All they do is concentrate the pollution into fewer places; I presume you have never lived downwind from a coal fired power plant or seen what is left after coal has been strip mined from the earth.

But that's actually really important; by concentrating pollution into fewer places, it makes it massively easier to reduce it, either by replacing the polluting fuel with a cleaner one (nuclear instead of coal/gas), or by capturing the carbon emissions. Admittedly CCS is currently unproven tech, but it's feasible and in development. So aggregating your polluting sources into fewer locations is an absolutely vital first step.

I've never understood the dismissive 'but it just moves the pollution to power stations' comment about electric cars. We do have clean sources of fuel. In France, 80% of electricity comes from nuclear power. Not only do they have close to the lowest energy prices in Europe, but they can reduce pollution further using electric cars. Rinse and repeat for the Nordic countries and hydro power, and so on.

I've never understood the dismissive 'but it just moves the pollution to power stations' comment about electric cars.

Depends on how you define pollution. Your blithe characterization of nuclear energy as clean suggests an extremely narrow definition. Just as the economics of nuclear energy look really nice when costs are off the books, the environmental impacts of nuclear energy look really nice when they're not included in the definition of pollution.

I've never understood the dismissive 'but it just moves the pollution to power stations' comment about electric cars.

Even ignoring nuclear power, turbine power stations are far more efficient at converting petroleum to electricity than a car's internal combustion engine. All things being equal, shifting the burden of power from automobiles to power stations would represent an enormous uptick in petroleum efficiency. Of course, all things are not equal, but that's part of the discussion.

GCC is completely right about nuclear power.

I've never understood the dismissive 'but it just moves the pollution to power stations' comment about electric cars.

That's because you're thinking like someone who wouldn't oppose it just to oppose it.

Of course it makes perfect sense to switch cars to electric as much as possible, and then power the grid with the most logical mix of technologies/fuels for a given geographic area.

I would argue, however, that unless and until you can effectively and quickly charge a vehicle through a normal wall outlet enough to go a short distance, a small backup ICE with a small tank capacity still makes an awful lot of sense. It would ease one concern about adopting mostly electric vehicles, and of course would provide actual backup in the event of power outages, massive traffic tie-ups that could leave many electric cars stranded, etc.

Depends on how you define pollution. Your blithe characterization of nuclear energy as clean suggests an extremely narrow definition. Just as the economics of nuclear energy look really nice when costs are off the books, the environmental impacts of nuclear energy look really nice when they're not included in the definition of pollution.

OK, fair comment, there are definitely obstacles to overcome with nuclear power, but those problems tend to scale very well, whereas they don't with most thermal generation solutions. You can achieve massive efficiencies in terms of nuclear waste storage and re-processing if you're willing to make it the backbone of your electricity mix, as France has. But you can't significantly reduce pollution from thermal sources until we make a CCS breakthrough.

Which we will; it's not that difficult; it just requires money and time, and political will - which isn't helped by the political influence of those who really, really don't want climate change to be true, and thus have decided that any facts that contradict that faith must be in error. But, you know, facts are awfully inconvenient things.

Back to my point: Nuclear power used as baseload is cheap and efficient and safe. Nuclear power used as a 'sprinkle-in' 15-20% isn't that cheap or efficient, but it is safe. The Dash for Gas in the UK unfortunately stopped nuclear build in its tracks, but had it not, we could be looking at Paris-level energy costs (something like 30% of UK power costs for the end user right now).

Plus, of course, historical deaths per TWh of electricity produced for different fuel sources - Coal: 161. Oil: 36. Gas: 4. Nuclear: 0.04.

Depends on how you define pollution. Your blithe characterization of nuclear energy as clean suggests an extremely narrow definition. Just as the economics of nuclear energy look really nice when costs are off the books, the environmental impacts of nuclear energy look really nice when they're not included in the definition of pollution.

There are three major sources for electricity generation in the US: coal, natural gas, and nuclear (the first two are about 80%, nuclear is another 10-15%). Coal is absolutely horrid: mining causes serious environmental damage, burning releases both carbon and dangerous pollutants. Natural gas is a bit better: drilling is less harmful (for the most part), burning is cleaner (still carbon, but less of the other pollutants). Nuclear has no airborne emmissions, but mining and refining uranium is nasty work (and there's always the risk of radioactive releases, albeit very overstated). Then there's what to do with spent fuel rods.

But this is a bit moot if we're talking about Seattle/Washington State, which has the best hydroelectric power network in the country - 3/4 of Washington's electricity comes from hydropower (U.S. EIA). From an environmental statepoint, electric cars make all the sense in the world there.

facts are awfully inconvenient things.

That would make a good name for a movie!

...or a really sad country song.

Coal is absolutely horrid: mining causes serious environmental damage, burning releases both carbon and dangerous pollutants.

I've spent the last 24 hours engrossed in Jonathan Franzen's "Freedom". Are you telling me Walter Bergland's dream of saving the cerulean warbler through mountain top removal of coal isn't going to work?

The most amazing public transit system I've ever seen is the skytrain in Bangkok.

I loved traveling in Bangkok, and the rest of Thailand. So many options for transport, very fun and convenient.

I loved traveling in Bangkok, and the rest of Thailand. So many options for transport, very fun and convenient.

So you recommend it as a vacation spot? Thinking a couple years down the road here, as Portugal's up next...

I've spent the last 24 hours engrossed in Jonathan Franzen's "Freedom". Are you telling me Walter Bergland's dream of saving the cerulean warbler through mountain top removal of coal isn't going to work?

What did you think? I found it disappointing on the whole though it has some effective set pieces (like the son finding out what kind of person he is by digging through his own #### for an engagement ring while on a business trip with a hot girl he wanted to ####).

[Edit] Thailand might be the greatest place in the world.

What did you think? I found it disappointing on the whole though it has some effective set pieces (like the son finding out what kind of person he is by digging through his own #### for an engagement ring while on a business trip with a hot girl he wanted to ####).

I'm actually still about 100 pages from finishing it. Luckily I passed that scene this afternoon so you didn't spoil anything for me! I'm finding it entertaining, though after this and The Corrections I remain confused as to why Franzen is hailed as a genius. To me his stuff is the definition of guilty pleasure...I consume it because I have an affinity for repressed family tension, and the fact that he can drag out inevitable and horrible sexual decisions for pages upon pages...but I'm not really sure if that adds up to worthwile work. I do like that his characters devote about 50 times more time and effort to deciphering the petty, under-handed reasons they do things, and subsequently disguising that, than they spend actually doing them.

Which I guess is a long way of saying I enjoy reading his books because his characters seem to approach the world the same way I do. Which in turn leads me to suspect that I read him purely because it in some way validates my own pettiness. Both books I've read voraciously, and then (I'm assuming future events with this second one now) upon completion I feel bad about myself for liking them and despise my hipster friends who swear by him.


EDIT: I've always had an odd thing with Franzen because I read "The Corrections" on the urging of the girl I was in love with at the time who said the younger brother reminded her of me, which she saw as a compliment. Considering how he turned out it was a bit of a quandry.

So you recommend it as a vacation spot? Thinking a couple years down the road here, as Portugal's up next...

I cannot more strongly recommend Southeast Asia. Beautiful, inexpensive, friendly.

Now, that being said, this was in 2007, before whatever insect or caribou god of nature and human anger decided to turn the place into a hotbed of difficulty. I'm not sure how different it is now compared with then. With all that, Vietnam and Cambodia were as equally awesome as Thailand, if not moreso.


I simply cannot get into Franzen because I'm fine when fiction portrays unhappiness, difficulty, and discomfort; but when every single character is unhappy, difficult, and uncomfortable, I just don't find it realistic or compelling.

I simply cannot get into Franzen because I'm fine when fiction portrays unhappiness, difficulty, and discomfort; but when every single character is unhappy, difficult, and uncomfortable, I just don't find it realistic or compelling.

So the adjectives you're least likely to use when describing BBTF are "realistic" and "compelling"?

I simply cannot get into Franzen because I'm fine when fiction portrays unhappiness, difficulty, and discomfort; but when every single character is unhappy, difficult, and uncomfortable, I just don't find it realistic or compelling.

I'm not so well read that it would surprise me if someone else did it as well, but what I found most compelling about The Corrections (Freedom is on my shelf waiting its turn behind Stephenson and Chabon) was the way that Franzen effectively portrayed the way the different characters viewed and interpreted the same events, actions, motivations, etc. The way that (at least for me) you could read the section told from the daughter's perspective and find her forthright and credible...only to be smacked in the face later when reading things from the mother's perspective.

The essential truth that we don't see things the same way--that we are deeply influenced, even blinded at times, by our own particular point of view and inability to see or understand someone else's, even those close to us--the book's success at showing that without ever resorting to telling it is, for me, what elevated it as a tremendous piece of work. (He did something similar, in a more limited way, in Strong Motion, so I think it's a key theme for him.

I simply cannot get into Franzen because I'm fine when fiction portrays unhappiness, difficulty, and discomfort; but when every single character is unhappy, difficult, and uncomfortable, I just don't find it realistic or compelling.

So the adjectives you're least likely to use when describing BBTF are "realistic" and "compelling"?

Fortunately, we have Shooty. He only ever gets uncomfortable when his girl laughs at him when he's naked.

I agree with the earlier posts: you'll never catch me living where I need a car. I can drive, and I do when I visit my mother out in the boonies, but when I go to work, I don't need the stress of traffic. I read my paper, drink my water and look out the window (I'm fortunate half of my subway ride is outside, in Queens, though I live in Manhattan). And I do the same on the way home.

I also am a grad student (with a part-time job) with little disposable income, and paying 100 or so a month to get myself around is a lot, lot, lot more feasible than having a car. (I still won't be buying a car once money picks up after school ends though.)

I like the SF transit system but as others have said it doesn't go very many places within the city (and wow cabs are hard to get downtown there). DC's is pretty but sort of expensive considering its infrequency.

Paris, London, Beijing, Tokyo, Seoul (particularly), Singapore all do it very well.

Have spent very little time in Chicago but I hear good things.

This view may change once I pass 40 and stop going out. But I have never, in my life, had the need for a designated driver (I went to college in jersey but we didn't drive to parties).

I enjoy visiting my friends in LA, but if I had to commute in that mess every day I'd just jump off a bridge.

And people say, "Ah but with a car, you can go anywhere!" Yes, I'm 25. I can rent a car if I really need to go someplace obscure. But most places I can get to by commuter train, bus, or plane, and then I never have to park or worry about anything related to owning a car.

But of course I'm biased. I do like a nice solo drive with no traffic. But the places I'd have to live to find that every day or what have you would depress the hell out of me.

If I move out of NYC someday (and I have several times, but to Paris, S. Korea, etc., places with good subways, aside from college), it will be to a similarly well-connected place.

Nothing like heading home after a night out and hopping the bus or train that never closes and leaves me a few blocks from my door (at the most).


Now, you know what the worst is? Living in a big, well-connected city but away from the places where the trains go. You know, like Staten Island. Heh.

EDIT: Sorry this ran long, but I've loved subways since I was four years old and memorized the entire NYC map when I had the chickenpox and was out of school for a week.

I'm not so well read that it would surprise me if someone else did it as well, but what I found most compelling about The Corrections (Freedom is on my shelf waiting its turn behind Stephenson and Chabon) was the way that Franzen effectively portrayed the way the different characters viewed and interpreted the same events, actions, motivations, etc. The way that (at least for me) you could read the section told from the daughter's perspective and find her forthright and credible...only to be smacked in the face later when reading things from the mother's perspective. The essential truth that we don't see things the same way--that we are deeply influenced, even blinded at times, by our own particular point of view and inability to see or understand someone else's, even those close to us--the book's success at showing that without ever resorting to telling it is, for me, what elevated it as a tremendous piece of work. (He did something similar, in a more limited way, in Strong Motion, so I think it's a key theme for him.

I don't disagree with a single word of this, I just don't think it's in opposition to my subjective problem with Franzen's work. (I mean, MOSTLY subjective. It's rooted there, absolutely, but something about the uniformity/unanimity of discomfort rings so false to me.) That so many people I respect have positive things to say about Franzen is enough for me to admit I just don't like it vs. it's not good.

I don't disagree with a single word of this, I just don't think it's in opposition to my subjective problem with Franzen's work. (I mean, MOSTLY subjective. It's rooted there, absolutely, but something about the uniformity/unanimity of discomfort rings so false to me.) That so many people I respect have positive things to say about Franzen is enough for me to admit I just don't like it vs. it's not good.

It sounds like you may not like it primarily because the way he sees the world, or people--or at least the part of it/them he deems interesting enough to write about--is at odds with the way you do. And I can entirely understand that.

franzen is a genius, but you have to have the stomach for that kind of genius. for me reading him is like watching someone operating on my brain. he is about the same age as me and so his first person stuff in the new yorker is just scary for how it converges with my state of mind. plus, i think his actual prose style is quite accessible, which makes him all the more dangerous. its easy to get sucked into the world he's composing.
those aren't criticisms. i really think he's an important writer. that said, he might turn into the type of writer whose art does not age well. he's extremely in the present.

plus, i think his actual prose style is quite accessible, which makes him all the more dangerous.

This, too. He's not overly showy or stylized, but that's not easy to do well either. I think that might extend his shelf life.

I would put David Mitchell in that general category of prose as well. Mitchell's might be "prettier," and of course his earlier work is structurally very ambitious, but I think he's also very accessible. Jacob de Zoet was a ####### fantastic read, by the way.

I enjoy visiting my friends in LA, but if I had to commute in that mess every day I'd just jump off a bridge.

Welcome to my life. I spend last least an hour each way every single day on the freeways, and it sucks. By the time I get to work I already feel worn down, and when I get home I'm usually in the worst frame of mind to shift in to dad/husband mode. However, because LA's public trains on reach within 20 minutes of my house and the busses to and from the train stations are... let's just say "slow," it would actually take me 30 minutes longer each way to take public transportation.

Southern California sprawl kills public transportation. It just does.

I do like a nice solo drive with no traffic. But the places I'd have to live to find that every day or what have you would depress the hell out of me.

You can have that in San Francisco, amongst many other urban spots. One of my favorite parts of SF was driving around the city in the late evening. Taking Hyde Street north towards the water- and then heading east somewhere- is one of the best driving experiences you'll ever have.

SF is great becasue you can get around without a car, but it's still a great city to have a car in. LA lags a bit on the former (depending on your location) but it's a great place to have a car because of how big it is and because of all the natural spots to visit nearby. Manhattan is probably the only US city I've spent time in where I might consider simply not having a car, even if I was there full-time. All the same, I'd still need good access to one. Public transport is great, being wholly reliant on it, is not IMO. I've been in Manhattan, as well as couple of European cities, for long stretches where I didn't have a great car option, and it starts to feel a bit stifling.

Yes, I remember someone telling me that the (4?) LA subways are even slower than the driving.

Public transport is great, being wholly reliant on it, is not IMO. I've been in Manhattan, as well as couple of European cities, for long stretches where I didn't have a great car option, and it starts to feel a bit stifling.

Never once for me. I tend to find cars stifling. And traffic immediately stresses me out.

Traffic does suck. No doubt about it. And LA is awful with traffic. That, and atmospheric inversion, are the two biggest downsides to living in LA.

To paraphrase Biggie, I find Cali a great place to visit. Could live in a small hamlet out there when much much older.

Good for them I guess but where do I go to get my free tank of unleaded.

Considering how many trillions of dollars our government has spent to keep oil flowing, costs that are not passed on to the consumer, I'd guess at least every other tankfull is free.

Yeah. SoCal's a great place to live and a great place to work. It's just a horrible place to commute.

public transportation in a city that has a 60+ mile diameter is difficult

The greater New York mass transit system serves a much larger area than that. I'm sure a lot of other metro areas have similarly scaled systems.

I drive my Prius 150 miles a day three or four days a week. If I lived in Poughkeepsie and worked in Manhattan, I could spend all that time doing work while riding the train instead of just listening to audio books.

public transportation in a city that has a 60+ mile diameter is difficult

That isn't a city.

That, and atmospheric inversion, are the two biggest downsides to living in LA.

I hate to be this guy, but were you there in the early 90s? The air there now is like a filtered biodome compared to then.

I didn't realize it until this thread, but Bangkok is the scene of some of my happiest transportation memories. The skytrain is terrific and very useful, but it's not even the most memorable thing there. The old boats that go up and down the river are a highlight, especially when it was hot. Beautiful view and fresh air. They have seats at the front that are reserved for monks. And then there are smaller boats, like motorized gondolas, that go through the canals. Those canals were crazy. In the middle of that modern city there were still homes and businesses whose "front doors" faced the canals, and little canal-based economies, door to door salesman on boats. I saw a man floating on a giant piece of Styrofoam, using a canoe paddle to get wherever he was going.

And then the motorcycle taxis. I used to take them everywhere. They weave in and out of traffic in a highly entertaining and dangerous manner. Late at night, when the streets were empty, I would take a motorcycle taxi from one end of town to the other. You could get anywhere in no time at all, and if you were drunk it was even better.

Oh, and finally, I took a taxi one night that was like a disco taxi. It had neon everywhere inside. That was fun.

on edit > And I forgot the tuk-tuks! One of the world's single most enjoyable forms of transportation.

The greater New York mass transit system serves a much larger area than that. I'm sure a lot of other metro areas have similarly scaled systems.

Indeed, people commute just as far, if not farther, into NYC. People come in from CT, central Jersey. Manhattan is tiny, but the metro area is one of the largest on earth. It just doesn't feel that way because Manhattan is dense (and really really tiny).

and to put it nicely, public transportation in a city that has a 60+ mile diameter is difficult. the cute little choochoos are for show - going from downtown to the football stadium through the medical center. big deal. bus transportation is a nightmare unless where you are going just happens to be on the route of the bus you originally catch. AND getting your kids from skool, especially if they go to different ones? you are supposed to get them - and you ARE expected to go and get them - like HOW?

It's a totally different situation in most of Manhattan and some of the outer boroughs of NYC. I never thought I'd be happy not to have a car until I lived in Manhattan. For the first two months that I lived here, I had to move my car from one side of the street to the other four times each week or to sit in my car for 90 minutes to avoid a ticket.

Occasionally, the subway isn't convenient or timely and I end up spending maybe $10-15 on a cab, but it's barely faster than the subway unless it's very late at night, and during rush hour, it's almost always slower. I figure that I spend maybe $100/month on trains and maybe $150/month on cabs; I can't imagine that any car would be cheaper than that to own, insure, park, and fuel. There are garages in my neighborhood that charge $400/month, and I'm not in the most expensive area of the city. I'm on a list for a very cheap spot in my building's garage, but there's a long waiting list and it might take five years to become available. Even then, I might turn it down, just because it will probably be cheaper just to rent a car when I need one.

San Francisco has very mediocre public transit. The Bay Area as a whole is almost useless, but there are some sweet spots.

I usually take the Caltrain (commuter train) to Palo Alto - but this commute ends up being nearly an hour and a half to go 35 miles. This includes the fastest possible way of getting to the train station in SF - i just drive 3 miles and park 3 blocks away. Taking the street car (2x3 block walks) probably takes 40 minutes instead of 20 because you have to factor in waiting up to 15 minutes AT RUSH HOUR for the streetcar.

If I lived in another part of town it would take 45+ minutes to get to the train.

Note that of my 1 hour 20 minute commute it breaks down like this:

10 minutes drive to train station
9 minutes walk + wait for train
32 minutes train (express)
5 minute wait for shuttle bus
20 minute shuttle drive
5 minute walk to office

My office used to be in the main part of campus and that last 30 minutes was more like 12.

The brutal parts are the
a) the switching costs for various segments to match up

combined with

b) the fact that the big "legs" are extremely infrequent so if I miss my train or shuttle it adds 30 minutes or more.

I can drive in about 45 minutes, although often the freeway exit is clogged and it will take me 20+ minutes to go the last 2 miles.

It's funny with all the political debates over irrelevant issues the real enemy of humanity is never attacked. That enemy is suburban development which should be attacked at every opportunity. That said, I own a house 5 kilometres from downtown of a city of a million people and without suburban development that probably wouldn't be possible. Nonetheless, I still say a mass transit system that goes everywhere and has a train every five to ten minutes is a basic condition for living life to its fullest in a mass society.

Planners and architects have been hammering on suburban development since the 1970s and are largely ignored. It would take enormous political will to end it, and it would require a combination of incentives and regulation that Americans seem to loathe. I'd like to see, for instance, a five year ban on building detached, single family homes, but that's no more likely than the U.S. adopting a one child per family policy.

Last I crunched some numbers, replacing all vehicles in the U.S. with electric vehicles would require a doubling of the current number of operating power plants. It's close to time to bet the farm--I'd bet on solar if it was my game, and if enough large volcanoes erupt to significantly diminish the amount of sunlight that reaches earth then we perform triage. Then again, I think a one child policy makes a lot of sense, I'd just push it via tax incentives rather than through the police force and forced sterilization.

On the other end of the scale, the small Amsterdam system is fairly nasty, probably because most of the population fare-dodge.

I thought most systems had learned early to beat fare dodging through the judicious use of pairs of enforcement officers who spot-check tickets and hand out stiff fines, payable immediately, to people who fail to buy tickets. Does that not happen in Amsterdam?

I learned the hard way when I was fourteen and youth hosteling through one of the northern European countries. My friend and I thought that free subways were very cool until those uniformed guys came by and pretty much emptied our wallets. I think it was in Holland, fwiw...

All they do is concentrate the pollution into fewer places; I presume you have never lived downwind from a coal fired power plant or seen what is left after coal has been strip mined from the earth.

But that's actually really important; by concentrating pollution into fewer places, it makes it massively easier to reduce it, either by replacing the polluting fuel with a cleaner one (nuclear instead of coal/gas), or by capturing the carbon emissions. Admittedly CCS is currently unproven tech, but it's feasible and in development. So aggregating your polluting sources into fewer locations is an absolutely vital first step.

It works for garbage; less so for other things. Reasonably compacted, without excessive recycling, the U.S. generates something like 27 billion cubic feet of garbage each year. Sounds like a lot, but if you could distill that to 27 cubes a year a thousand by a thousand feet, and dump it on a yard thick clay carpet on some unlamented real estate in North Dakota it ceases to be much of a problem. That's a square mile a thousand feet high. Not much in the scheme of things and while the above is obviously not practiceable getting rid of garbage isn't a genuine problem if it's thought of in terms of, say, 500 smaller disposal stations. Building 300 new nuclear power plants, or roughly 500 new reactors, which is what an all electric fleet would take, on the other hand....

That so many people I respect have positive things to say about Franzen is enough for me to admit I just don't like it vs. it's not good.

Come on now, trust your instincts. I sort of liked Freedom but at the end of the day he doesn't actually have anything to say. Or rather he has things to say but they don't add up to anything. He's certainly a good writer but I'm not surprised that people don't like him. It isn't you, it's him.

I thought most systems had learned early to beat fare dodging through the judicious use of pairs of enforcement officers who spot-check tickets and hand out stiff fines, payable immediately, to people who fail to buy tickets. Does that not happen in Amsterdam?

Not very much; people just refuse to pay the fines, and walk off at the next stop (probably to join the next train). And the Dutch transport officials don't seem minded to press their case. Plus, if you plead 'tourist', they generally let you off anyway. Until recently, Amsterdam used a very non-intuitive system for buying journeys in bulk, called 'strippenkarten', which tourists were always getting wrong, so you'd need a fairly hard heart to enforce the letter of the law.

There's also a surcharge for taking your bike on an Amsterdam metro, but, as the local newspaper I read recently told me, 'if you pay this charge, you will be the first person in Amsterdam to do so'.

Building 300 new nuclear power plants, or roughly 500 new reactors, which is what an all electric fleet would take, on the other hand....

It would be very expensive and take a lot of time and arguments. But it would also grade out safer, cheaper (including for the end user), and less polluting than the equivalent in thermal. Hey, I'd rather they carpet Nevada in solar panels first, but at some point you need baseload. Consider, too, how much it costs and pollutes just to move oil and coal to where it's needed . . . Electricity transmission isn't cheap to build, but it lasts.

But that's actually really important; by concentrating pollution into fewer places, it makes it massively easier to reduce it, either by replacing the polluting fuel with a cleaner one (nuclear instead of coal/gas), or by capturing the carbon emissions. Admittedly CCS is currently unproven tech, but it's feasible and in development. So aggregating your polluting sources into fewer locations is an absolutely vital first step.

Ooh.. CCS! This is right in my wheelhouse! CCS is up there with Wind Turbines and Bio-Fuel as one of the great wastes of resources in the fight against the great satan of carbon emissions.

There are two types of CCS. Post-Combustion (what is currently used in Norway [Mongstad] and elsewhere) and Pre-Combustion which is still in the development stages (the technology works but is still working it's way through the gristmill of the feasability study).

Within Post-Combustion CCS you have two competing technologies (1) Amine based systems using Activated MDEA and (2) Chilled Ammonia based systems. They both have advantages and disadvantages but they aren't that great and it's like choosing between two brands of toaster oven that have slightly differing feature sets.

Post-Combustion CCS can be "bolted on" to existing power stations and has two steps (1)capturing CO2 from flue gas and (2)storage of CO2 (usually by re-injection into depleted gas resevoirs or injection into natural caverns). Each of these steps has very significant engineering challenges because of the sheer scale of the plant required.

The CO2 capture process [whether by Amine or Chilled Ammonia] requires heat exchangers, compressors, expanders an absorption column and a regeneration column. Due to the extremely large volumes of flue gas the process columns would typically be in the order of 15-20m in diameter and ~50+ m in height. Due to the scale the CAPEX for a plant I was recently involved with was in the order of £2bn and rising - also remember that because the power generated by the station has to also power the CCS plant the actual usable power generation capacity of the station will be reduced by 30% or more. The only and I do mean ONLY way these plants are actually viable is through massive government subsidy - no power company would want to build one on it's own dime unless you want to see your electric bill double.

Pre-Combustion CCS is a little better but it is not really carbon capture, it's rebranded "clean coal" and little more than a super-sized coal gasification plant to make syngas and then scrubbing the CO2 from the Syngas before it is burnt to reduce the volume that needs to be handled.

If only there were some ... object... that could capture CO2 and store it. Maybe as a side benefit it could absorb solar radiation and cool the earth a little.

Maybe it could even use some of the solar radiation in CO2 capture and store it as a high quality fuel.

It would require a really intelligent designer, though. Or a long, long time.

Note that of my 1 hour 20 minute commute it breaks down like this:

10 minutes drive to train station
9 minutes walk + wait for train
32 minutes train (express)
5 minute wait for shuttle bus
20 minute shuttle drive
5 minute walk to office

Yes, public transportation is great if it happens to be going where you need to go, when you need to be there. Do you really enjoy spending three hours of your life each day traveling to and from work? I understand that you have to be where your job is and all that but one would think that your time is worth something. I live in a relatively small town (appx 125,000 people) and on a normal day, my commute to work is 15 minutes. I don't want you to think I'm picking on you personally I'm just saying that not everyone wants to live and work in a major metropolitan area. I am more than happy to live in a small town and have the time I don't spend commuting back & forth to work available for other uses.

San Francisco has very mediocre public transit. The Bay Area as a whole is almost useless...

I lived for three years in San Francisco as an adult with no driver's license and never once thought this.

Also, PreservedFish made the exact same post in #133 I was too lazy to write out about Bangkok public transit.

If only there were some ... object... that could capture CO2 and store it. Maybe as a side benefit it could absorb solar radiation and cool the earth a little.

There is.

Maybe it could even use some of the solar radiation in CO2 capture and store it as a high quality fuel.

Yup.

It would require a really intelligent designer, though. Or a long, long time.

Not on the first count:

Natural selection

But correct on the second:

Evolution tree

CCS is up there with Wind Turbines and Bio-Fuel as one of the great wastes of resources in the fight against the great satan of carbon emissions.

I don't get agree with this comment at all. Wind turbines and biofuel production certainly are more clean than the burning of fossil fuels, especially coal. In some places, wind is actually quite economical.

We aren't as far along with biofuels but a lot of progress is being made and their presence will serve as a barrier to the oil price going too high.

facts are awfully inconvenient things.

Ha. Facts are "stubborn things". Or "inconvenient truths".