March/April 2002
Feature Articles
Holistic Health Q & A
by Karen R. Raymund
Of PMS, premenopausal weight-gain,
and osteoporosis.
What is... Psychotherapy?
by Charles Larsen
Of various schools of psychotherapy
and what to expect and look for.
EnergyUpDate
by David Findlay
Articles on the theme "Good & Bad Habits"
Teaching Good Habits
by Barbara Bedingfield
A Waldorf teacher's viewpoint on how
adults should teach children the importance of good habits.
Mother Of All Bad Habits
by Aman Motwane
The habit of chasing illusions rather
than seeing the world as it is and dealing wih reality.
It's All Habit
by Patrick Plaskett
Using the mechanism of habits to get
the results in life that we want.
Improving Your Game
by Rev. Pat Cross
The effect habits have on our lives.
Using good habits to accentuate the positive.
The Fewer the Better
by Lisa Raphael
Letting go of habits and, instead,
living fully conscious of our thoughts, feelings and actions.
Changing From The Inside
by Rev. Linda Lou Kearns
Having the courage to be completely
honest, getting "out of the box."
Peace of Mind
by David Hunt
"A Course in Miracels" approach
to habits.
The Essence of a Habit
by Daniel DeFrank
How to replace negative habits with
life enhancing ones using the power of our thoughts.
Habits, Physical and Mental
by Betty Perry
Of behavior patterns and patterns of
thought. How they affect our lives.
Energy UpDate
by David Findlay
Energy is everywhere. Yet, although we take it for granted, use it and are even prepared to go to war for it, few of us understand it. So what's the problem? Or problems? How do we come to grips with such a complex matter?
Maybe it would be helpful to ask, "What would be the ideal for our energy needs?" Here are a few suggestions: Energy should be cheap. It should be clean i.e. it shouldn't pollute the environment. It should be efficient. It should be reliable. It shouldn't have to be transported over long distances. It should be relatively terrorist-proof. And there should be plenty of it.
Clearly it makes a difference the sequence of priorities. Is it more important that energy is cheap rather than clean, or vice versa? How important is it that our energy supplies are terrorist-proof? How important is efficiency?
Rather than try to sort out these priorities, I'd rather ask the question, "Is it possible to have it all?" I believe that it is, and the purpose of this column, Energy Update, is to point the direction how.
The goals may not be immediately obtainable. Remember when Kennedy set the goal to put a man on the moon? It took time, but less time than most people had thought possible. It should be much simpler to solve our energy problems. Maybe it will take 5, 10, 15 years, but we can do it if we have the foresight, determination and will.
Right now America is the energy pariah of the world. It is claimed that we are the cause of 25% of the world's pollution. Recently Bush declared that it was not in our interests to sign the Kyoto Protocol an agreement between a number of industrial nations and developing nations designed to reduce carbon emissions believed by many scientists to be the major cause of the "greenhouse effect" and global warming. His objection was that it penalized the industrial countries in fact that it would be damaging to our economy and gave an unfair advantage to developing countries such as India and China. He has come up with a revised proposal that is less stringent. Is he right or wrong?
Maybe, rather than agreements which are notoriously difficult to implement and enforce, we should concentrate on setting an example. Then, instead of being the "energy pariah of the world" we could become a true leader and help others solve their problems by exporting our know-how.
There may not be just one solution... rather a number of solutions. Each will have its proponents and this is fine. Let's have real, fair competition that's the American way!
At the moment we have unfair competition. Take, for example, oil. 25% or so of our oil comes from the Middle East. It costs us that's you and me the taxpayer a lot of money to maintain a military presence in Saudi Arabia, primarily to protect our oil interests I read in one report a figure of 75 billion dollars a year... and that was before September 11. If we were to add that money to the cost of the oil we import, it would become clear that oil is not in fact so cheap.
"But what," you may ask, "are the alternatives to oil?"
We are so used to filling up our cars with gasoline that we tend to assume that this is the only source of fuel available.
It is not.
I'd like to mention two possible alternatives: bio-mass ethanol and liquid hydrogen.
Bio-mass ethanol
I recently received a report from a reader about bio-mass ethanol, and the following information is excerpted from that report. (For readers who would like more information, contact Quenten Thornton by email at: qthornton@hotmail.com.)
What is ethanol? "Ethanol" is the same as "ethyl alcohol" which gives us a clue. At least we know something about alcohol! Apart from being able to drink it, it burns. I well remember the English Christmas tradition of pouring brandy over the plumb pudding and then setting light to it. "Ethyl alcohol" is defined in the dictionary as "ordinary alcohol, a colorless volatile liquid made by fermentation as of grain or sugar."
Could alcohol be used instead of gasoline? Sure. Quoting from the report: "For more than one reason, bio-ethanol has become a strategic fuel. Among these reasons, energy self-sufficiency, sustainable renewability, high octane rating, clean burning and reduced emissions, greenhouse gas neutrality and reduction and flexibility of use in chemical, automotive and electricity generation..." "Nearly 50% of large-scale ethanol is manufactured today by fermentation of sugarcane juice mainly in Brazil and the other 50% is by fermentation of corn starch in the USA. ... Grain ethanol is expensive and the high price is mainly due to the high grain and distillation costs. The current selling price of grain alcohol is $1.45 a gallon (after a $0.54 road tax credit)." Note that even at this price, which the writer says is expensive, $1.45 a gallon is still competitive if we compare it with the true cost of oil (to include the cost of maintaining our military in Saudi Arabia).
So what is bio-mass ethanol? Here, rather than using sugar or grain, wood is the bio-mass. "Bio-mass hydrolysis processes for production of fermentable sugars from wood have been known for more the 150 years." The report goes on to outline a new wood hydrolysis process. "... For the first time in history, total simultaneous dissolution of all types of woody plant materials becomes possible. The wood component separation is complete and 98% wood substance and sugar recovery has been independently confirmed." "The estimated bio-ethanol production cost is below $0.75 a gallon without the road tax credits available in North America." Now, doesn't that start to look interesting? a price that is really competitive, even allowing for the unfair competition from oil!
Liquid hydrogen
What is hydrogen? We probably first think of hydrogen as a gas that is lighter than air. It is also highly flammable remember in 1937 the German airship, the Hindenburg, which went up in flames as it was landing in New Jersey. Hydrogen, however, is not only a gas. It is the key ingredient of most fuels described as hydrocarbons. (Hydrocarbons are any one of a class of chemical compounds containing only hydrogen and carbon. Gasoline is a mixture of hydrocarbons. Ethanol is also a hydrocarbon. Its formula is C2H5.)
The problem with burning hydrocarbons is that one is left with the carbon. The hydrogen is clean; the carbon is, basically, soot. So wouldn't it be neat if one could by-pass the carbon altogether and just use hydrogen? This is the idea behind using liquid hydrogen.
How do we get liquid hydrogen?
I'd like to reference an article in U.S. News & World Report of November 12, 2001 called "Wind-power Revolution." This article is mainly about utilizing the power of wind to generate electricity a subject we'll be dealing with in more depth in future articles. One of the problems, however, of wind power is transporting energy in the form of electricity to where it is needed. This is the problem "solved" by our complex grid system. However, this is not an issue when converting wind energy into liquid hydrogen. To quote: "The most far-reaching vision for wind energy involves breaking down the limitations of geography and weather. If enough wind infrastructure is built, the spare energy produced at night could be used to run an electric current through water (a rather simple process) to produce hydrogen. And hydrogen is what auto-makers and indeed, most oil companies, see as the viable alternative to the petroleum that now fuels the U.S. economy."
How would the liquid hydrogen be used to fuel our cars?
We tend to think of fuel as something that burns that's what an internal combustion engine is about... it burns gasoline or diesel. I guess one could burn liquid hydrogen too, but that's not the way it is proposed to use it. A new engine is being developed called the fuel cell. I say "new" though actually the technology has been around for quite some time. The fuel cell does not burn the hydrogen but uses it in a chemical process without combustion as a fuel to create electricity.
So the car of the future may well be electric, fueled by a fuel cell using liquid hydrogen, ethanol or even today's gasoline. Is this 10-15 years down the line? No, not according to the article. "'We are working as hard as we can to get them on the road,' says Sara Tatchio, spokesman for Ford Motor Co., which plans limited production as soon as 2003." (I saw a GM prototype of a fuel-cell driven car at Epcot last year.)
True, we may have to build an infrastructure that allows consumers to fill up with hydrogen or ethanol, as they now do with gasoline at gas stations, but that may well be an investment worth making.
In the next issue, I'll be talking more about fuel cells and how they work.
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