Re: America's future energy source?

[denison.8@postbox.acs.ohio-state.edu (Eric Denison)]

In article  xat@inel.gov (Alden Tschaeche) writes:

>Sandy Perle wrote:

>>   ``The 35 billion tonnes of methane carbon on the Blake ridge
>> is a quantity of methane that could meet the 1996 United States'
>> natural gas consumption rate for the next 105 years,'' 

>Then what?  How about all the CO2 that burning methane would put into
>the atmosphere (if you believe in the greenhouse effect)?  

All that CO2 should be metabolized by plants, which have done a superb job of 
cleaning it up thus far.  After all, there haven't been substantial changes 
in the atmospheric composition tables lately, have there?  This assumes, of 
course, that we can get people to stop burning down the forests...

>Nuclear is still better environmentally and costwise.

For electric power generation, yes.  But until they can heat my house directly 
with a small reactor, I want natural gas.  Apologies to all of the utility 
folks, but electric heat just doesn't cut it.  Been there, done that, don't 
want to go back.

Eric Denison