Sorry Mt View Guy....
algae is not the answer either!
http://socialwork.arts.unsw.edu.au/tsw/D86.RE.Ch.5 .LiquidsX.html
The algae section is half way down. Check it out. There are enormous problems wtih the algae process, and the Australian CSIRO concluded it was a net energy loser. I hope they can turn it around, I seriously do... for the sake of my kids.
After peak oil we will have to return our sewerage NPK nutrient values to the soil. We'll have to have some safe way of processing it while retaining the nutrients. Algae COULD be the answer but there are enormous technical problems to overcome first. Enormous! It's not the "silver bullet". It might help towards retaining fertilizer from our sewerage, but at this stage I doubt it will make a net energy profit.
I'm more inclined to think we should try the standard wind turbines, plus the 24 hour reliable wind power of a Solar chimney, plus Solar PV and everything else we've got on some kind of electric grid transport system... but I'm all for saying goodbye the private car! We cannot afford the energy to drive to work, McDonalds, school, etc. We cannot afford the energy to construct vastly energy greedy suburbia. Hence the title of the movie! (See previews at website.)
www.endofsuburbia.com
>>>"That's all current vegetable oil production. Serious, forward-looking studies of biodiesel consider growing new crops specifically optimized for oil production. IIRC an area 105 miles square would suffice for the entire energy requirements of the U.S.."
Dream on. The areas required to grow biodiesel are ENORMOUS!
For example... Australia exports 80% of our wheat. We eat a LOT of Weet Bix, bread, pasta, etc... but we still export 80% of our wheat. We grow a lot! But if we were to convert all 100% of our wheat into ethanol, we'd only get 9% of our transport fuels and no Weet Bix, bread, or wheat exports!
Biodiesel has similar land limitations. You quickly end up running into making a choice between land and food!
Also, how is it grown? If it is grown with traditional industrial "green revolution" agriculture, you LOSE energy! That's right. Look up the Haber Bosch process and figure how much gas energy gets used making nitrogen fertilizer. Figure how much petroleum & diesel energy gets used mining and transporting Phosphorous and Potassium. Once you add in the NPK values of the fertilizer, you realize we are in trouble. Then there's the pesticides... made from the petrochemical industry... oil again!
So it's no wonder the "Green revolution" is now decidedly looked on as NOT that green.
Indeed, after peak oil we will have enough trouble feeding ourselves, let alone growing fuel. check out "Eating Fossil fuels" at the link below.
http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/100303_e ating_oil.html
If the USA COULD grow it's own oil from just a hundred or so square miles of dirt, why hasn't it? Why blow out the trade figures? Why fund your enemies? Why go to war in Iraq? This is not a game Chris... IIRC, 105 square miles is NOT going to fuel America.
http://socialwork.arts.unsw.edu.au/tsw/D86.RE.Ch.5 .LiquidsX.html
Chris, please read the two links above. They could change your understanding of the world situation. This is really not a game, not a matter of personal opinion. We are in trouble... peak oil is here and yet we keep focussing on what "future cars" will look like when hardly anyone will be driving!
hey, do I detect a fellow peaknik?;-)
Yeah, I seriously, seriously wonder how many people will be driving in say, 5 or 6 years? Many geologists are saying this is the year. This could be the historical year that we pump the most oil we ever will!
If you plot the mining of oil from a specific oil field over time, the volumes of oil extracted follow a rough bell curve. Production starts off slow, then as more and more wells are drilled volumes increase until about halfway through the field's life production plateaus. This is the maximum output you will ever produce from that oil field. This marks the beginning of the end of that oil field's life. Soon, the oil field goes into decline as the deeper oil takes more energy to extract, and is more expensive to process. All the light sweet crude is gone, and you are now into the heavy crude. You have moved from a growing output of cheap oil to a decreasing output of poor quality oil. This trend can be observed for one field, a collection of fields, a state, an entire nation, and estimates can even be made for the whole world.
Many are saying we are on the peak of world oil production. The "peak" is the most oil we will ever produce annually; only from our immediate vantage point it looks more like a plateau. We may find that 86 million barrels a day is the ceiling of what humanity will ever produce. OPEC have promised to raise daily output a number of times over the past 18 months, but just cannot. In just a few short years we may be able to see the beginning of the energy down slope.
If we really are at peak oil production, it means we have burnt all the easy to access oil, all the "low hanging fruit". As National Geographic puts it, "Humanity's way of life is on a collision course with geology -- with the stark fact that the Earth holds a finite supply of oil... The peak will be a watershed moment, marking the change from an increasing supply of cheap oil to a dwindling supply of expensive oil." (National Geographic, June 2004, page 88.) New discoveries will not save us. Discovery peaked in the 1960's, and so we are now consuming 4 barrels of oil energy for every barrel discovered.
The Deputy Prime Minister of Australia, John Anderson, and celebrity scientists Dr Karl Kruszelnicki of Australia and David Suzuki of Canada have stated that they believe we are near the peak. Yesterday Exxon-Mobile quietly announced that all non-OPEC oil producing nations would peak in the next 5 years. The world will then rely on OPEC to supply any increase in demand -- which they apparently cannot do. The same article also stated that oil demand would increase by a million barrels per day each year after 2010. With China and India coming online as oil consuming nations, demand for oil has never been higher. It appears demand has already caught supply, and the price of oil is rising as a result.
CONSEQUENCES.
But what will happen as oil extraction actually slows down each and every year after the peak? Put simply, the economic consequences will be catastrophic. It will be like the 1970's oil crisis, but this time it is here to stay.
Oil is the lifeblood of our civilization. Not only does oil provide 90% of transport energy, but it also provides the feedstock for our chemical and plastics industry, the bitumen for our roads, pharmaceutical inputs, and most importantly oil provides the raw ingredients for making pesticides. Oil is food. Some have calculated that it takes ten calories of oil and gas energy to make just one calorie of food energy. (Google "Eating Fossil Fuels").
The cost of everything that depends on oil will rise. Airlines will become unaffordable to the average citizen and will bankrupt as a result. Once the airlines stop flying the world's largest employer, international tourism, takes a severe economic hit. Some smaller nations dependent on tourism will become bankrupt. The flow on effects of oil prices skyrocketing out of control will throw us into the Greater Depression. We have left adjusting to the post-oil era too late. Indeed it mystifies me that go
Slashdot Mirror
Sorry Mt View Guy.... algae is not the answer either! http://socialwork.arts.unsw.edu.au/tsw/D86.RE.Ch.5 .LiquidsX.html
The algae section is half way down. Check it out. There are enormous problems wtih the algae process, and the Australian CSIRO concluded it was a net energy loser. I hope they can turn it around, I seriously do... for the sake of my kids.
After peak oil we will have to return our sewerage NPK nutrient values to the soil. We'll have to have some safe way of processing it while retaining the nutrients. Algae COULD be the answer but there are enormous technical problems to overcome first. Enormous! It's not the "silver bullet". It might help towards retaining fertilizer from our sewerage, but at this stage I doubt it will make a net energy profit.
I'm more inclined to think we should try the standard wind turbines, plus the 24 hour reliable wind power of a Solar chimney, plus Solar PV and everything else we've got on some kind of electric grid transport system... but I'm all for saying goodbye the private car! We cannot afford the energy to drive to work, McDonalds, school, etc. We cannot afford the energy to construct vastly energy greedy suburbia. Hence the title of the movie! (See previews at website.)
www.endofsuburbia.com
>>>"That's all current vegetable oil production. Serious, forward-looking studies of biodiesel consider growing new crops specifically optimized for oil production. IIRC an area 105 miles square would suffice for the entire energy requirements of the U.S.." Dream on. The areas required to grow biodiesel are ENORMOUS! For example... Australia exports 80% of our wheat. We eat a LOT of Weet Bix, bread, pasta, etc... but we still export 80% of our wheat. We grow a lot! But if we were to convert all 100% of our wheat into ethanol, we'd only get 9% of our transport fuels and no Weet Bix, bread, or wheat exports! Biodiesel has similar land limitations. You quickly end up running into making a choice between land and food! Also, how is it grown? If it is grown with traditional industrial "green revolution" agriculture, you LOSE energy! That's right. Look up the Haber Bosch process and figure how much gas energy gets used making nitrogen fertilizer. Figure how much petroleum & diesel energy gets used mining and transporting Phosphorous and Potassium. Once you add in the NPK values of the fertilizer, you realize we are in trouble. Then there's the pesticides... made from the petrochemical industry... oil again! So it's no wonder the "Green revolution" is now decidedly looked on as NOT that green. Indeed, after peak oil we will have enough trouble feeding ourselves, let alone growing fuel. check out "Eating Fossil fuels" at the link below. http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/100303_e ating_oil.html
If the USA COULD grow it's own oil from just a hundred or so square miles of dirt, why hasn't it? Why blow out the trade figures? Why fund your enemies? Why go to war in Iraq? This is not a game Chris... IIRC, 105 square miles is NOT going to fuel America.
http://socialwork.arts.unsw.edu.au/tsw/D86.RE.Ch.5 .LiquidsX.html
Chris, please read the two links above. They could change your understanding of the world situation. This is really not a game, not a matter of personal opinion. We are in trouble... peak oil is here and yet we keep focussing on what "future cars" will look like when hardly anyone will be driving!
hey, do I detect a fellow peaknik? ;-)
Yeah, I seriously, seriously wonder how many people will be driving in say, 5 or 6 years? Many geologists are saying this is the year. This could be the historical year that we pump the most oil we ever will!
If you plot the mining of oil from a specific oil field over time, the volumes of oil extracted follow a rough bell curve. Production starts off slow, then as more and more wells are drilled volumes increase until about halfway through the field's life production plateaus. This is the maximum output you will ever produce from that oil field. This marks the beginning of the end of that oil field's life. Soon, the oil field goes into decline as the deeper oil takes more energy to extract, and is more expensive to process. All the light sweet crude is gone, and you are now into the heavy crude. You have moved from a growing output of cheap oil to a decreasing output of poor quality oil. This trend can be observed for one field, a collection of fields, a state, an entire nation, and estimates can even be made for the whole world.
Many are saying we are on the peak of world oil production. The "peak" is the most oil we will ever produce annually; only from our immediate vantage point it looks more like a plateau. We may find that 86 million barrels a day is the ceiling of what humanity will ever produce. OPEC have promised to raise daily output a number of times over the past 18 months, but just cannot. In just a few short years we may be able to see the beginning of the energy down slope.
If we really are at peak oil production, it means we have burnt all the easy to access oil, all the "low hanging fruit". As National Geographic puts it, "Humanity's way of life is on a collision course with geology -- with the stark fact that the Earth holds a finite supply of oil... The peak will be a watershed moment, marking the change from an increasing supply of cheap oil to a dwindling supply of expensive oil." (National Geographic, June 2004, page 88.) New discoveries will not save us. Discovery peaked in the 1960's, and so we are now consuming 4 barrels of oil energy for every barrel discovered.
The Deputy Prime Minister of Australia, John Anderson, and celebrity scientists Dr Karl Kruszelnicki of Australia and David Suzuki of Canada have stated that they believe we are near the peak. Yesterday Exxon-Mobile quietly announced that all non-OPEC oil producing nations would peak in the next 5 years. The world will then rely on OPEC to supply any increase in demand -- which they apparently cannot do. The same article also stated that oil demand would increase by a million barrels per day each year after 2010. With China and India coming online as oil consuming nations, demand for oil has never been higher. It appears demand has already caught supply, and the price of oil is rising as a result.
CONSEQUENCES.
But what will happen as oil extraction actually slows down each and every year after the peak? Put simply, the economic consequences will be catastrophic. It will be like the 1970's oil crisis, but this time it is here to stay.
Oil is the lifeblood of our civilization. Not only does oil provide 90% of transport energy, but it also provides the feedstock for our chemical and plastics industry, the bitumen for our roads, pharmaceutical inputs, and most importantly oil provides the raw ingredients for making pesticides. Oil is food. Some have calculated that it takes ten calories of oil and gas energy to make just one calorie of food energy. (Google "Eating Fossil Fuels").
The cost of everything that depends on oil will rise. Airlines will become unaffordable to the average citizen and will bankrupt as a result. Once the airlines stop flying the world's largest employer, international tourism, takes a severe economic hit. Some smaller nations dependent on tourism will become bankrupt. The flow on effects of oil prices skyrocketing out of control will throw us into the Greater Depression. We have left adjusting to the post-oil era too late. Indeed it mystifies me that go