The thing with news organizations isn't that they lie, it is that they present the facts in such a way as to promote their own agenda, or they position editorials to have the same effect.
So the issue isn't really one of trust, it is more one of gullibility and inability to divine missing information. Even if you do your own research in nearly all cases what you find will corroborate the facts that they have selected.
That isn't to say that what Fox says meets standards of integrity, but really they're not the ones to blame. They didn't create American's ADD induced appetite for three minute segments or 24 hour news on their own, they are just playing to the market as they found it.
I'm tempted to say we've ceased to be a nation capable of critical thought, but I'm not sure we ever were.
All your points are certaily valid, and I mostly agree with you.
However, because the public school system is bound and determined to teach everyone it seems to do a poor job teaching anyone.
I don't have a solution, and I especially think the easy way out, tracking, is a miserable idea, but there are some fundamental issues unrelated to funding that should be addressed.
Oh, and making sure that the students take a standardized test every two years doesn't actually make them smarter...
How many terrorists make their explosives? I don't know, but I'd bet that it is damn near zero. Tim McVeigh didn't synthesize an explosive he used common fertilizer. Sure it's possible to make nitroglycerine or TNT, but in order to get a truly destructive quantity it is easier to rob a mining outfit, or a farm, or a plumber, welder, race strip, airport, or pharma company.
"Dangerous" basement chemistry isn't explosives; it is things like meth. And as the article said the deterrent for making meth in your basement should be the laws and punishments associated with making meth, not the unavailability of pH strips and Erlenmeyer flasks.
Lets face it I'm not going to blow up any buildings with what I can make in my garage (except maybe my garage.) This is just another aspect of the government fear mongering with the word terrorist. Coupled that with the consequences of our decreasing ability to take responsibility for our actions and the actions of our children - I burned myself with the sulfuric acid in the chemistry set I'm suing - and you have the makings of a society that stifles intellectual curiosity.
The concord looks bad, but as you alluded the flight numbers are smaller. Notice there is only the one incident. In the only fatal concord accident the plane ran over a piece of debris on the runway which blew out a the landing gear, which ultimately would likely have had fatal consequences on any plane in service.
If you eliminate the single non-design related concord accident it is probably one of the safest planes ever built.
Well, safest unless you count the horrendous damage it could do to the wallet of anyone associated with it - passenger or operator.
You're right, it isn't really a free speech issue. It is, however, an issue of legislating the web, and there is plenty of out-cry from slashdot when anyone tries to do that with any subject besides spam.
While our legislators are banning spam perhapes they could get that pesky Falun Gong off the net too. It still amazes me (I know it shouldn't) how people are so free speech until it is something they don't want to hear.
Also any valid point you may have wished to make is completely eclipsed by this titanic faulure of logic and perspective:
While I think it's fair to have a gut reaction against journalists, I don't think that it is ultimately a defensable position.
Technically minded people are the most arrogent people on the planet. They think that anything that doesn't capture reality in a wholly accurate manner in detail is useless. I mean clearly it should be a crime against humanity whenever someone equates copyright violation to theft.
In the real world people actually want to have current events explained to them in a way that they can understand. Journalists are trained in communication, not in your area of expertise. If the average person is incapable of understanding what a root-kit is, is it better to scoff at them and call them names, or to try to explain it (in technically inacurate terms) so that people with no desire to understand the inner-workings of an operating system can at least have an idea what it was that Sony did? So what if they call it a virus? Sure, it's not technically correct, but it gets the point across. That is after all what communication is all about.
I think that the problem stems from our education teching us that the printed word is an authority. I know I seldom questioned the accuracy of the encylopedia, my textbooks, or even the newspaper before I was in college (or at least until I was an upper-classman in high school.) Now in our particular areas of expertise we are frequently more knowlegable on a subject than the newspaper. We draw the conclusion that the newspaper is worthless as a source of information. What we (as technically minded people) fail to recognize is that the newspaper's goal isn't to be totally technically accurate, but rather to explain what is happening in the world to people who aren't experts.
Journalists have a role to play and it's not to provide technical information. If you are trying to understand AJAX by reading a Web 2.0 article in USA today, it isn't the journalist who has failed, you have failed in seeking out an appropriate source of information.
I don't care why you responded to me. All I'm pointing out is that coal to hydrogen isn't as desirable as you want it to be. You know, giving others information and all that.
Now take a look at the F-T process you linked to in Wikipedia. Notice that the starting ingredient in Methane. So, in other words it is exactly the same process used in the very case I described - converting Natural Gas to hydrogen.
Now, I'm not a chemist, I didn't know exactly what the method was called before you pointed it to me, but I am not completely ignorant about hydrogen production. If I had said, "The only way to get hydrogen is electrolysing water." then you might have a point. I didn't. I addressed your argument from the get go. So it's not foriegn oil, it is still a bad idea.
I don't care if you're frustrated either. I'm providing counter-arguments, your saying, "I bet you didn't know about this - so NAH!" And you still have yet to explain to me why we'd rather be burning coal sourced gasoline over the three or so examples I've already provided. But just for shits and giggles heres another. I'd rather be paying Canada to destroy their enviornment and supply us with oil-shale based crude than using coal based gasoline or hydrogen.
My definitions, although I think you'll find that it isn't uncommon terinology.
Net-positive: Any fuel who's production, refinement, and processing energy requirements are less than the total energy stored in the fuel.
Net-Negative: Any fuel who's production, refinement, and processing energy requirements are greater than the total energy stored in the fuel.
Sure, strictly speaking it has to net negative, one could count energy input into the system by the sun, or as a result of being burried for millenia, but since it is essentially free energy, it makes little sence to do so.
Now that I've shared with you my definitions would you care to enlighten me as to how you define battery and fuel?
Whether there is a difference or not I'd rather have a battery charged by nature than one which we have to charge ourselves. Hydrogen has to be charged, bio-diesle is charged for us.
Repeat after me: "Hydrogen is not pollution free."
All you are doing is moving the source of pollution, unless we are using solar or wind power to do it. In that case like I said we've solved a much deeper problem.
Which is why I said that the best option for forcing the "hydrogen economy" is to build a few nuclear plants dedicated to electrolysing water.
There is no way with current or near-future tech that we will be able to produce any sizable amount of hydrogen with any combination of water, wind, solar, and geothermal energy.
The best way to harness "natural energy" is to turn plants - not water - into fuel.
Originally I said there are two ways of making hydrogen, one of them is stripping hydrocarbons. Correct me if I'm wrong but isn't coal a hydrocarbon? Sure I said natural gas, but the process works with any hydrocarbon.
Now I'm a tad surprised that you're not jumping all over me for straw-manning the crap out of the benefits. That we have coal here is the single biggest benefit, but at the same time the single biggest benefit of hydrogen is that it is a "clean fuel." If we're making it from coal that ceases to be the case.
So if we do transition away from the synthesis gas to hydrogen we can worry about getting our hydrogen from cleaner sources right. Oh wait now all those other problems are still unresolved...
If we really wanted to create a fuel that runs in the existing infrastructure with resources that we have in abundance we'd be spending money not on turning coal to hydrogen, but on turning soybeans into diesel.
All they are ultimately after is a pollution-free energy source that we will not ultimately run out of.
And how pray tell are we going to get this energy source? Every energy problem is a thermodynamic one. You need energy to turn water into hydrogen, and that has to come from somewhere.
We'd all like solar power, but you can't just wave your hands and say solar energy is the answer. As I said origanally if we can figure that one out we've solved a lot more serious problems than getting the kids to soccer.
I was being a bit facetious saying that we need to break the law of thermodynamics to make hydrogen work, but not much. I realize that it might be worth is to expend energy to get a mobile fuel source, but I still can't think of a single reason why we'd rather have hydrogen than bio-diesel.
If hydrogen is a poor fuel source it is a worse battery. Batteries are portable, (relatively) safe, and rechargable. Hydrogen ain't.
Really there isn't much of a difference between fuel and battery, but since hydrogen consumed, and isn't locally rechargable I still think it is better to compare it to other fuels. Besides hydrogen provides power in exactly the same way as gasoline, so if I need to call hydrogen a battery I can do the same with gasoline, and all the comparisons are still valid.
Of course thermodynamics enters into it. Any fuel source that is net positive (gasoline, ethanol, natural gas, (soon?) bio-diesel, etc.) is better than a fuel source that is net negative. As I said originally I understand that we might be willing to use a net negative fuel for the ease of transportation, but hydrogen is all hype.
Sure some smart people would disagree, but who is paying their salaries? In most cases I'd bet it is the DOE. If the government wanted to throw money at creating a national water-slide transportation system (I'm patenting the NWSTS) someone smart would take the money and expound on its virtues.
For my money we ought to be diverting a large portion of the fuel cell funding to ethanol and bio-diesel research.
Eh, using coal to make hydrogen is of course possible, but I thought we wanted clean fuel.
It's possible, but if we're going to be building an infrastructure from scratch shouldn't it be at least a little better than the current one is some aspect?
The limitations of the Hydrogen economy simply aren't technological in nature. They're fundemental. There are so many reasons why hydrogen won't work, and only pie in the sky ideas about how great it would be if it did.
In a nutshell there are two ways to get hydrogen commercially. The first is striping hydrocarbons. They're called hydrocarbons because it diverts your attention from the very obvious problem with this approach. Hydrocarbons are foriegn oil (more accurately natural gas, but it is the same problem.) Remind me again what the problem is that prompted us to look at alternative fuels.
The second way is electrolysis of water, the only problem is that pesky second law of thermodynamics. Yes, I know that stationary powerplants are more efficient than IC engines, and yes I know that we might be prepared to pay the energy penalty twice in order to get a transportable fuel, but the fact remains you are starting with a losing proposition.
If the senate is serious about spurring Hydrogen growth they should be approving new nuclear power plants with the express purpose of making hydrogen. That IMO is the only economically way to produce the stuff. (Sure solar is great, but I think that if we manage to improve solar technology to the point that we can mass produce hydrogen we've solved a bigger problem than foriegn oil. In other words solar power is a bigger problem independent from Hydrogen, and if we lick that we will be less concerned with Hyrdogen.)
So even if we do have hydrogen production plants you still have very serious storage and transporation issues. Not to mention prohibitively expensive fuel cells and batteries. I think the govenment is already dumping more than enough money into these fields as it is. Maybe the H-prize will help along research in storage, but I think the dozens of million dollar plus university grants are a bit more of an incentive than this prize.
All in all I view this as a public challenge to violate the laws of thermodynamics. Call me cynical, but I don't think it's going to work out.
So that begs the question how much energy do you have to put in per gallon to go from grass to sugar, since enzymes work best at elevated temperatures, and is that in any way proportional to the pay-off of growing grass instead of corn?
Ok lets say a tractor is plowing using this plow (advertised for its energy efficiency).
Power Requirement
All deep-tillage tools are power-intensive. Depending on the number of legs on a Paratill® , figure 30 to 35 HP for each leg. In addition, the tires should be in good condition (adequate tread) for traction. Plows have only CIII capabilities for hitching.
Since the model pictured is a 6 legged plow that is ~180hp or 134kW.
Lets say we want to swap batteries at intervals no less than 1 hr. If I'm doing the math right that means we need to carry 121 batteries like the one you linked to, or 6000 lbs of battery costing $3720 (USD) (used). So if it takes 5 hours to charge, that is just under $20,000 for second hand batteries, or $82,200 new.
Batteries are too expensive, which is why hybrids aren't economically viable.
I've heard of this, esp. around the State of the Union, and briefly looked into it, and it just doesn't make sense to me. Anyone care to fill me in?
The way I understand it is that the more sugars a crop has the more EtOH you can make, simply because it is easier to ferment sugar than starch. Basically this means that order of EtOH viability follows order of tastyness. Sugarcane, sugarbeet, then corn, then soy, and so on. Grass doen't have much sugar, and it takes energy to convert starches and cellulose (of which grass has plenty) into sugar, and then you can ferment it. Since it has been my experience that we obey the laes of thermodynamics in this country how is it ever going to be more efficient to get EtOH from grass than corn? The fruit of corn will always provide the advantage. If you are going to convert cellulose you can convert the ears and stalks of corn, or just the stalks of grass.
Is switchgrass all hype, or am I missing something?
Sweet, so we're free and clear of oil dependance 1.5 generations after gas hits $10 a gallon.
I'm all for more nuke plants, but do we really need more refineries? I'd be much happier with newer refineries - I say we gently prod exxon, shell etc. into completely refitting their refineries by closing down the oldest one every year.
Oops off by a factor of 2. A farmer would only need 3 battery packs if it lasts 4 hours and recharges in 12. Still too expensive, and I doubt that they'd last that long.
Slashdot Mirror
The thing with news organizations isn't that they lie, it is that they present the facts in such a way as to promote their own agenda, or they position editorials to have the same effect.
So the issue isn't really one of trust, it is more one of gullibility and inability to divine missing information. Even if you do your own research in nearly all cases what you find will corroborate the facts that they have selected.
That isn't to say that what Fox says meets standards of integrity, but really they're not the ones to blame. They didn't create American's ADD induced appetite for three minute segments or 24 hour news on their own, they are just playing to the market as they found it.
I'm tempted to say we've ceased to be a nation capable of critical thought, but I'm not sure we ever were.
He's talking about the credit bureaus. Who certainly also know more about my finances than I do - I just don't pay them, I use my free yearly report.
What I wonder about though is why shouldn't you be able to use google spreadsheet to create and view the data and still store it locally?
All your points are certaily valid, and I mostly agree with you.
However, because the public school system is bound and determined to teach everyone it seems to do a poor job teaching anyone.
I don't have a solution, and I especially think the easy way out, tracking, is a miserable idea, but there are some fundamental issues unrelated to funding that should be addressed.
Oh, and making sure that the students take a standardized test every two years doesn't actually make them smarter...
No, assuming the products purchased are properly labeled. That's FedEx's problem.
And the whole point is that this fear is asinine.
How many terrorists make their explosives? I don't know, but I'd bet that it is damn near zero. Tim McVeigh didn't synthesize an explosive he used common fertilizer. Sure it's possible to make nitroglycerine or TNT, but in order to get a truly destructive quantity it is easier to rob a mining outfit, or a farm, or a plumber, welder, race strip, airport, or pharma company.
"Dangerous" basement chemistry isn't explosives; it is things like meth. And as the article said the deterrent for making meth in your basement should be the laws and punishments associated with making meth, not the unavailability of pH strips and Erlenmeyer flasks.
Lets face it I'm not going to blow up any buildings with what I can make in my garage (except maybe my garage.) This is just another aspect of the government fear mongering with the word terrorist. Coupled that with the consequences of our decreasing ability to take responsibility for our actions and the actions of our children - I burned myself with the sulfuric acid in the chemistry set I'm suing - and you have the makings of a society that stifles intellectual curiosity.
Or suggest that he might be writing a letter...
The concord looks bad, but as you alluded the flight numbers are smaller. Notice there is only the one incident. In the only fatal concord accident the plane ran over a piece of debris on the runway which blew out a the landing gear, which ultimately would likely have had fatal consequences on any plane in service.
If you eliminate the single non-design related concord accident it is probably one of the safest planes ever built.
Well, safest unless you count the horrendous damage it could do to the wallet of anyone associated with it - passenger or operator.
If you're going to rip-off an article the least you can do is provide a link to it.
http://magic-city-news.com/article_5888.shtml
All this in light of yesterdays article about plagerism .
You're right, it isn't really a free speech issue. It is, however, an issue of legislating the web, and there is plenty of out-cry from slashdot when anyone tries to do that with any subject besides spam.
Also any valid point you may have wished to make is completely eclipsed by this titanic faulure of logic and perspective:
While I think it's fair to have a gut reaction against journalists, I don't think that it is ultimately a defensable position.
Technically minded people are the most arrogent people on the planet. They think that anything that doesn't capture reality in a wholly accurate manner in detail is useless. I mean clearly it should be a crime against humanity whenever someone equates copyright violation to theft.
In the real world people actually want to have current events explained to them in a way that they can understand. Journalists are trained in communication, not in your area of expertise. If the average person is incapable of understanding what a root-kit is, is it better to scoff at them and call them names, or to try to explain it (in technically inacurate terms) so that people with no desire to understand the inner-workings of an operating system can at least have an idea what it was that Sony did? So what if they call it a virus? Sure, it's not technically correct, but it gets the point across. That is after all what communication is all about.
I think that the problem stems from our education teching us that the printed word is an authority. I know I seldom questioned the accuracy of the encylopedia, my textbooks, or even the newspaper before I was in college (or at least until I was an upper-classman in high school.) Now in our particular areas of expertise we are frequently more knowlegable on a subject than the newspaper. We draw the conclusion that the newspaper is worthless as a source of information. What we (as technically minded people) fail to recognize is that the newspaper's goal isn't to be totally technically accurate, but rather to explain what is happening in the world to people who aren't experts.
Journalists have a role to play and it's not to provide technical information. If you are trying to understand AJAX by reading a Web 2.0 article in USA today, it isn't the journalist who has failed, you have failed in seeking out an appropriate source of information.
I don't care why you responded to me. All I'm pointing out is that coal to hydrogen isn't as desirable as you want it to be. You know, giving others information and all that.
Now take a look at the F-T process you linked to in Wikipedia. Notice that the starting ingredient in Methane. So, in other words it is exactly the same process used in the very case I described - converting Natural Gas to hydrogen.
Now, I'm not a chemist, I didn't know exactly what the method was called before you pointed it to me, but I am not completely ignorant about hydrogen production. If I had said, "The only way to get hydrogen is electrolysing water." then you might have a point. I didn't. I addressed your argument from the get go. So it's not foriegn oil, it is still a bad idea.
I don't care if you're frustrated either. I'm providing counter-arguments, your saying, "I bet you didn't know about this - so NAH!" And you still have yet to explain to me why we'd rather be burning coal sourced gasoline over the three or so examples I've already provided. But just for shits and giggles heres another. I'd rather be paying Canada to destroy their enviornment and supply us with oil-shale based crude than using coal based gasoline or hydrogen.
My definitions, although I think you'll find that it isn't uncommon terinology.
Net-positive: Any fuel who's production, refinement, and processing energy requirements are less than the total energy stored in the fuel.
Net-Negative: Any fuel who's production, refinement, and processing energy requirements are greater than the total energy stored in the fuel.
Sure, strictly speaking it has to net negative, one could count energy input into the system by the sun, or as a result of being burried for millenia, but since it is essentially free energy, it makes little sence to do so.
Now that I've shared with you my definitions would you care to enlighten me as to how you define battery and fuel?
Whether there is a difference or not I'd rather have a battery charged by nature than one which we have to charge ourselves. Hydrogen has to be charged, bio-diesle is charged for us.
Repeat after me: "Hydrogen is not pollution free."
All you are doing is moving the source of pollution, unless we are using solar or wind power to do it. In that case like I said we've solved a much deeper problem.
Which is why I said that the best option for forcing the "hydrogen economy" is to build a few nuclear plants dedicated to electrolysing water.
There is no way with current or near-future tech that we will be able to produce any sizable amount of hydrogen with any combination of water, wind, solar, and geothermal energy.
The best way to harness "natural energy" is to turn plants - not water - into fuel.
Originally I said there are two ways of making hydrogen, one of them is stripping hydrocarbons. Correct me if I'm wrong but isn't coal a hydrocarbon? Sure I said natural gas, but the process works with any hydrocarbon.
Now I'm a tad surprised that you're not jumping all over me for straw-manning the crap out of the benefits. That we have coal here is the single biggest benefit, but at the same time the single biggest benefit of hydrogen is that it is a "clean fuel." If we're making it from coal that ceases to be the case.
So if we do transition away from the synthesis gas to hydrogen we can worry about getting our hydrogen from cleaner sources right. Oh wait now all those other problems are still unresolved...
If we really wanted to create a fuel that runs in the existing infrastructure with resources that we have in abundance we'd be spending money not on turning coal to hydrogen, but on turning soybeans into diesel.
And how pray tell are we going to get this energy source? Every energy problem is a thermodynamic one. You need energy to turn water into hydrogen, and that has to come from somewhere.
We'd all like solar power, but you can't just wave your hands and say solar energy is the answer. As I said origanally if we can figure that one out we've solved a lot more serious problems than getting the kids to soccer.
I was being a bit facetious saying that we need to break the law of thermodynamics to make hydrogen work, but not much. I realize that it might be worth is to expend energy to get a mobile fuel source, but I still can't think of a single reason why we'd rather have hydrogen than bio-diesel.
If hydrogen is a poor fuel source it is a worse battery. Batteries are portable, (relatively) safe, and rechargable. Hydrogen ain't.
Really there isn't much of a difference between fuel and battery, but since hydrogen consumed, and isn't locally rechargable I still think it is better to compare it to other fuels. Besides hydrogen provides power in exactly the same way as gasoline, so if I need to call hydrogen a battery I can do the same with gasoline, and all the comparisons are still valid.
Of course thermodynamics enters into it. Any fuel source that is net positive (gasoline, ethanol, natural gas, (soon?) bio-diesel, etc.) is better than a fuel source that is net negative. As I said originally I understand that we might be willing to use a net negative fuel for the ease of transportation, but hydrogen is all hype.
Sure some smart people would disagree, but who is paying their salaries? In most cases I'd bet it is the DOE. If the government wanted to throw money at creating a national water-slide transportation system (I'm patenting the NWSTS) someone smart would take the money and expound on its virtues.
For my money we ought to be diverting a large portion of the fuel cell funding to ethanol and bio-diesel research.
Eh, using coal to make hydrogen is of course possible, but I thought we wanted clean fuel.
It's possible, but if we're going to be building an infrastructure from scratch shouldn't it be at least a little better than the current one is some aspect?
The limitations of the Hydrogen economy simply aren't technological in nature. They're fundemental. There are so many reasons why hydrogen won't work, and only pie in the sky ideas about how great it would be if it did.
In a nutshell there are two ways to get hydrogen commercially. The first is striping hydrocarbons. They're called hydrocarbons because it diverts your attention from the very obvious problem with this approach. Hydrocarbons are foriegn oil (more accurately natural gas, but it is the same problem.) Remind me again what the problem is that prompted us to look at alternative fuels.
The second way is electrolysis of water, the only problem is that pesky second law of thermodynamics. Yes, I know that stationary powerplants are more efficient than IC engines, and yes I know that we might be prepared to pay the energy penalty twice in order to get a transportable fuel, but the fact remains you are starting with a losing proposition.
If the senate is serious about spurring Hydrogen growth they should be approving new nuclear power plants with the express purpose of making hydrogen. That IMO is the only economically way to produce the stuff. (Sure solar is great, but I think that if we manage to improve solar technology to the point that we can mass produce hydrogen we've solved a bigger problem than foriegn oil. In other words solar power is a bigger problem independent from Hydrogen, and if we lick that we will be less concerned with Hyrdogen.)
So even if we do have hydrogen production plants you still have very serious storage and transporation issues. Not to mention prohibitively expensive fuel cells and batteries. I think the govenment is already dumping more than enough money into these fields as it is. Maybe the H-prize will help along research in storage, but I think the dozens of million dollar plus university grants are a bit more of an incentive than this prize.
All in all I view this as a public challenge to violate the laws of thermodynamics. Call me cynical, but I don't think it's going to work out.
So that begs the question how much energy do you have to put in per gallon to go from grass to sugar, since enzymes work best at elevated temperatures, and is that in any way proportional to the pay-off of growing grass instead of corn?
Anyone know?
Since the model pictured is a 6 legged plow that is ~180hp or 134kW.
Lets say we want to swap batteries at intervals no less than 1 hr. If I'm doing the math right that means we need to carry 121 batteries like the one you linked to, or 6000 lbs of battery costing $3720 (USD) (used). So if it takes 5 hours to charge, that is just under $20,000 for second hand batteries, or $82,200 new.
Batteries are too expensive, which is why hybrids aren't economically viable.
because we cound never think of another reason to go to war like: religion, expansion, ideology, economy, boredom, general fiestyness, etc.
I've heard of this, esp. around the State of the Union, and briefly looked into it, and it just doesn't make sense to me. Anyone care to fill me in?
The way I understand it is that the more sugars a crop has the more EtOH you can make, simply because it is easier to ferment sugar than starch. Basically this means that order of EtOH viability follows order of tastyness. Sugarcane, sugarbeet, then corn, then soy, and so on. Grass doen't have much sugar, and it takes energy to convert starches and cellulose (of which grass has plenty) into sugar, and then you can ferment it. Since it has been my experience that we obey the laes of thermodynamics in this country how is it ever going to be more efficient to get EtOH from grass than corn? The fruit of corn will always provide the advantage. If you are going to convert cellulose you can convert the ears and stalks of corn, or just the stalks of grass.
Is switchgrass all hype, or am I missing something?
Sweet, so we're free and clear of oil dependance 1.5 generations after gas hits $10 a gallon.
I'm all for more nuke plants, but do we really need more refineries? I'd be much happier with newer refineries - I say we gently prod exxon, shell etc. into completely refitting their refineries by closing down the oldest one every year.
Oops off by a factor of 2. A farmer would only need 3 battery packs if it lasts 4 hours and recharges in 12. Still too expensive, and I doubt that they'd last that long.