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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."
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!
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
Patriotism is the conviction that your country is superior to all others because you were born there. (GBS)
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.
10: PRINT "Everything old is new again."
20: GOTO 10
Here's a starter link: Link
--- Ban humanity.
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.
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!
Convenient, you didn't turn fat American mode off.
sig
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.
The author of this post asserts his moral rights.
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.
Edith Keeler Must Die
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.
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:
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.
: What Constitution?