4 Tons Of Plants per Mile to Ride In Your Car

Roland Piquepaille writes "As you might know, I enjoy big numbers. So it's just natural that I was attracted by this news release from the University of Utah, "Bad Mileage: 98 tons of plants per gallon." "A staggering 98 tons of prehistoric, buried plant material is required to produce each gallon of gasoline we burn in our cars, SUVs, trucks and other vehicles." For a reasonably efficient car, riding 25 miles per gallon, this translates to 4 tons of prehistoric plants per mile, or more than two tons per kilometer. The research paper also mentions that everyday, we are using the fossil fuel equivalent of all the plants growing during a whole year just for our cars. Even if these numbers are too large, this still makes you think about how inefficient our cars are. This analysis describes the calculations and contains other details about the research paper which will be published in November by Climate Change."

Comments

say no to cars?

[QEDog]

Reminds me of an article posted in /. before that said:

"Building more roads to combat traffic congestion is like buying a bigger belt to combat obesity"

Re:say no to cars?

[pmz]

Capitalists have managed to convince you that they are Creating Profit when they pump oil (cut rainforests, build suburbs, etc) and sell it -- in fact, they are not. They are ROBBING the planet (which we must all share wisely) and telling you its "ok".

No, oil is an energy source. When it is no longer practical and/or desirable, you do understand that the Sun is always a very good Plan B?

There is no shortage of energy. There will never by a shortage of energy until the Sun goes nova and evaporates the earth. Using oil is robbing the earth of nothing, and it is our inefficient and irresponsible use of that oil that is the biggest problem. Low emissions is simply an engineering problem (and one that doesn't need to be driven by legislation, either, as markets for energy-efficient engines become more common).

The best thing you can do is spread awareness of alternative types of engines/power sources/etc. and help create the demand for them and the resulting markets that drive the corporations. Consumer demand does wonders and is more efficient than the government even dreams about.

Re:say no to cars?

[JaredOfEuropa]

The "Environmentalists are luddites" argument is stupidity. Environmentalists want balance. Technology can help achieve that balance.

Environmentalists want control.

Environmentalists are often portrayed as selfless idealists who fight for a good cause. For many of the environmentalists, this is true (whether or not their good cause is a misguided one, is another matter). But I do not trust the environmentalists that matter: the ones in political parties, in lobbyists groups, or the loudest individuals in the green movements. They are not selfless, although it may seem so because they aren't after money. It is power, influence and control over other people's lives that they want.

Environmentalists are seen as luddites, because the top dog environmentalists often dismiss technological solutions to environmental problems out of hand. They would prefer a dirty factory to close or to produce less, rather than have its smokestacks fitted with scrubbers. Why? Selfish reasons. If the factory closes, they have shown themselves to be influential and caring for the environment. They'll garner the credits for the positive impact on the environment. And with any luck, they get to tell who can be allowed to use the now scarce products of this factory. In contrast, if the factory is fitted with scrubbers, they do not gain a lot of power, or even recognition: it's the factory owners who will, as 'responsible businessmen'. You can see this behaviour anywhere. The more rabiat environmentalists do not want cleaner cars, they want us to drive less. They don't want cheap energy, they want us using less of it.

I do realise that it might seem that I lump all environmentalists together, but that is not my intention. My point is that the label 'luddite' for environmentalists, is earned for then by the loudest few amongst them. It may also seem that I paint a rather sinister image of these environmentalists. Again, I do not include all of them; I am sure the majority of them are well-meaning individuals. But I do not trust the kind of environmentalists who dismisses solutions for vague reasons, because they are 'impractical', 'only postpone the inevitable', or are 'only seemingly clean', and try to push their preferred measures 'for our own good'. If you hear anyone utter those 4 words, you can be sure that it's their own good they are after.

Re:say no to cars?

[spike hay]

Or let's go with fresh fruits, I live in Toronto and guess what, most of my apples come from California.

There is something horrificly wrong in the way the market works I'd say.

Just like the AC said, read up on comparative advantage. It's called free trade. I live in a temperate area. I can't get pineapples from my region because you can't grow pineapples in temperate zones. Thus the Thai produce it for me. My regional economy is better suited to producing apples and grapes, so these products are produced in leiu of other products.

It's not horrifically wrong at all. It makes perfect sense and it is the way the world economy should work. That is, unless you'd like to go back to preindustrial conditions and live by the mercy of the harvest.

burgers

[matticus]

and every time I eat a burger, 2 tons of modern plants died to make that cow (or something like that).
We all know the cars burn too much energy. how long of a period were plants compressed for oil? thus, how long until we run out?

Re:burgers

[Anonymous Coward]

I think the artical is misleading. Not all of the plant is converted to oil only a small part. This is intuitive, becouse your car dosen't carry 52 tons of gas in its tank. Also, gas is one of the best ways to back that much energy in to a small space.
-James

Re:burgers

[ekephart]

Convenient, you didn't turn fat American mode off.

Re:burgers

[misterpies]

Major logical fallacy: that 2 tons (or however much) went to make the whole cow, not a single burger. Your single quarter-pounder is no doubt equivalent to several pounds of cowfeed, but that's nothing like as ineffecient as the conversions being talked about here.

Moreover however much the cow ate, its food came from recently grown, mostly sustainable sources (eg hay). It's carbon neutral over a matter of years. Burning up fossil fuels at this rate would be carbon neutral only over thousands if not millions of years, i.e. it would take that may years of plant growth to put that carbon back in the soil.

Re:burgers

[greenhide]

Also, gas is one of the best ways to back that much energy in to a small space.

Yeah, but a Hummer is not the best ways to use that energy, which is the real point of the article.

Re:burgers

[nizo]

But you know what keeps me up at night? Our bodies are made up of matter that came from dying stars, how many stars had to die to make each one of us???

Re:burgers

[CKW]

Nope.

Cows themselves are 1000 pounds or so.

A quick search shows that a cow will eat 25 pounds of hay per day - and the average age when taken to slaughter is 4-5 years.

That means one cow requires 41,000 pounds of feed over it's life, that's 20 tons. The amount of usable meat is around 700 pounds (although only 100 pounds or so is used for hamburger meat, but that's just the typing of the meat).

So for every single pound of (hamburger) meat, you need 58 pounds of hay. (Fair deal if you ask me.)

.
We haven't added in the transportation and processing costs, which if we used current plant matter instead of 10,000,000 year old refined plant matter, would increase it by how much? (Sorry, I'm not going to do that calculation).

Re:burgers

[Rogerborg]

I note that you cited a PETA claim as one of your sources. If PETA told me that cows eat grass, I'd go and check myself to make sure.

Beef cattle are slaughtered at 18 months. Add a little more for the breeding cows, and you can push it to two years average. Find your own links.

Since your 700/100 lbs per cow is from a completely unreferenced anecdote, I'll throw in one of my own. McDonalds burgers are 100% beef, because they are (very nearly) 100% of the cow. Picture a huge cow sized grinder, making cow paste. You don't have to believe me; instead, find me anyone who works in the slaughter industry who'll eat a fast food burger.

Well -- yeah, Are you just figuring this out?

[Biff98]

Internal combustion engines have ALWAYS been inefficient. There have been attempts to make them more efficient, but there has NEVER been an engine based on gasoline that has exceeded even 35%. Even rotary engines are very poor producers of energy to a set of tires. Just the facts of life.

Anyone for Hydrogen?

Re:Well -- yeah, Are you just figuring this out?

[Mattcelt]

Agreed. From the original post: Even if these numbers are too large, this still makes you think about how inefficient our cars are.

This is a misleading statement; obviously our cars are not directly burning 4 tons per mile! As the AC above states, the 'inefficiency' in this article is really with mother nature, which is what turns that 4 tons of organic matter into fossil fuels. Even then, we refine it even further - what we use in our gas tanks is actually very efficient even compared to raw crude, much less the original decomposing matter!

So to say that our machines are inefficient by this deduction is absolutely incorrect. It's sort of like saying that a candle burns inefficiently because it took so many "bee hours" of labor to create the candle: the creation of the wax has nothing whatsoever to do with the burn rate of the candle. (I can add or remove things from the wax which can raise or lower the burn efficiency independently of how many bees it took to create the wax.)

reasonably efficient?

[ratbag]

25 miles per gallon is many things, but reasonably efficient isn't one of them.

Rob.

Re:reasonably efficient?

[weave]

A U.S. gallon is 4/5ths that of an Imperial gallon, so once you adjust for that, you're down in the crap range as well!

Isn't most of the original mass water?

[YetAnotherAnonymousC]

Isn't most of the original biomass water that does not end up in the oil/coal/gas deposits? Or am I missing something.

I just don't quite see the point of the guy who did the calculations/report... and I did read the article. This is just throwing around big meaningless numbers. At least Ig Nobel candidate material is train-wreck-interesting.

Re:Isn't most of the original mass water?

[andykuan]

Well here are some percent water composition numbers for various fruits and veggies from a Virginia Farm Bureau article.

Let's say plants are 75% water (probably a bit high, but I'm being conservative here). That 4 tons of wet-weight per mile becomes 1 ton of wet-weight per mile. It's all in the same order of magnitude. 2000 pounds of dried spinach to push my car 1 mile is still a lot of plant matter.

Anyway, I think the point of this calculation is similar to the point being made by those illustrative lessons (say, in Time Magazine) about how many miles high a trillion dollars in debt would be if we stacked 1 dollar bills, or how many miles of muscle we have in our body, or the number of land mines per person have been buried in Korea. It just offers a different perspective.

Re:Isn't most of the original mass water?

[ivan256]

It's a selective usage of statistics at best and an irrelevant spin on an irrelevant fact designed to decieve people to win supporters in the most likely case.

This article is fraudulent.

Lets start with the easy one. First, they write off as waste all the other products of the oil that don't become gasoline. So, remove another 50% from the tally...

Next, they add the weight of all the plant that didn't manage to become oil, even after all the water is disregarded. In fact, the multiply their figure by 10,750 (there's a few orders of magnitude in there if you werent counting).

Finally, and most importantly, it doesn't matter how many dead, prehistoric plants were required to make the oil we use. It's an irrelevant number, no matter how large or small. Any meaning derived out of this article was conjured by spin and implication.

Ditch the propaganda. If you don't have solutions, don't waste money on research.

Re:Isn't most of the original mass water?

[poot_rootbeer]

Could you maybe tell us WHY it's "fraudulent" to include all the parts of the prehistoric plants that don't get turned into gasoline?

Take that away, and you've taken away the part of the figure that people can relate to. We all know what living plants look like, what with their water mass and their insoluble fiber. If you take only the stuff that becomes gasoline, what does that look like? Is that crude oil? I don't even know. Now THAT would be a meaningless statistic.

it doesn't matter how many dead, prehistoric plants were required to make the oil we use.

I disagree. No one would argue that oil is a renewable resource, but studies like these demonstrate just how much of a resource drain it is.

Re:Isn't most of the original mass water?

[ivan256]

Take that away, and you've taken away the part of the figure that people can relate to.

That's why it's fraudulent. They needed to artificially inflate the number to make people relate to it. I can think of a million apt analogies, but let's suffice it to say that I could relate any meaning I wanted in any reasearch I wanted to do if I were allowed to multiply the resluting data by 10,000, or .00001.

To make maters worse, there are plenty of valid arguments against oil use. There is no reason to fabricate addtional arguments by twisting some meaningless numbers into a suggestive paper.

but studies like these demonstrate just how much of a resource drain it is.

No, studies like this plant a totally false impression of how much of a resource drain it is. We could extract the same energy from far fewer plants because we don't have to throw away 99.990% of the plant before we start.

Re:Isn't most of the original mass water?

[CharlieG]

Actually, what I find interesting is "4 tons" like that is a BIG number

I live on a small plot of land in NY - 50x100, and most of THAT is house

From April till Mid October, I take 10 cubic feet of grass clippings/week off my lawn. Call it 28 weeks. That's 280 cubic feet of grass clippings, at 24 lbs/cu ft, or 6720 lbs (Note only about 1/4 of that property is grass) - then figure in leaves from the trees - another 120 cubic feet, at 14lbs/cu ft. Thats 1680 lbs - so I "raise" a total crop of 8400lbs of clippings/leaves per year, or 4.2 tons. Note, this doesn't count growth of the trees. Maple comes in at about 37lbs/cu ft (DRY - green is MORE) Oak is about 45 lbs/cuft. Think how many cubic feet are in an oak tree - you probably have 10 tons or more in a typical full grwn tree

Inefficient?

[jeffkjo1]

Even if these numbers are too large, this still makes you think about how inefficient our cars are.

I think it shows how inefficient mother nature is. Stupid nature, not forseeing our need to drive Hummers and Ford Excursions!

What's the point here?

[AnhZone]

Why do we care about prehistoric plants that turned into underground petrochemical deposits millions for years ago. I agree that cars are ridiculously inefficient, but underground oil is not one of the natural features I am worried about being disturbed. Above-ground pollution, oil spills, global warming, yes, but why cry for rotten prehistoric plants?

John

Re:What's the point here?

[exp(pi*sqrt(163))]

The point is we should celebrate. Those plants died believing that that was all there was to their existence. But millions of years later the energy they stored during their lifetimes has found a new purpose. Maybe millions of years after you die you'll find a purpose too. I think it's wonderful.

Better than that

[cybercuzco]

this still makes you think about how inefficient our cars are.

Its even better than that! Internal combustion engines are only about 25% efficient, so for every ten gallons of gas you put into your car, only 2.5 gallons are actually used to propel you forward, the rest is just used to heat up the engine and exhaust.

Thank goodness for research like this

[TopShelf]

That certainly explains the foul smell I can't get out of the seats...

What about thermal depolymerization?

[Xiver]

I read an interesting article at Discover.com. Technological savvy could turn 600 million tons of turkey guts and other waste into 4 billion barrels of light Texas crude each year.

I think this is a huge step in the right direction, I'll be very interested to see what happens once the plant is online.

Comparisons?

[confu2000]

Anyone want to take a stab at how much a horse eats per mile? I guess to be fair, you'd probably want to multiply it by 4 at least. Even then it's only 4 horsepower versus like 100-150 in your standard economy car.

How much gas does that give us?

[Wyatt Earp]

"The research paper also mentions that everyday, we are using the fossil fuel equivalent of all the plants growing during a whole year just for our cars."

If there's 600,000,000 of plants and plant material out there to burn in fossil fuels...and we burn a years worth of it a day. And you divide 600 million by 365...that gives us 1643835 years worth of fossil fuels.

A much more optomistic projection that even the Skeptical Environmentalist!

I'm going to go drive my 5.7 liter Chevy truck around then just for the hell of it.

Inefficiency?

[worst_name_ever]

Even if these numbers are too large, this still makes you think about how inefficient our cars are.

I agree that regular gas-powered cars could be made more efficient, but don't the numbers above point more towards the "inefficiency" of the prehistoric plants --> crude oil deposits process?

Re:Inefficiency?

[pkiguruman]

Yes, from the article:

...only about one-10,750th of the original carbon in ancient plant material actually ends up as oil...

If it *is* plants

[HarveyBirdman]

There's an idea that some oil comes from deeper sources, and has an abiogeneic origin. There are hundreds of wells drilled more than 5 km deep, below the levels of prehistoric plants (what is called "basement rock"), and they are still productive.

Here's a starter link: Link

Re:If it *is* plants

[Greg151]

Thanks for bringing up Thomas Gold. There is really little evidence to go along with the fossil theory of petroleum, and increasingly more to support Thomas Gold. See this link

Re:If it *is* plants

[Tony]

"Robert O. Russell, a wellsite geologist at the first well in North America (at Fort McMurray, Alberta, Canada) drilled into crystalline basement granitic shield rocks for the express purpose of commercial hydrocarbon exploration, has pointed out that there are more than 400 wells and fields worldwide, both off-shore and on-shore that produce or have recently produced oil from igneous rocks." (Quoted from here)

There is really no evidence supporting an organic origin of petroleum. At one time, it was the best explanaition we had; now, with oil drilled from beneath basement rock, and from 3B-year-old sandstone, there is no longer any reason to just assume organic origin. Too much evidence points to non-organic origins.

Does it say

[Kohath]

Does it say how many tons of plants have existed in the last billion years or so?

I bet it's a lot.

Re:you assume

[wa5ter]

What are you suggesting? There is no shortage of clear proof that this is where the oil comes from. Coal contains clearly fossilised plant material.. oil and coal and natural gas are often all found together. The process of generating them can be simulated very easily.

This isn't just about inefficiency of cars.

[Derek Pomery]

But also about inefficiency of natural fossil fuels.
Key Fact.
Since only about one-10,750th of the original carbon in ancient plant material actually ends up as oil, multiply 4.14 kilograms by 10,750 to get roughly 44,500 kilograms of carbon in ancient plant matter to make a gallon of gas.

google cache of old-news biofuel breakthrough

Note they are claiming they can eliminate dependance on oil importation with agricultural waste alone. No other cultivation necessary.
And the point is. Once we use the biofuels, we are in the carbon cycle. No more pumping carbon out of the earth.

Re:How many tons of hydrogen

[tbone1]

Not only that, but how much land would be opened up to agriculture if all our fuel came from crops? Would forests be leveled, swamps drained, topsoil eroded, etc?

Everything comes at a prices, monetary or otherwise. Most environmentalists (or at least, journalists writing on environmentalism) don't seem to grasp this.

One word: bioethanol

[Fnkmaster]

That's right, there are great solutions out there that are far more efficient. But the unfortunate reality right now is that the economics of pumping shit out of the ground is very, very hard to compete with. The cost basis of oil (formed mostly by transportation, corruption and cronyism) vs. any harvested biological feedstocks used to make ethanol or biodiesel may be closer to competitive these days, but it's unlikely that the harvested feedstocks will ever win out by a large enough margin to encourage the capital investment necessary to switch over the huge established infrastructure without substantial government intervention.

No, I'm not talking about corn ethanol here, so please stop the silly arguments about how ethanol is inefficient - making it from corn is just silly. There are lots of cheap, far more easily harvested cellose-based plant products that can be broken down with slightly more effort into ethanol, and could provide us with a cheap, plentiful, and substantially more efficient means of storing and transporting biological energy to power our big ole' gas guzzlers.

This is a substantially more realistic and cost effective solution than hydrogen, and it doesn't require us to build massive amounts of new infrastructure (just a limited number of bioethanol plants) or a totally new kind of transportation and distribution network to handle hydrogen. Ethanol is stable, easy to transport, and holds up quite well to most abuse (well, except the drinking kind). It still takes a lot of cellosic material to make a gallon of bioethanol, but it's a lot less than went into that gallon of gas - it's just that the input of biological material happens in the here and now instead of millions of years ago - so we have to bear the cost ourselves. But it's renewable, predictable, and would remove the sick political imperatives behind the distribution and availability of fossil fuels. As an added bonus, no more terrorists.

Very true

[heironymouscoward]

There are several theories that hydrocarbons come from something else than compressed rotting plants.

The evidence is mainly circumstantial, and based on the observation that oil & gas seems to be linked to geographical formations like volcanoes and thin crusts rather than being tied to (e.g.) coal deposits, which would seem more likely.

Coal, after all, does contain plant remains enough to prove that it's most likely compressed peat and bogs.

But oil is a bit wierd. My theory (and it's probably not original) is that hydrocarbons are remains of annobacteria colonies that live off sulphur compounds deep in the earth's crust. Such bacteria are known to exist, observed around volcanic vents in the ocean floor, for instance.

Now imagine _really_ large colonies of such bacteria, living in hot porous sulphur-rich rocks, and dying to rot and produce oil and gas.

Seems more likely than (oil = compressed dinosaur bones and cabbage) to me.

Which also implies that oil is a much more massive resource than previously thought, it won't run out soon, but instead the problems it causes (global heating, oil-driven warfare in poor countries) will continue for a long time to come.

Re:you assume

[mikerich]

There is no shortage of clear proof that this is where the oil comes from. Coal contains clearly fossilised plant material.. oil and coal and natural gas are often all found together.

Actually there is some evidence for a non-biogenic source for some oil reserves. It came as a surprise to me as well when I did my geology degree.

Thomas Gold (most famous for his Steady-State Theory of the Universe) postulated that oil might be formed from organic compounds deep in the Mantle which migrate up to the surface. IIRC he persuaded the Swedes to sink a test well into ancient hard shield rocks (where there should be no signs of hydrocarbons) and indeed traces of such compounds were recovered. Now I don't know whether they excluded the possibility that they were products of the lubricating mud used to drill the well or if they were younger oil seeping into the basement rocks from a distant reservoir.

However, the vast majority of oil reserves are clearly from fossilised plants. The breakdown products of porphyrins (the complex organo metal compounds such as chlorophyll) can be extracted from most crudes.

Finally, oil, coal and natural gas may be found close to one another, but are usually not. For instance, the mainland of the UK has enormous coal reserves, but only one productive oil field and no on-shore gas. British oil probably originates in the Kimmeridge Clay - an organic rich clay that was formed in the late Jurassic. Conversely, the Middle East almost entirely lacks coal, but holds 60% of the World's petroleum reserves. The closest association is usually natural gas and oil - where it has been driven off from oil reservoirs that have been heated.

In the Southern North Sea much of the natural gas probably came from the underlying Coal Measures which have been deeply buried and exposed to intense heat.

Best wishes,
Mike.

That's interesting, but the real question is...

[pulse2600]

...how many Libraries of Congress is that?

Atomic energy will save us...

[dpbsmith]

...don't worry, we'll soon have energy too cheap to meter. We'll unleash the limitless, endless, bountiful power of the peaceful atom to provide an inexhaustible supply of energy for all mankind.

A single aspirin-sized pellet of uranium will provide Mr. and Mrs. America with enough power to run their car for a lifetime. And soon, the peaceful atom will provide a propulsion source that will make family helicars practical and affordable.

Scientists expect this to happen in a few short decades--perhaps before the end of the sixties.

At least, that's what the science teacher said when I was in junior high school.

Good News!

[IronTomFlint]

Why, if we have millions of years' worth of plants as the source of our oil, and if we only consume a year's worth of plants for our cars each day, then we've got enough fossil fuels to last for centuries!

Let's pretend that we've got just 5 million years' worth of plants as the source for all the oil. That gives us 13,000+ years of oil for our cars. Even if we assume that all other uses of fossil fuels amount to 10 times as much use per year, that still gives us well over 1200 years worth of energy.

Maybe by then the eco-whacko Left will allow us to build nuclear power plants again. I know, I know. Call me a dreamer...

It's not about the dead plants, it's about us

[ianscot]

Interesting little synopsis of the usual environmental debate, your post.

Environmentalist: We're running out, and our current wasteful practices mean we're running out fast!

Apathetic response: Who cares about a bunch of dead plants anyway?

The answer being, as we (literally) burn through these resources, they not only produce waste that endangers the place we live, they also become more scarce -- leading to the places that have the dead plants, in the form of oil, receiving quite a lot of value for what's left. Scarcity and value, see? Take a look at the extreme wealth of Saudi Arabia's ruling family, examine the Wahaabist faith they've backed using that wealth, all the result of a scarcity of these old dead plants in the world, and then tell me -- is it a potential problem for oil to be the scarce resource we're relying on? Do we want to continue to use inefficient methods of blowing through the oil we've got left, making it more scarce, increasing the upheaval caused by things like Opec's production targets? Or not?

So, see, when environmentalists are worried about this, it's not some tree-hugging lovey-eyed thing on their part, it's self-interest. Similarly, when scientists fret over an oncoming mass extinction, they're worried because no previous mass extinction has allowed the currently dominant group of species to continue in that role. It's not that they're only worried about black-footed ferrets or whatever; they also see that human survival is at stake.

That being the point. Not that "really big numbers" is necessarily the best argument, but human survival is the point.

This says nothing of car efficiency

[Jay Bratcher]

Rather, it says that fossil fuel, and the process it goes through to get to the point that it is useable for a fuel (including the several thousand years it spends underground), is inefficient. The same cars running on grain alcohol use considerably less, as far as I know - I can't imagine 4 tons of corn being used to produce a gallon of grain alcohol...

So what? We will never run out of oil

[Helevius]

I don't see the point of this post. We will never run out of oil. Why? Economics. Assume oil began to become scarce. No new supply is replacing the oil taken from the ground. Assuming fixed demand, the price of oil would rise as the supply diminished. (If demand rose, the price would rise even more.)

As prices rise, alternatives to oil become financially viable. Suddenly fuel cells or wind power or any other technology currently more expensive than oil looks attractive to investors. Those who can afford oil buy it, while others turn to the alternatives. Assuming no new oil is discovered (to address the supply issue), eventually no one cares about oil as everyone has transitioned to other forms of energy. The remaining oil sits in the ground unused.

Of course this adjustment must take place over the mid- to long-run. Short-term adjustments are called "oil shocks," such as we had in the 1970s or during the early days of most recent wars.

Helevius

Not only that...

[kindbud]

The steel used to build your car's frame and body was produced in a supernova over 5 billion years ago. Only a tiny fraction of the energy generated by fusing at least 4 solar masses of hydrogen went into the production of the iron, chromium and carbon that was used to make the steel. A whole solar system was likely destroyed in the process.

Automobiles are far more inefficient than even this article implies.

Cars inefficient?

[misleb]

Seems to me that "4 tons of plant material per mile" speaks more to the massive amounts of energy that modern technology and societies require than to its relative (in)efficiency. The average internal combustion engine is, what, 25% efficient? Thats not terribly bad. Lets say you made it 100% efficient. You'd still be using the energy equivilent of 1 ton of plant material per mile. Numbers like this really put into perspective the feasability of switching to renewable sources of energy on a global scale. Can we really expect to generate the energy equivelent of one years global plant growth every day from diffuse sources such as the sun, wind, and ocean? And that is just for our cars. I think it is safe to assume that as we increase efficiency we will also increase total consumption. There are a whole lot of people in teh world that don't own cars, but would love to...

-matthew

Re:you assume

[Hits_B]

I hate to split hairs here, but as a geologist who has worked in oil and gas exploration I need to clarify a few points. First, if you assume a biogenic origin for hydrocarbon deposits then you realize that different types of organic matter generate different types of hydrocarbons. I need to quote F.K. North from his book Petroleum Geology. In it on page 53 he states " Oil is not derived, as coal is, from terrestrial plant materials." As a result plant material is responsible for the generation of natural gas. Liquid hydrocarbons originate from the sapropelic material that typically is aquatic algae and may include some spores and pollens.

WWGD?

[Anonymous Coward]

What would a geek do?

People want to drive SUVs. But SUVs use too much gas and pollute too much. What is the proper geek response to this dilemma?

A. Make everyone walk, take the bus, and drive smaller cars.
B. Invent an SUV that gets 100 miles to the gallon (preferably a gallon of H20).

It amazes me how many geeks reach for the social engineering solution instead of the ingenious, creative technical response that is the hallmark of geekdom.

Re:say no to dinosaurs!

[Bytesmiths]

I cut out the middle man. To me, it isn't the amount of plant matter consumed by cars as it is the millions of years it takes to convert it to petroleum products. All that carbon has been sequestered for millennia, and we're just shooting it into the atmosphere.

So I do away with the process of turning plants into petroleum, and burn the plants directly in my engine. Anyone can do it! You only need:

• a diesel powered vehicle, and
• a way to thin vegetable oil, either
  • alcohol and a base catylist (typically methanol and lye), or
  • a heater to bring vegetable oil up to about 80C (180F).

With either method, waste vegetable oil from restaurants can be used, solving two problems at once!

With the exception of nitrous oxide and CO2, vegetable oil powered diesels are MUCH cleaner than petro diesels. Yes, they produce climate-warming CO2 in similar quantities to petro-diesel engines, but the CO2 they release was taken out of the atmosphere last year, NOT millions of years ago.

It is unlikely that Big Oil is going to embrace this, but you don't have to go it alone. Co-ops for producing and/or distributing biodiesel are sprining up like rapeseed oil plants. Google for "biodiesel," "SVO," "WVO" for more info, or visit www.GoBiodiesel.org for more information.

Hydrocarbon fuels may not be decomposed plants

[akuzi]

There are many alternative theories for petrolium formation, many are 'abiogenic' theories that say that 'fossil fuels' are actually primordial, that have existed since the Earth was created.

For more info read see this and "The Deep Not Biosphere" by Thomas Gold of Cornell university.

... and their math is wrong.

[Harik]

Assuming that it _DOES_ take 98 tons of plant material to produce one gallon of gasoline, they're still wrong. Gas is just one of the things that comes from crude oil. Think they just throw the rest away? Nope. It all gets used: Grease, Fuel-grade oil, Diesel, whatever. There's a market for every grade. How many plants does it make for a gallon of crude? And how much of that becomes gasoline? That's the real number that matters.

The guy who wrote this seems a bit optimistic

[FearUncertaintyDoubt]

"We would have to choose between our rain forests and our vehicles and appliances."

Timmmmmmberrrrrr!

What?

[JCMay]

Let me put it this way: If I pay 65 cent/l for gas (as of this morning), I get 9l to a 100K, then I can see quite clearly that somehow 87cents (no matter how cheap the bulk rate for fuel is) will pay for the transport alone. I would say someone is someone giving money to allow this stuff to be so cheap, no?

In a word, NO. Welcome to the world of economies of scale. Cans of tuna are not delivered from the packing plant to your grocer's shelf individually in personal automobiles. They're packed into flats that are loaded onto pallets that are then carried by ship and/or truck to the final destination. Although road tractors don't get stellar fuel economy, they carry a massive amount of cargo and the transportation costs are divided among the entire payload.

For that matter, here in the US, a first-class postal letter costs $0.37. According to your logic, a postal carrier picks my single letter out of my mail box, drives it all the way to California, or where ever, and delivers it to the destination mail box, all for $0.39.

Actually my point is that what we pay for our produce at the register is not an accurate reflection of the true costs. There is a lot of hidden costs (e.g. Transportation) that we obviously don't seem to pay for. Having said that, the question would be: Who is paying for that?

You are! All costs associated with bringing the product to the shelf, plus the fraction of the operating expenses for the store (personnel, electricity, insurance, etc) for you to buy are wrapped up in the purchase price!

Re:say no to dinosaurs!

[Bytesmiths]

"Soybeans are terrible for the soil."

Who said anything about soybeans? Any plant that produces oil can produce transportation and heating fuel. It doesn't even have to be a wonderful nitrogen fixer like soybeans. (I would disagree they're "terrible for the soil.") Or you can alternate nitrogen-depletors like corn with beans, getting two oil crops that complement each other's soil use. (I grew up on a farm, so please don't tell me what is good or bad unless you can claim the same.)

"We are converting farmland back into forest in the US and if we met domestic demand for diesel through vegetable oil we would be back to deforesting and depleting. Bad idea."

First, I would argue both that we are NOT "converting farmland... to forest" in any significant quantity, and also that any resulting "managed" forest is no better than farmland with respect to environmental factors.

I never claimed that we should get all our transportation needs from farm crops. Indeed, if you re-read what I wrote, I was advocating using WASTE cooking oil. How you got from there to "soybeans" and "farmland" is beyond me.

"A far better option seem to be CWT. These guy say they can change any carbon into distilled water, balanced organic fertilizer and gasoline."

Well, I couldn't find any place where they claimed that!

Their process seems to consume unspecified hydrocarbons and produces various hydrocarbons. It appears to be energy- and water-intensive, with lots of heat and pressure required. It is unclear exactly what the feedstock is and exactly what the result is, except that it consumes a great deal of water and energy in the process.

A hydrogen energy economy is decades away. Vegetable oil diesel can serve as an important part of a transition away from fossil fuels. This can be done with today's technology -- indeed, in a handyman's garage -- using a waste stream that is currently a disposal problem.

Just don't tell me it can't be done, or I'll have to un-drive all those miles I've driven, powered by waste vegetable oil!