Scientists Turn Air Into Petrol

You are so far off base that you must have done absolutely zero research here. I'm going to go down the list of why you're wrong point by point:

1. Population density is slightly lower in Brazil than in the US - Brazil has an approximate population of 194,429,773 while the US has a population of 312,488,000. Given the area measurements of each country, the population density of Brazil is 22/km (57/sq mi) and the US is 31/km (80/sq mi). This indicates that the population density of the US is approximately 40% greater than in Brazil which is a SIGNIFICANT difference. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brazil%E2%80%93United_States_relations]

2. Brazil has a national power grid that covers every part of the country that's physically possible - Please cite your reference for this information as I can find zero information supporting this. Regardless, the US has a very similar system in that failure of a single reactor does not typically create a permanent outage scenario. My next point also illustrates why your argument is flawed at its base.

3. The US grid is much, much worse than Brazil's - Brazil produces a total of 484,800 GWh while the United States produces over 4,325,900 GWh of power yearly (from 2010 numbers - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_electricity_production [wikipedia.org]). Over 80% of all electricity generated by Brazil is Hydroelectric which sounds great at first until you consider that regional droughts can and have caused serious power issues in the past (2001-2002 crisis - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electricity_sector_in_Brazil [wikipedia.org]). This makes Brazil's entire power grid so heavily reliant on a single resource that it cannot sustain the demand for power in the event that weather conditions are not hunky-dory. In other words, this is much less reliable and much more prone to system-wide failures or outages than the US grid. Granted, Brazil's energy production is more renewable and 'greener', however hydroelectric damming is known to cause widespread ecosystem problems by interrupting spawning paths for fish and other animals that rely on the uninterrupted flow of water along natural riverways.

Ultimately, I'm not saying Brazil's grid sucks, I'm just saying you're wrong and you have no idea what you're talking about.

Source: http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdotScience/~3/TWavdwH_o8M/scientists-turn-air-into-petrol

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