothing more than an energy storage device.  If the production can be accomplished with clean energy that may otherwise go to waste (like excess solar or wind at certain times), even if it's inefficient it may make sense to store energy that way.  On the other hand, if the clean energy is not otherwise at risk of waste, or if a better storage mechanism is available, why accept the inefficiency?   There are far better uses for land, including let it return to nature, than the agricultural strip mining that it is corn production by factory farms.

By the way, I take all your points about batteries, all I was trying to point out was two things:  (1) this is a balancing act and it may or may not make sense against the alternatives and (2) if the goal is to produce clean energy efficiently (rather than to make politically advantageous payments) then they wouldn't be using corn to do it.

[TheDeamon]

I missed the Corn Ethanol thing. I'm not talking about that. I'm talking about Oak Ridge National Labs announcing they created a "nanospike" that was intended to be part of a multi-step process that does what they intended in one step:

Pass water through a device with said nanospikes present, add some electricity, and get ethanol out as a byproduct of it interacting with CO2 dissolved in the water. And the raw materials needed to build said device? Carbon, copper, and nitrogen.

Skips the whole "grow and harvest crops" process, and isn't dependent on "rare earths" like practically every other high tech "green energy" alternative.

Which just leaves the question at "how much electricity for a given amount of ethanol? And how easy is it to build these nanostructures?" They don't have a final answer yet as they're still tweaking it as they should be able to make it more effective yet. Then they need to try to build it at scale rather than in a lab.

[TheDeamon]

Or to put it into slightly apocryphal terms: ORNL is partway there on the whole "turning water in wine" thing. They've made it to Ethanol, now someone just needs to work out how to turn Ethanol into wine.

[Seriati]

I agree with you.  I just think the massive incentives will disappear (which shouldn't happen) when they remove corn from the process, because the real political motivation is in the agricultural handouts.

[TheDeamon]

I agree with you.  I just think the massive incentives will disappear (which shouldn't happen) when they remove corn from the process, because the real political motivation is in the agricultural handouts.

Depending on:
1) The energy inputs required.
2) The amount of ethanol produced(energy out) per unit of energy used to produce it(energy in).
3) Cost of creating the "nanostructures" in the first place(and ability to build at an industrial scale).

I suspect it could potentially end up being a strong competitor against (near-)peak oil, to the point of true "peak oil" never happening. As extraction rates decline due to the inability of Oil to compete against the nano-Eth alternative. (There is a lot of oil that could be extracted, and in some cases has already been commercially extracted (profitably at that; albeit only when crude was pushing triple digits. Ironically, this could make a Coal Fired plant with a moderately effective CCS(Carbon Capture & Sequestration) system preferable to extracting more oil**more at the end), which using available techniques is a net energy loss for all concerned. More energy is consumed extracting it than was gained from extracting it--ie it was being extracted for use as "Chemical battery" and other associated uses, not because it was "needed for the energy"strictly speaking. Which then also leads into transportation and other processing costs not directly tied to the extraction itself.

I'm under the impression their converter probably isn't running on 1.21 gigawatts of electricity in order to produce a measureable quantity of ethanol. The actual power usage, in particular given the (lab) scale involved is probably quite small. Of course, that probably means the quantity of produced ethanol was likewise quite small. But I'd be inclined to put decent odds on it producing at a reasonable "exchange rate" once they complete optimizing it.

Although the other interesting aspect is that they've now demonstrated that nano-scale electro-chemistry using nanostructures is "a thing" that can be used to create targeted substances... Something they weren't exactly trying to prove in the first place. The possibility that this could be applied for other substances is  a very exciting prospect, particularly if it can be efficient or otherwise highly competitive with existing alternatives. This could have big implications outside of the Energy sector before all is said and done.

Going back to the burning CO2(Coal) to reduce CO2 emissions for a moment:

Lets use a fictitious scenario with numbers fully pulled out of my #$$:

We have a situation where you have 250 Million tons of new CO2 released into the atmosphere which could be serviced by this new energy derivative.

But to do so, you're going to need new power generation capabilities. Which you decide you're going to meet by only using fossil fuels. In the course of generating this needed power, you're going to "free" an additional 400 Million tons of CO2. Which on first pass is a bad deal, because you're now releasing 1.6 times as much CO2 as you would by keeping the status quo.

Except you need to remember, that energy is being generated in order to "Capture" and use some 250 Million tons of athmospheric CO2. So that comes off of that 400 Million Ton counter, leaving us with 150 Million Tons of new CO2 as a consequence of this initiative, so it still seems to be a bad idea.

Except you've applied other Carbon Capture and Sequestration(CCS) techniques as well, which capture 175 Million Tons of CO2 from those same plants every year(43.75% capture efficiency). Which is where we end up with the magical and very weird net result of reducing CO2 by 25 Million Tons per year.

Yes, it is highly energy inefficient, but it works on paper.

But even if it is inefficient, if it also happens to replacing another source that was either an "energy loser" as well, or nearly breaking even on the gain/loss scale...