Stuff You Should Know - Geothermal Energy: Earth's Gift to Mankind

Episode Date: September 24, 2015

Green energy is good for all, and it doesn't get much greener than using the Earth's own heat to warm your home or office. Learn all about geothermal energy in today's new episode. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

On the podcast, Hey Dude, the 90s called, David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show, Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're gonna use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s.

We lived it, and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s called on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast, Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass

and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help. And a different hot, sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life. Tell everybody, ya everybody, about my new podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never, ever have to say. Bye, bye, bye.

Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know from HouseStuffWorks.com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles W. Chuck Bryant, Jerry, and me, Josh Clark.

Which makes this stuff you should know, the podcast. That's right. I thought that I wrote this article, and it turns out it didn't. That's not your pseudonym, Stephanie Watson. No, I thought, I updated, I did something way back in the day on our website about geothermal energy. It might've just been an update

that I didn't end up getting a byline for. It was probably how to survive a shipwreck due to geothermal energy or something like that, right? Maybe. Didn't you do a bunch of survival ones? Yeah, I was a survival guy for a while. You were wearing that bush hat, the safari hat? Yeah.

Where one flap goes up? Uh-huh. Like the jungle guy from G.I. Joe. What was his name? I don't know, I didn't watch those. Man, that's crazy. Yeah, I know, right? Crazy.

That was too sophisticated. Chuck. Yes. So, do you know that Earth is about 4.8 billion years old? It's old. Super old. That's like so old. Some say it's a lot younger.

Some people do. Yeah. Science is pretty much in consensus on the idea that it's about 4.8 billion years old. All right. And for about the first billion of those years, it was in a crazy state. Yeah.

Just loco, basically. So, the whole thing supposedly formed as an accretion disk. Yeah. Right? And the terrestrial planets in our solar system, which include Earth, Mercury, Venus, and Mars, happened to attract the heavier elements,

elemental particles, which created a rocky core eventually, and then more and more stuff was attracted to this rotating gravity-pulsing core, and the Earth was formed eventually, right? Yes. Well, as it was formed, or forming at some point, another celestial body, which just took off afterward, slammed into Earth.

Yeah. And remember, we talked about the moon. This is how the moon was formed. Yeah. Just basically spit out a bunch of the Earth, and then the moon formed its own little accretion disk, and then there was the moon. But when this body hit the Earth,

they think that it melted, the impact melted the first several thousand kilometers of the Earth's surface. Yeah. The depth just melted it. It hit it that hard. Isn't that cool? Yeah.

So I raised this, all right, I mentioned all of this for two points. One, that heat that was originally part of the Earth's early formation. Still there. Yes. And then secondly, the heat from that impact that eventually calved the moon.

Yeah. Still there too. Wow. Isn't that crazy to think that after 4.8 billion years, the Earth is still cooling down? Yeah. That's pretty remarkable. That's not all.

So those account for a combined about half of the heat found in the Earth's core. The other half is mostly from radioactive decay of isotopes in the core from these incredibly high temperatures and heat. The particles actually decay, and as they decay, a particle is sloughed off and when there's an imbalance in the mass,

that extra mass is released as heat energy. So that's about half of the heat in the core, but it's substantial. It is. 4,400 miles, that's 6,400 clicks down, you're gonna have temperatures of about 7,600 degrees Fahrenheit. That's hot.

That's the core, baby. And at that core. And we should say for our friends everywhere else on Earth, that's about 4,200 degrees Celsius. That's right. And at that core, we're talking about rock melting temperatures creating magma, which is that melted rock. Right.

So you've got the magma down there. It's less dense, so it tends to rise. And we talked about it a lot in the Volcano episode. We talked about it some in the Geysers episode, when the lava flows, that is the magma, but when it just stays down there, it heats up water, underground water, and that escapes sometimes as Geysers,

sometimes as hot springs even. Yeah, it can just be like an underground reservoir of really, really, really hot water. Yeah, or it just stays there. And that's what's called a geothermal reservoir, is when you have this really hot water heated by magma, just hanging out down there, waiting to be used. Yeah.

So just in the first 50 kilometers, no, I'm sorry, just in the first 10 kilometers below the Earth's surface, right? Yes. Not that deep. There is an estimated 50,000 times more energy in the form of heat than there is in all of the oil and natural gas reserves in the world.

What? 50,000 times more energy, right? Crazy. Because of all this heat. And everywhere you go on Earth, you're going to find, in some way, shape, or form, this heat that's in the Earth's surface, beneath the surface.

Yes. So I said that's just waiting to be used. It's not waiting to be used, because it is being used in the form of geothermal energy. And that is not new. It goes back to the Roman times. Ancient Romans used hot springs. Yeah, the city of Bath in England.

It's a Roman town. That's right. Built around hot springs. Right here in North America, 10,000 years ago, are American paleo-Indian friends. They used hot springs. They bathed in them. They cooked in them.

Yeah, they used to. I would imagine not at the same time. I don't know. They could be like Kramer. Remember we prepared that radish flower as he bathed? Yeah. Nice butt stew. Yeah.

They used to lower FDR into the warm springs at Warm Springs, Georgia. That's right. And the first real geothermal heating system was developed in Boise, Idaho, here in the United States. But before that, it was developed in Italy, in Lauderello. That was actually after it. So the one in Boise.

Oh, was it? Yeah. I thought the first one was in pizza in Lauderello now. So the first, and we'll talk about the distinctions in a minute, but the first. Oh, the first plant was in Italy. Right. So that was a geothermal energy production plant.

In Boise, Idaho, they used what's called direct geothermal energy, which is basically where you just pipe this really hot water and use it to heat greenhouses in the winter. Or there's a lot of cities that get snow on the ground that have basically radiant heat sidewalks, where the heat from the geothermal springs nearby is pump any sidewalks or streets

to keep the ice from forming. Yeah, Climate Falls, Oregon. They have such a system because they knew. We have a KGRA nearby, which is a known geothermal resource area. They have water from about 200 to 220 degrees, just sitting underneath the ground. And they, like you said, melt their sidewalks.

They melt their bridges. They melt their faces out there. They melt anything they can with that junk. So like I said, 50,000 times the amount of energy in the form of heat, just waiting to be used in the first 10 kilometers below the Earth's surface, everywhere on Earth. Yeah.

That's pretty attractive, man, for a few reasons. One, everybody knows that fossil fuels are dirty. They're problematic. Sure. They require transportation. And if you think about electrical production in the world, the world uses 17.7 million megawatts of electricity, or it did in 2012.

That's a ton of electricity. It is. Most of it was produced by gas, oil, or coal. Yeah. And the whole point of all of those things is you burn them, and you create heat. Yeah. Then you use that heat to heat up water.

Yeah. You use that water to make steam, and use that steam to turn a turbine. Yeah, we talked about this in one of our other ones. How amazing it is. Electricity. Yeah. Everything we've ever come up with still

comes down to trying to get that steam to turn that turbine. That's exactly right. That's why we use all of these fossil fuels is to heat water. Not even just fossil fuels, man. Nuclear power uses radioactive rods. Oh, we definitely talked about it there, yeah. Yeah, and they dip it in water. It heats the water up, turns it into a vapor, spins a turbine.

I mean, with geothermal energy, one of the things that makes it so attractive is you're cutting out a lot of processes. Not only are you cutting out the need to burn fossil fuels, you're cutting out entire steps, which over the course of the plant's lifetime can reduce the cost of this geothermal energy production. Yeah, and it is caught on in a big way.

I believe there are, I think, 20 countries now that are using geothermal energy. The United States is leading the way there. Yeah, surprisingly, I didn't realize that. Yeah, but if you want to really see it in action, go to Iceland, the city of Reykjavik, where basically the entire city is heated with those geothermal wells.

Yeah, and the country of Iceland as a whole, a quarter of its energy is produced geothermally. Amazing. Same with El Salvador, did you know that? I did. Oh, well, I thought you were going to say I did not. You got me there. The thing is, though, is worldwide,

about 7,000 megawatts of geothermal energy are produced. And don't forget, we use 17.7 million megawatts. It's still pretty small things. It is, but we'll talk about the different kinds of geothermal energy right after this. OK, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast, Frosted Tips, with Lance Bass. The hardest thing can be knowing who to turn to when

questions arise or times get tough, or you're at the end of the road. Ah, OK, I see what you're doing. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place, because I'm here to help. This, I promise you.

Oh, god. Seriously, I swear. And you won't have to send an SOS, because I'll be there for you. Oh, man. And so will my husband, Michael. Um, hey, that's me. Yep, we know that, Michael.

And a different hot, sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life, step by step. Oh, not another one. Kids, relationships, life in general, can get messy. You may be thinking, this is the story of my life. Just stop now. If so, tell everybody, yeah, everybody, about my new podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never, ever have to say bye,

bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart Radio App, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. All right, kinds of geothermal energy. I like this stuff. You know that Earth Science Jazz is me, man. Yeah, well, whatever I did for this many years ago, I remember being very turned on by it.

I don't know if it was updating or writing. I just remember thinking, man, this is cool. And if you are a critic of geothermal energy, hold your horses. We understand that there's problems with it. We're just talking about geothermal energy, and it's prose right now. Boy, people get so upset about alternative fuel sources.

I've never gotten that, you know? There's a lot of money at stake, a lot of geopolitical posturing and power in stuff at stake. The world's based on fossil fuels. I know, but I don't know, it just doesn't make sense. It seems like it would make more sense, even for economies to like, hey, let's pursue it all. Well, that seems to be the prevalent mindset

these days, an energy policy that includes everything. Although I think a lot of that, though, is just kind of paying lip service to the alternative stuff, and it gives you a blank check to pursue fossil fuels more, because you seem like you're an open-minded person. Yeah, it's just weird. I don't know, you hear something about solar power, and you think, I think, well, that's neat.

And I'll post something about that. Wait, wait, what does solar power make you think? Well, that's neat. And I'll post something about it on the stuff you should know, Facebook, while people are just so powerful, stupid, that's so dumb, why would anyone do that? What is up with Facebook and stuff like that? It brings out the worst in people.

Give a man a mask, and he will show his true face. Wise words, did you just make that up? No, that's an old saying. I think anything that says give a man a automatically reveals its age, you know? Turn around the block a few times. Give a man a fish, he'll eat for a day, teach a man to fish, he'll eat for at least two or three days.

If the fish are biting. Did you make that one up? Oh, that's a good one, Chuck. It's a t-shirt. I never catch fish, so it should say, teach a man to teach Chuck to fish and he'll starve because he is a very good at catching fish. Can't get a bite.

Nope, gotcha. He'll go to Arthur Treachers instead. Man, are those still around? I think they, there was one in LA that I remember. Seems like Captain D's really took over the market. I don't even see Long John Silver's anymore. There's still Long John's. But I mean, like it's more Captain D's than anything.

Well, as it should be. Oh, are you a Captain D's over Long John's fan? I grew up on Long John Silver's. They got me with the free pirate hats. Yeah. I think I like the Captain D's better. I just like fried fish. Yeah.

Is Arthur Treachers like an also ran just like those? Or is it like a little fancier? No, I think it was just another chain, but has seen its better days in the past, if I'm not mistaken. I might be wrong. Someone tell me about Arthur Treachers. Yeah, if you work at Arthur Treachers,

let us know if it's still around. All right, direct geothermal energy. That is where you have one of those known geothermal resource areas not too far under the Earth's surface. That's like if you're located near a place where there are these hot pools. Yeah, and you're not doing anything fancy with it.

You're just basically piping that hot water into say a house. And using it as hot water at that house, which is what that Boise district did back in 1892. You wanna know something amazing? What? That geothermal direct use plant is still heating 450 homes in Boise today.

Nice, and it is not just to give you hot water. You can also use a heat exchanger and incorporate it into your HVAC system. And all of a sudden you are using that heated water to heat your home as well, and to cool your home. Right, so that's a geothermal heat pump, I believe, right? What, to heat and cool? Yeah, so I think those are both,

like a geothermal heat pump is an example of direct geothermal energy. Direct geothermal energy is not necessarily just like using the hot water to heat and cool your house. It could also be, yeah, exactly. Or you can just use the hot water directly to wash your dishes or something like that. Sure.

But when you're using a heat exchanger or something, this is actually extremely clever. And it's been around for a very long time. And as the green movement's kinda caught on by this stupid green movement. It's this older technology that's starting to get rediscovered, I guess. But basically, if you use a geothermal heat pump,

the whole idea is that you bury in the ground beneath your house some pipes, a closed pipe system. Yeah, closed loop, that's what it's called. And there's like an HVAC system in your house that circulates air, or say something like water or antifreeze through these pipes. And it takes the heat from your house and exchanges it through this heat exchanger in the summer,

sends it through the underground, where it's cooler than it is in your house in the summer. So that water or antifreeze or whatever is cooled, which brings it back and then cools the air in your HVAC system, which then blows out through your ductwork. Yeah, just a few feet under your feet underground. It's 50 to 60 degrees year round.

Yeah, below the frost line, which is usually about 10 feet below ground. And yeah, since it's a steady temperature, depending on the season, especially if you have wild seasonal fluctuations where it gets really cold and really hot, depending on, yeah. Then you can really take advantage of this.

So the whole idea is, if it's say like 50 degrees, in the summertime, when it's 90 degrees, if you're cooling that liquid that's in turn cooling your air, that's easy, but 50 degrees in the winter, that seems not that much warmer, but just that little bit of warmth, that extra say 20 degrees on a particularly cold day,

that heats up that air, which means that your HVAC system has less energy to expend in further heating up the air to say 75 degrees. Yeah, call it an assist. Exactly, so you're still using like a lot of the same technology, like a compressor and all of that,

that you would use with a traditional HVAC system in your home, but the steady temperature of the ground is like you said, assisting that. So you're using less energy and thus your energy costs are less as well. Plus it's reliable. It's not, you know that it's gonna be

between 50 and 60 degrees. Right, all year round. All year round. The third way that you can use this is with a power plant like we talked about. And that is when they, like we said, they generate, they pipe it up through the wells and they generate electricity.

There are dry steam plants where they just pipe it directly into the generator and power it. That's, I guess, the easiest and most cost efficient. Yeah, that's just, yeah. I think the one in Italy and where? Lardarello, I think is Lardarello, Italy in 1904. It's still in online today.

They're basically like, we have the steam. Right, and let's use it. And let's just put a turbine on top of it. And so it cuts out all those middlemen. It's just, you're using the steam, naturally produced steam underground to spin the turbine to produce electricity. Right, and obviously you have to have

a great amount of luck, I guess, to be located near such a place. Right, so that's considered a dry steam plant. Yes, then you have the flash steam and that's water between 300 and 700 degrees Fahrenheit, which is super hot. That they draw it through a well and then use that steam to spin the turbine.

That's right, and then there's binary cycle plants. So, let's say you're not located over a super hot reservoir. Yeah. But you still have pretty hot water, something that would be considered like a hot springs. Typically this is between 150 and 300 degree water, which is as low as, or as high as 148 degrees Celsius,

right? Okay. And what you do is you take this water and you use it to heat another liquid that has a lower boiling point. Yeah. Pretty clever. Then when that liquid with the lower boiling point begins to boil, it creates this steam that powers the turbine.

So again, that's like an assist, I would say, probably. And then lastly, there's another one that's newer that's called enhanced geothermal energy. And basically it uses fracking techniques to create a geothermal hot spot. So they go in and they dig wells, they dig a deposit well, and they dig another well and exit well.

Yeah. Right? And then in between those two, they go in and just break up a bunch of this really hot rock, where there's no water necessarily, but it's super hot, right? Yes. So they pump water into this hot rock bed,

let it heat up, and then they let the hot water come back up the other well. Yeah. And then they use that to create steam, usually like a binary cycle plant. And again, that spins the turbine. Yeah. It's all about spinning that turbine.

All about spinning the turbine, man. All right, so let's take a break here and we will finish up with, I guess the lowdown on how it compares to other forms of energy out there. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new I Heart Podcast, frosted tips with Lance Bass. The hardest thing can be knowing who to turn to when questions arise or times get tough, or you're at the end of the road. Ah, okay,

I see what you're doing. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help. This, I promise you.

Oh, God. Seriously, I swear. And you won't have to send an SOS because I'll be there for you. Oh, man. And so, my husband, Michael. Um, hey, that's me. Yep, we know that, Michael.

And a different hot, sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life, step by step. Oh, not another one. Kids, relationships, life in general can get messy. You may be thinking, this is the story of my life. Oh, just stop now. If so, tell everybody, yeah, everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never, ever have to say bye,

bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you listen to podcasts. ["The Star-Spangled Banner"] All right. So here we are. Is it good?

Is it bad? Well, like everything, it's both. I'm going to have to land on the good side, though, for the most part. I think it's typically good. The thing is, the bad stuff is so rarely mentioned, you know? Everybody thinks like geothermal. It's as green as it gets.

And there are, like, a really, there's a lot about geothermal energy that is very green. For the most part, it emits very, very little carbon dioxide compared to a fossil fuel power plant. Yes, I have some numbers on that, in fact. By the way, if you've ever driven by a geothermal plant and you see the smoke coming out, that's not smoke. It's water vapor.

Yeah. So don't get all up on your hackles. Water vapor. Just water vapor. Which, and I like this stuff, I couldn't find anything. Water vapor is a greenhouse gas, as well, like a pretty bad one. But I didn't see anything where that was, like, a problem with geothermal energy.

Oh, yeah? Yeah. All right, so here's some numbers. They did a case study of a coal plant. They meaning? They, scientists, yeah. Scientists, science doers. May or may not have been funded by a front group.

They said they studied a coal plant with scrubbers, with good scrubbers, and emissions control technology. So basically a newer coal plant. And they said that it emitted 24 times more CO2 and almost 11,000 times more sulfur dioxide and about 3,800 times more nitrous oxide per megawatt hour than a geothermal steam plant. Wow.

Pretty good. No, that's not bad at all. However, one of the concerns with geothermal is it does emit sulfur dioxide. Which gives it a horrible eggy smell. Yes, and contributes to acid rain. But SO2 emissions from geothermal plants are about 30 times lower per megawatt hour than coal plants,

which are the largest SO2 source. So that is one of the bad emissions. Other than that, not a whole lot of really harmful emissions. No. Most of the problems that come from geothermal energy production come from the fact that when you are harvesting hot water from these geothermal sources, before, they used to just pump it out.

Yeah, that was an open loop system. And they figured out. You don't see much anymore. Right. And they figured out that this is a huge waste of a resource, right? Yeah. So they started making closed loop systems

where the water would be pumped out. It would be used to, say, heat some other fluid with a lower boiling point. Or however you used it to make that turbine spin. And then the water would be captured and then sent back down into the reservoir to be reheated and used again. Super smart. It is very smart.

And in that case, there's even fewer emissions than with an open loop system. The problem is that it also leads to introduction of things like salts, sometimes arsenic, other heavy metals, into the groundwater supply once it comes through and makes a cycle. So there's a threat to groundwater contamination using geothermal energy production.

That's one problem with it. Another one is those hotbeds that are used that basically use fracking techniques. Just like with fracking, they can cause things like earthquakes or massive earth sinking. There's apparently a geothermal plant in Australia where the areas sunk about five feet ever since it's been in production.

Wow. Yeah, because you're going in and you're sucking out all the water. You're breaking up a bunch of rocks that form bedrock. So when you start messing with that stuff, it can have seismic repercussions. Ooh, that's a good band name. Thanks.

The noise pollution is on the plus side because they say it typically produces less noise than the equivalent of leaves rustling from breeze. That is not bad. Plus the typical geothermal power plant takes about a lot less real estate. Yeah, you can do a vertical system if it suits the area and that really doesn't use up much

as far as spreading it out. It's called surface area. Right. Because it's going straight up and down. It uses a lot less water. Geothermal plant uses five gallons of fresh water per megawatt hour compared to 361 gallons by a natural gas facility.

Isn't that ironic? It uses less water. Yeah. Even though water is the basis of the whole thing. Yeah. And apparently, binary air-cooled plants use zero fresh water. Oh, it's all just down from the earth.

Yes, and for the land use, I did have one more stat. Over a 30-year span, which is the time period they usually use to consider the big impact of a life cycle of a system, they said a geothermal facility uses 404 square meters of land per gigawatt hour, while coal uses 3,632 square meters per gigawatt hour. Wow. That's a big diff.

Yeah. I also saw that they had a net energy ratio of four. That for every one input of energy, you get five in return. Yeah, which is really great. The thing is, the upfront costs are very expensive. Yeah. So in a lot of places where it would be advantageous

to start a geothermal energy production plant, they just don't have the money to set up that kind of infrastructure. It's anywhere from $1 million to $4 million for a well to be drilled, and with, say, like a hot rock binary system, you need two wells at least. That's just for one area. Yeah.

So the upfront costs can be prohibitive. And the same thing goes for if you're setting up like a geothermal heat pump in your home, too. Yeah, I think it's pretty reasonable. Well, with government subsidies, it's super reasonable now. With the energy savings, they typically estimate the thing pays for itself within like five years. Yeah, for the 2009 Economic Stimulus Recovery Act,

they removed the cap on heat pump system rebates. So now you can get 30% toward a qualified geothermal heat pump system. So even the Richie Riches can make out. So if you're looking at an average, a typical home of 2,500 square feet, boy, that's a typical home, jeez. A heating load of 60,000 BTUs and a cooling load of 60,000 BTUs

is going to cost about $20 to $25 grand to install. You get 30% back, and that's about double the cost of conventional heating and cooling HVAC. But it reduces your bill by 40% to 60%, and it lasts 18 to 23 years, which is easily double what your standard HVAC will cost. So you're definitely going to make your money back if you want to invest in something like this.

It's also better than wind and solar in many ways, because you don't have to rely on the sunshine or the wind to blow. It's 24-7, 365. That's the other thing. It's also typically considered renewable, although they've figured out that you have to take measures to sustain a production plant.

Like, you can't just pump all the water out. You have to make a closed system. But even if you do use a closed system, like the area can cool off over time, like the one in Italy has seen a 25% reduction in steam power since the 1950s, because the geothermal reservoir beneath it has been cooling. So you basically have to take it easy on it.

You got to treat it a little gently, you know? Yeah, and apparently you can use, if you're putting in a system, not just for your home, but a plant, other things can be going on there. It can be a golf course. It can be a horse trading facility. It can be what else is land used for? It can be a cemetery.

Well, maybe not a cemetery. Yeah, because people don't get buried below the frost line. They just get buried six feet deep. Well, my family does. So they're addressing that a lot of people say, well, it just takes up too much land. What if you don't have a lot of land? You can actually build a vertical system

where the pipes just go straight down rather than flat beneath your house, and you'll have the same effect. That's right. The last thing I have here is the world's largest facility called the Geysers. It's in San Francisco, right? Yeah, and about 70 miles north of San Francisco in the Mayakamas Mountains, a company called Calpine.

It is 40 square miles long, and it powers 14 plants. And this thing's been around for a while. This is not new. 725 megawatts of electricity it creates. Enough to power 725,000 homes, or a city like San Francisco. So it meets the power needs of Sonoma Lake and Medesino counties, and portions of Marin and Napa, and satisfies almost 60% of the average electricity demand

in the North Coast region from the Golden Gate Bridge to Oregon. Yeah. Isn't that crazy? That's so perfect for San Francisco. Oh, man, they're all over that stuff. That's great. So you've got nothing else, huh?

No, man. Man, my dad was an HVAC engineer. He'd be pretty proud of this one. Yeah, you're going to point it out to him? Probably. I don't know, he probably won't listen, but still. And he'd say, what's that show you do again? If you want to know more about geothermal energy,

you can type those words in the search bar at howstuffworks.com. And I said, search bar's somewhere in there, and that means it's time for this one. I'm going to call this organ donation follow up from an expert, as he says. Hey, guys, I'm a donation specialist at an OPO, an organ procurement organization

in the Northeast. I've been doing it for about eight years. And the biggest concern I had with your show was how tissue donation was incorrectly grouped together with whole body donation. They're definitely not the same thing. Body donation for science research is completely different than tissue donation for transplant.

Tissue donation should be and is grouped together with organ donation, bone, skin, cornea, heart valve, and vascular tissue are both life-saving and life-enhancing gifts meant for recipients. In fact, when you register to be a donor with DMV or an online database, you're registering as an organ and tissue donor, not a whole body donor. Secondly, there absolutely is federal oversight, regulation,

and protocol for tissue. The FDA AATB, American Association of Tissue Banks. I bet that's a fun conference. Yeah, conference. The EBAA, the EyeBank Association of America, are some of those governing bodies. OPOs and tissue banks are held as strict standards, including site visits and annual audits.

Lastly, I would encourage you both to do some further research into tissue donation and be careful not to perpetuate incorrect stereotypes and misconceptions. This guy. This is from Josh Brennan. And another guy wrote in and was like, I see where Josh is going, but he's got it backwards.

He said, there's too much regulation on the organ side. 7,000 people a year die because of the over-regulation, and they need to make it all for money. Disagree. And he was like, he sourced a bunch of academic. He's like, the medical and academic communities are the ones making the call for this. He's like, it's not like a bunch of free market zealots.

Trump's not calling for it? No, he was like, doctors and scientists are saying this is how it should go. I guess the reason I saw fit to lump those things in together is because I saw that one of the outcome from whole-body donation could be the harvesting of your parts for sale. And that happens from time to time, whether legal or illegal or gray market.

Yeah, that's what the guy, the first guy said is, the gray market is there because it's so heavily regulated. People are dying because they can't get this stuff. So they're willing to go pay. He said, if you give the demand that illegal supply won't have to be there. Yeah, I mean, maybe that's the case as well. But yeah, I don't know.

I think they're doing a great job with the Oregon Procurement thing, aside from the 7,000 people that are dying every year waiting. Yeah, isn't that funny? Yeah. Thank you very much for writing in. Josh, other Josh. Josh, yeah.

And do you remember the other dude's name? No. No, the Anonymous Masked Author. That's right. Thanks for letting us know the deal. If you want to get in touch with us, you can tweet to us at S-Y-S-K podcast. You can join us on facebook.com slash stuff you should know.

You can send us an email to stuffpodcast.howstovework.com. And as always, join us at our home on the web, stuffyoushouldknow.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit howstuffworks.com. On the podcast, Hey Dude, the 90s called David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show, Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're going to use Hey Dude as our jumping off point,

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