DrumBeat: May 6, 2007
Posted by Leanan on May 6, 2007 - 8:03am
Topic: Miscellaneous
Renewable is not a synonym for sustainable
One of my dad's maxims was "never buy or sell hay." Buying hay might bring in the seeds of weeds we had spent years trying to control; selling hay removed tons of nutrients without replacing it with commensurate manure. Thousands of years of unharvested prairie had built the rich silt loam. The first 75 years of diversified, value-added farming saw mainly livestock and livestock products leave a nearly-level farm, using no commercial fertilizer, yet with ever-increasing yields.
Kuwait oil reserves secret for national security
Kuwait will never disclose the size of its oil reserves for reasons of national security, Oil Minister Sheikh Ali Al-Jarrah Al-Sabah was quoted as saying after Kuwait announced a new oil find. “Kuwait has not and will not disclose the size of its oil reserves,” he told Al-Arabiya Television late on Monday. “The Kuwait people are not concerned with numbers. This is related to national security.”Industry newsletter Petroleum Intelligence Weekly (PIW) said in January 2006 it had seen internal Kuwaiti records showing reserves were about 48 billion barrels — half the officially stated 99 billion, or some 10 percent of global oil reserves. Kuwait’s former oil minister, Sheikh Ahmad Al-Fahd Al-Sabah, has said that PIW’s report only paints a partial picture while other oil officials said the report was inaccurate. PIW said official public figures do not distinguish between proven, probable and possible reserves. Sheikh Ali told Arabiya that just because some fields were not proven it did not mean there was no oil there but that they were not being used.
Is U.S. Natural Gas Headed Toward Excess Supply?
Several recent analytical studies, sponsored by EPRI, indicate that there is a plausible scenario that gas supplies will increase and that excess gas supplies could emerge over the intermediate-term, perhaps within two years.
Wind Farms May Not Lower Air Pollution, Study Suggests
Making good decisions about wind energy may be difficult, said David J. Policansky, the study director, because negative effects occur locally while benefits are probably regional or national.
Facing Western Diplomatic Pressure, Iran Looks East
When Iran looks west, it faces trade sanctions, political hostility and military threats. So now the vilified government is turning to the east, where energy-hungry Asia is embracing it as a regional partner.
The (Not So) Eagerly Modern Saudi
SAUDI ARABIA, home of Islam’s holiest sites, flush with oil revenue, and increasingly the most influential player among Arab countries, has long resisted changing its ultratraditional ways. Now the intrusions of global economics and technology have begun to challenge some traditions in ways that the country’s idealists could not. And the strain that this is causing is showing in the form of surprisingly open debate about how much Saudis really want to modernize.
Dave Cohen: The Call on OPEC?
An earlier column, Decline Rates and Non-OPEC Supply, investigated a likely peak (or plateau) in oil supplied by nations outside the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) by 2010. The "call on OPEC" to satisfy growing world oil demand must inevitably increase thereafter. Will OPEC answer the call? The people running OPEC are businessmen. They will answer the call only if there is a financial incentive to do so.
Big Oil in Tiny Cambodia: The Burden of New Wealth
Still clawing its way out of the ruins of its brutal past, Cambodia has come face to face with an extraordinary new future: It seems to have struck oil.
Accidental Sustainability and Why We Can't Sustain It
For those of you who haven't heard yet, a portion of a highly trafficked freeway interchange in the San Francisco Bay Area collapsed early yesterday morning when a gasoline tanker lost control and exploded. The flames apparently reached temperatures nearing 3000F degrees, and a structure we ordinarily trust to be quite stable turned from an overpass into an asphalt waterslide.
Iran gas oil price hike rejected
Iran's parliament on Sunday voted against a government proposal of gas oil used as diesel fuel for trucks and for heating homes, official media reported on Sunday.Refined oil and gas products are heavily-subsidised in resource-rich Iran, encouraging consumption as well as draining state coffers, but raising prices is politically sensitive as the country struggles with high inflation and unemployment.
Agrichar is the term not for the biomass fuel, but for what is left over after the energy is removed: a charcoal-based soil amendment. In simple terms, the agrichar process takes dry biomass of any kind and bakes it in a kiln to produce charcoal. The process is called pyrolysis. Various gases and bio-oils are driven off the material and collected to use in heat or power generation. The charcoal is buried in the ground, sequestering the carbon that the growing plants had pulled out of the atmosphere. The end result is increased soil fertility and an energy source with negative carbon emissions.
Ethanol: Converting Agricultural Crops into Oil
Is this the optimal economic and social way to produce fuel? It is known that the prices of corn, and consequently bread and fodders for chickens and other animals, have risen as a result of using corn to produce fuel instead of food. Also well-known is the fact that corn and sugar cane fields use large amounts of water.
A green light for General Motors, AAA
Sedans that run on a combination of ethanol and gasoline were parked next to trucks powered by high-efficiency engines.Hybrid sport utility vehicles powered by gas and batteries were flanked by a futuristic car that runs on liquid nitrogen.
This problem can be readily addressed by literally putting the power in the hands of the people by encouraging householders to produce renewable energy.
Many people say their conscience is driving them to seek alternative fuels.
Another spring, another jump in gasoline prices and another round of ineptitude from Washington.There is never a good time of year to see gas above $2.80 per gallon, but it's particularly worrisome to reach this level now. That's because pump prices tend to go up from here as we head into the high-demand summer vacation season.
Good works usually come at the expense of something else
On the up-side, higher oil prices increase the viability of ethanol. And, theoretically, at least, decrease the number of illegal immigrants entering the United States.
Increasing gas prices are causing some to reconsider that long summer car trip in favor of a closer vacation destination, but others say high fuel costs will not affect their upcoming travel plans.
"Like a baseball player with a hamstring injury, the refineries will get off the disabled list in time for peak season."
Carolyn Baker: The Spirituality of Collapse
The first edition of this article was written in February, 2006, but I have recently revised and updated it. Since the first writing, the theme of collapse seems to have reverberated around the world, now manifesting its symptoms in the scientific community’s latest dramatic reports on global warming, the issue of Peak Oil coming further out of the closet--being discussed openly in mainstream media, and the bursting of the U.S. housing bubble that now finds 1 out of every 264 homes in the nation facing foreclosure as each day the value of the dollar decreases and the value of precious metals soars.
Peak Oil and U.S. Representative Vernon Ehlers
This morning, I brought up Peak Oil in a town hall meeting with U.S. Representative Vernon Ehlers of Michigan.Representative Ehlers was formerly a nuclear physicist, is one of only three scientists in Congress, and is extremely well versed on both energy and Peak Oil.
It sucks the energy right out of you
A Modest Proposal: For Tomorrow's Energy Crisis, Today, imagines the world in 2039, 19 years after the oil crash of 2020. In it, a cyclical process finds humans modifying their bodies monthly by eating foods that raise their body mass index, or BMI – like Borks, a cross between beef and pork – to gain weight before having the fat extracted and turned into fuel.The film can be viewed online here.
The Uranium Juniors and Majors: A Symbiotic Relationship
Fears about peak oil and the concept of uranium as a cleaner energy source have coupled in the industry’s collective imagination and forced the price of uranium to triple in the last year. On the supply side experts are alerting the public of shortages and many are saying that the uranium price will continue to climb as a result. With bio-energy solutions seen as being far-off in the future, uranium is being touted as nothing less than the solution to world’s energy and greenhouse gas problems.
Pipeline delivers huge benefit and international research goldmine
In Weyburn, the oil buzz would be at a much lower pitch if it weren't for a pipeline that comes all the way from Beulah, about 200 miles southeast as a strong crow would fly.Minister demands staff electricity metre figures The pipeline carries carbon dioxide, one of the most common molecule bonds on earth.
Ghana: Minister demands staff electricity metre figures
The Minister of Local Government, Rural Development and Environment has directed all directors and members of staff of the Ministry to read electricity meters in their offices and official residence every Monday morning and submit the figures to his office.The exercise, which takes off on Monday, is intended to show the percentage savings the ministry, its departments and agencies, are making as their contribution towards efforts at solving the country’s energy problems.
The Silver Lining to Impending Doom
A curious feature of capitalism is that threats, or more precisely, the human response to them, are economically and technologically stimulating. Or, to put it another way, “Necessity is the mother of invention.”...There are good reasons to believe that crying wolf is exactly what the brightest innovators ought to be doing, and not only in response to the challenge of climate change. As a general matter, high anxiety will lead to more intense pursuit of innovation.
The implications for the world economy are potentially catastrophic. The world is not running out of oil, but it will run out of production capacity if the national companies, the new rule makers in this business, don't invest. Already, the petroleum industry is far more fragmented than it was a few years ago. Countries with large resources have an obligation to the world economy to develop their oil, not just cash checks. If they don't, the world will be unable to meet surging Asian demand. Oil-based kleptocracies will be strengthened, making these countries even less stable. The recent elections in Nigeria are an egregious example.
U.S. nuclear revival begins with restart of TVA's oldest reactor
Closed since 1985, TVA's oldest reactor was the scene of a major fire sparked by a candle three decades ago. It has been reborn as a modern 1,200-megawatt atomic generator capable of lighting 650,000 homes.
It isn't over yet for Lord Browne
His bullish refusal to accept that oil is in terminal decline may prove still more haunting than his lies to a judge.
Nigerian gunmen seize British oil worker
Gunmen seized a British oil worker from a rig operating off the Nigerian coast in a dawn attack Saturday, a company spokesman said.Work was suspended on the rig and 23 people left on board unharmed were safely taken to shore, said Guy Cantwell, a spokesman for Houston-based Transocean Inc. He said the worker was a subcontractor on the rig, which was drilling on behalf of the Nigerian oil company ConOil.
Japan gives $2.1B to stem climate change
Japan pledged up to $2.1 billion in aid Sunday to the Asian Development Bank to combat global climate change and promote greener investment in the region.
Mediterranean nations face up to threat of climate change
Global warming threatens to wreak economic havoc across the Mediterranean basin, warned scientists from 62 research institutes who have banded together to study the regional consequences of climate change and propose ways to adapt.
Mark June 9 on your calendars: The World Naked Bike Ride to protest oil dependency hits the northern hemisphere. "Less gas, more ass."
Check out GliderGuider's post at TOD:Canada entitled Peak Oil, Carrying Capacity and Overshoot: Population, the Elephant in the Room.
Yeah, I saw that. Here's my .002 cents:
Here is a link to a scientific report on Cold Fusion. don't discredit it to quickly. The source is the Navy.
http://www.dailytech.com/article.aspx?newsid=7168
and a video presentation on Googlevideo.
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-1214733147725965006
Also another science article of note this week was the result that Mercury DOES have a molten core of some sort. This is again another discovery that flies in the face of what was thought to be known. Mercury was thought to have had a SOLID core. They aren't able to provide an explanation of why the core is molten hot.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/05/070503160126.htm
Plus the Sun is not what it seems. The amount of oxygen with the sun is about HALF of what they though. This too is a big problem for many theories. Throws off many understanding of previous thinking about the universe.
http://www.physorg.com/news97326842.html
I would also like to point out that Pons and Fleischman are mentioned in this article. It was someone else that broke open the story and in a sense from what I have read and learned, "screwed up' the research etc, and caused CF to be discredited. This same person is now heralded as a hero of a theory using an explosive that is complete BS, and if his path is followed, it too will lead to discredit the research imo.
Quid Clarius Astris
Ubi Bene ibi patria
What you just posted bears no similarity to what you replied to.
Quantum mechanich does allow fusion to happen at room temperature. But this is extremely rare and would do absolutely nothing to help us solve our energy problems.
Mercury and the Sun, sigh. And this will help us solve our energy problems how exactly.
It's obvious you're just desperate and grasping for straws right now.
What exactly are you thinking? That Mercury having a molten core somehow means we're NOT in overshoot, please. Thats so pathetic its not even funny.
But the thing is that even if we did manage to achieve fusion, and provide us with unlimited energy. This would be some 40 years into the future, and thus be to late to help us right now.
Also nuclear energy provides electricity, while oil is primarily used to provide transportation and feed the petrochemical industry.
So even if we had fusion right now, I find it a bit difficult to see how that would help us solve the overshoot problem. I mean having electricity for you computer is nice, but how excatly will that help us drive a tractor, or getting fertilicer and insecticides.
Tractors run on diesel, they could thus run on biodiesel, and it is feasible to grow enough oilseeds like sunflower and rape to at least fuel the tractors. We have lots of problems confronting us, but I'd put that one pretty far down toward the bottom of the list.
This would make a good article. Consider writing it up. Percent cropland required. How much coal we would need to distill etc. Summery of EROI studies.
The Hirsch report did not include biofuels because they did not consider the technology mature enough (they required a minimum of at least 10,000 bpd capacity to count beyond the pilot stage).
While corn ethanol is terrible for EROI (and we cannot afford the carbon from coal) I wonder how much worse it is that CTL?
Don't have time to do all the reearch required.
I have seen a figure of 6 EROEI for sunflower oil. That compares with a figure I have seen for ethanol of 1.35 - or maybe even <1. If one rigs up an old-time horse-powered press right on the farm, maybe the EROEI could even be a little better for the sunflowers. Running straight veg oil in cold weather is a problem, but as most farm machinery tasks are in warm weather that should not be much of a problem.
How much acreage would have to be dedicated to growing sunflowers to power a tractor for a year? According to the source below, 1 acre of sunflowers should yield 102 gal of sunflower oil per year; rapeseed does a little better at 127 gal/ac.
http://journeytoforever.org/biodiesel_yield.html
The total amount of fuel needed to run a farm for a year will depend upon the size of a farm, but I would guess that for most farms we are talking about a few acres at most. The source below lists typical farm fuel consumption per acre for most common mechanized tasks.
http://www.extension.iastate.edu/AGDM/crops/html/a3-27.html
Looking at this table, it would appear that the total fuel consumption may run somewhere in the range of 2.5-5 gal/acre, depending upon crop. That would suggest that a single acre of sunflowers should provide enough fuel for at least a 20-40 acre farm. A 160 acre farm may require between 4-8 acres of sunflowers. That would seem to me to leave plenty of acreage for food production.
>Tractors run on diesel, they could thus run on biodiesel, and it is feasible to grow enough oilseeds like sunflower and rape to at least fuel the tractors. We have lots of problems confronting us, but I'd put that one pretty far down toward the bottom of the list.
1. It takes a lot of fuel to transport ag products to consumers that live far away from the fields. Not only do you need to grow the fuel to run the tractor, but the fuel to transport it (refrigerate it), process and package it.
2. A lot US ag. relies on depleting aquifers. Less water means less productivity.
3. US ag. yields are deplendant on petro-chemical inputs (eg. Fertializer, Pesticides). Costs for chemical inputs are already rising, and we have yet to experience an serious declines in energy resources. Before the green revolution, AG yields were about 25% of todays yield. If we abandon the green revolution, we will need to farm 4 times the amount of land to achieve the same production level today.
4. Fixing the AG issues does not resolve social issues with declining energy resources. Millions of Jobs will be lost that are dependant on cheap energy. Most of these people with not be able to adapt (ie retrain, choose a completely different career path), as the major of workers are specialists. In most cases a new career would take at least a decade or more to gain the same level of knowledge base in a new career.
5. This does not also resolve loss of energy for other vital systems and services that are dependant on cheap energy. Transportion, construction, industial processes, electricity, maintanance, etc.
Sounds bad, i can not find an argument that contradicts what you say. Perhaps Europe can cope with the AG issues somewhat better than US, because we have not yet gone so far in the industrial AG buissnes as you have in US.
Yes, there are other issues besides fuel for the tractors. We really need electrified rail (large PV arrays in remote locations could provide the power, if most trains were scheduled to run during the day). Biodiesel could also fuel barges and ships for bulk transport of grains. As for the tractors themselves, the oilseeds could be grown and pressed right on the farm.
Yes, water is a big problem - it deserves to be far higher up on the list of problems than the fuel supply for farm equipment. Global climate change should open up more northerly, better watered lands for cultivation to replace the arid lands that are running out of water; not only do northerly lands have more precipitation, they will also have less evaporation, so salinization will be less of a problem. Agriculture is going to have to get a lot better about managing and conserving water, just like we are all going to have to get a lot better about managing and conserving energy.
Or we could all cut beef out of our diet and make up most of the difference right there. It wouldn't even be necesary to all become vegans - just cut out the beef and that will get us most of the way there.
Fertilizers are the least important input in crop productivity. Making sure the plants get plenty of sunlight and water (& thus keeping the weeds from competing from the plants for water) and keeping all the other life forms from eating the crop before we do are the most important thing. Putting plenty of manure or compost (or now charcoal) back into the land, plus crop rotation that includes legumes, is the only sustainable method of maintainging soil fertility; such an approach also has the advantage of increasing the soil's ability to hold water (see 2 above).
Oh, and one more little silver lining on a black cloud: increasing CO2 levels will INCREASE crop yields.
There are a huge number of problems, the list is almost endless. My point was just that there is no need to put fuel for tractors at the top of it.
You had me going until I got to that line WNC Observer. But at that point I knew you hadn't a fu**ing clue as to what the hell you were talking about. Just try growing corn, or cotton, or soybeans, or wheat without fertilizers and see what kind of yield you get.
Of course water and sunlight is important. But that sure as hell does not mean fertilizer is unimportant. Have you ever heard of Liebig's Law of the Minimum? You cannot grow anything without water, sunlight or the necessary elements in the soil. All of them are important and nothing will grow without them. If you don't have enough nitrogen in the soil, you will not get much of anything. That goes for potassium and phosphate as well.
Of course you could go back to organic farming, or pointed stick planting as they did many years ago. But you would go back to those yields as well. It is with the aid of chemical fertilizers that brought about the green revolution. And if those fertilizers go away, we would only be able to feed a tiny fraction of the people we feed today.
Ron Patterson
Who said without any? Who said unimportant? What I said was LEAST important. Of course soil fertility matters. But you can pour all of the fertilizers you want on the land, but if there is not enough water or sunlight, they will make no difference at all. Soil fertility must be maintained by adding plenty of manure & compost and crop rotation, that is the only sustainable way to do it, and if it isn't done, then of course crop yields are going to be pretty pitiful. Chemical fertilizers have been a convenient but unsustainable shortcut. Maybe using them has generated superior yields, but those are not sustainable yields. But there is no way that shifting from unsustainable to sustainable practices means that yields will disappear.
"But you would go back to those yields as well. It is with the aid of chemical fertilizers that brought about the green revolution."
Erm, I know a couple here who grow crops organically, and they would be the first to pull you up on this point. It took me all of 5 seconds to Google this:
http://www.news.cornell.edu/stories/July05/organic.farm.vs.other.ssl.htm...
http://www.cnr.berkeley.edu/~christos/articles/cv_organic_farming.html
Crop yields from modern organic farming are often equal to or in excess of conventional farming.
"You can never solve a problem on the level on which it was created."
Albert Einstein
thats not definitive proof..
but oh well. believe what you want, the green revolution was simply industrializing agriculture. without the energy basis behind that industrialization we will go back to the pre green revolution level of food production if not less due to soil damage between then and now.
I agree that the vast availability of energy was probably the most important part in the green revolution, but that has nothing to do with my comment. Chemical (in the loose sense of argi chem fertilisers - as opposed to manure type) fertilisers are not necessary to maintain high yields.
"You can never solve a problem on the level on which it was created."
Albert Einstein
I hope everybody will keep in mind that a lot of those jobs dependent on cheap energy are best not done at all.
So how are those people gonna live when they lose those wortthless jobs? Better that they keep getting paid what they are paid and do nothing, than get paid doing what they are doing which is worse than nothing.
Examples? Almost all advertizing. Many manufacturing jobs resulting in worthless crap. A high proportion of office jobs. On and on. Just look around, notice the tons of entropy generation, and ask "did we need to do that?". No.
Worst of all. What really needs to be done ain't being done. What? Start with education and go on and on.
maybe we can make a transition from crap manufacturing to maintaiance of well engineered and manufactured products (like in the good 'ole days)
Because of the rate of change involved, adequate soil cover will be lacking on much of it.
True for permafrost, not so sure that is true for boreal forests (but their soil will be acidic and need lots of limestone)
>Global climate change should open up more northerly, better watered lands for cultivation to replace the arid lands that are running out of water; not only do northerly lands have more precipitation, they will also have less evaporation, so salinization will be less of a problem.
I very much doubt that, because northern regions weather will remain volatile limiting the growing season. There will still be late season cold snaps and early frosts that will inhibit crop yields.
>Oh, and one more little silver lining on a black cloud: increasing CO2 levels will INCREASE crop yields.
CO2 levels are rising in PPM. The small rise in CO2 levels doesn't significantly increase crop yields.
>Or we could all cut beef out of our diet and make up most of the difference right there. It wouldn't even be necesary to all become vegans - just cut out the beef and that will get us most of the way there.
Beef and other livestock can graze on marginal land that isn't suitable for farming. Today livestock are factory farmed because is easier and more economical, bu it doesn't have to operate that way.
>We really need electrified rail (large PV arrays in remote locations could provide the power, if most trains were scheduled to run during the day). Biodiesel could also fuel barges and ships for bulk transport of grains. As for the tractors themselves, the oilseeds could be grown and pressed right on the farm.
1. PV panels are extremely expensive and will become hideous expensive as energy prices soar. Few people understand how much pollution is generated and how much energy is consumed to make PV panels.
2. For Biodiesel farming, please read up on Rudolf Diesel's great biodiesel experiment and why it was abandoned. To the best of my knowledge there has never been a successful large scale farming operation using home-grown biodiesel without subsidation. Yes, I seen the articles about India farmers selling biodiesel. But much of the labor is done with cheap manual labor (pratical slave labor) and they don't consume any of the produced biodiesel for farming operations. They do not operate on a closed cycle. Despite huge diesel shortages in Africa, How come farmers dont simply make thier own biodiesel? Theorically Africa could be a food exporter if only the abandoned there fossil fuels ways! I also hear that there is a Rich Nigerian who wished to deposit a large sum of money in your bank account if you can kindly provide him with your back account information! He made a fortune by using biodiesel for farming!
Personally I am sick of all these wild ideas that people have in their heads that biodiesel, PV panels, Wind, etc are a solution. None of these are practical solutions. Instead of people telling everyone how things could work, how about actually trying it! I would like to see people actually try it for themselves instead of armchair coaching. I doubt anyone here that promotes biodiesel has even tried growing crops and pressing them to make biodiesel.
WInd turbines, HV DC transmission and pumped storage are all workable technologies that are cost effective (to a limited extent) today !
Minor modifications to economics and modest technological improvements will greatly expand the scope of these workable technologies.
For example, for the current price of electricity in Hawaii, I could design a system of wind turbines in Oklahoma, HV DC from there to a massive pumped storage complex around Chattanooga TN (one 2 GW there today) and from there another linked HV DC line to Florida. I might be able to do this for half of the current price of power in Hawaii ($0.32 / 2 = 0.16/kWh).
Best Hopes,
Alan
>WInd turbines, HV DC transmission and pumped storage are all workable technologies that are cost effective (to a limited extent) today !
For that to work you need:
A. Land that is Raised sufficient to create a kinetic potential and a place to drain the water into (aka River, lake or sea), and that can be configured to hold a large body of water.
B. An abundant source of water near by
C. An Abundant source of Wind (within a few hundered miles)
This rules out large sections of the US, because
A. Midwest is too flat and too dry
B. Western US already has water shortages.
C. Most of the Eastern US is heavily populated (aka suburbia) which leaves no room for constructing large man-made lakes or expanding existing ones.
There are few areas remaining to build storage facilities because most of the land that meets these requirements is already occupied. Fresh water is also used to supply agraculture and large cities.
Wind will never replace the majority of US electrical Production. I suspect it would probably max out at about 10% of current production.
Now all you need to do come up with another 150% to 170% of electrical production to move the US economy away from liquid and gas fossil fuels (aka to the electric economy instead of our current fossil fuel economy). Good luck.
As a lawyer, you show easily be able to recognize the uphill battle of displacing large groups of people and constructing new HV power lines over people's property, or trying to even build wind farms off the the coast because it "destroys the view, or kills birds" or a million other excuses people come up with.
It should be pretty obvious that nothing is going to be done until we start seeing national rolling blackouts and empty gas tanks. By then it will be too late and it still will take for every as politicans begin the finger pointing as usual and waste valuable resources on non-value projects.
IIRC, I was the one who informed you about the need to construct storage lakes to back up wind production. As we had a debate about the limitations of Wind power.
>For example, for the current price of electricity in Hawaii, I could design a system of wind turbines in Oklahoma, HV DC from there to a massive pumped storage complex around Chattanooga TN (one 2 GW there today) and from there another linked HV DC line to Florida. I might be able to do this for half of the current price of power in Hawaii ($0.32 / 2 = 0.16/kWh).
This would never work. Its way too complex and you have glossed over a huge list of issues that make this project impractical. Even if it could be made to work, Florida is only one of forty-eight states. What about California, Texas, the Mid-West, the Northeast, and the rest of the US's major population centers?
I have read that rapeseed requires a great deal of nitrogen, and NO2 emissions from fields are considerable. While rapeseed methyl ester (RME) may be carbon-neutral, it is not greenhouse-neutral.
Rather than grow a low-yield oilseed crop specifically for diesel fuel, it may be more efficient to adapt the diesel to run on something closer to raw biomass. I'd look at:
It shouldn't take much of a biomass yield to do the job. If crop wastes are insufficient, a relatively small tallgrass plot would yield the fuel required for cultivation. Excess could be converted to charcoal and tilled in.
There are any number of oilseed crops that can do the job. Most diesel engines can run filtered straight veg oil with no or minimal modification. The problem is cold temps. Sunflower oil remains liquid to a little lower temp than most veg oils, which is one thing to say in its favor. The growing conditions in much of the US are optimal for sunflowers; as a Brassica, rapeseed is a better fit for northerly climes like Canada and N Europe, but can be grown in much of the US as well.
It should be noted that sunflowers, rapeseeds, and other oilseeds are increasingly being cultivated as cover crops in a crop rotation scheme, and can thus play a part in preserving soil fertility. Like all crops, sunflower yields can increase with the application of nitrogen and other fertilizers. It should be noted, however, that the root systems of sunflowers are considerably wider and deeper than is the case with corn, and they are thus able to make good use of the fertility latent in a sustainably managed field with less need for fertilizer supplementation than is the case for some other crops.
My impression is that sunflowers are a relatively easy crop to grow, and are feasible to grow on a small scale; they are one of the few oilseeds that even home gardeners could and routinely do grow. Sunflower seeds are relatively easy to harvest and to process on a small-scale, low-tech basis. My thinking is that what is needed is an oilseed crop that could be processed into biodiesel right on the farm, eliminating the need for energy to transport the seeds to a factory and the oil back to the farmer -- that is what really kills you on EROEI.
Humans have been pressing oils from oilseeds for millennia before the modern industrial age, so it certainly can be done. Rig up a solar roaster to pre-heat the seeds before pressing and you can probably get farmstead production yields that may still be lower than what can be achieved by industrial production, but not that much lower.
The issue isn't the capability. The issue is the per-acre productivity (acres cultivated per acre of fuel crop) and the net GHG effect.
Harvestable corn stover can come to around 2 tons/acre above what's needed for soil cover. Compared to 6 gallons/acre of diesel (about 45 lb/acre) for production, the fuel yield overwhelms requirements and none of it comes from the primary product. With canola, your fuel is your product.
Back in the 80's, FEMA published plans for an emergency wood-gas generator for ag equipment. The suggested fuel was wood chips, but torrefied biomass would probably work even better. If you can run the combines on last year's corn stalks, you're doing a lot better than if you have to add acres of something else just to get a liquid diesel fuel.
Prisoner X, first you posted your thread as a reply to another thread that was not remotely connected to your subject. You did this just to get your post near the top of Drumbeat for this day. That was very rude of you.
Second, science is always correcting itself. We are discovering new things each day that proves old theories were in error. Plate tectonics is a perfect example. That is simply how science works, ever discovering and ever revising old theories.
Your reasons for reasons for mentioning the fact that two previously held theories about Mercury and the Sun, are wrong, is obvious. “Science was wrong here so it is obviously wrong about cold fusion as well”. No my friend, that is a non sequitur.
Coating a thin wire with palladium and deuterium, then claiming that charged particles are emerging as a result, is not an example of cold fusion even if it is true. However it might be, as the article points out, “an important precursor to scientists receiving the necessary funding to fuel additional research in the field”. After all, a research grant is the most important thing of all here……Isn’t it.
Ron Patterson
"The laws of thermodynamics, population theory, etc. are as well known as the curse of Oedipus. Yet we simply turned our backs on them."
This was part of that post. You jump to conclusions.
Quid Clarius Astris
Ubi Bene ibi patria
The classic research paper conclusion: "More research is needed" ;-)
How on earth would getting MORE energy make the problem we're in better rather than worse? It would let us extract more of our depleting global resource base, generate even more waste, and make even more people - all of which are precisely the parameters of the box we're in.
If cold (or even hot) fusion is to be the Deus Ex Machina for mankind, it behooves the priests who worship that Deus to tell us why the Machina isn't going to just kill us all a little faster. If too much energy got us into this predicament, more energy is very unlikely to be the solution.
Would need a bit of a change in values to go along with that bit more energy which seems about as likely as cold fusion.
I wonder if the green revolution as well as mechanized agriculture has as much to do with the population explosion. I think possibly the use of oil has more to do with the concentration of population than any increase that couldn't occur with an organic style of agi. The real use for the oil has been in the production of lots and lots of food transportation and amusing gigas to keep that concentrated population occupied. The difference between oil and no oil is the first way we get to the Olduvai Gorge by Caddy the other by foot.
Exactly. The ultimate nightmare scenario would be some form of limitless energy source like breeder reactors or what have you. For what? SO we can pollute even more of the planet w/ sprawl before running up against the walls of phosphate, fishery,etc. depletion anyways?
I actually watched the Google video (in spite of the abysmal sound quality). Radiation measurement is something that I know about, having worked in that field for over 20 years. The person speaking states that they were unable to measure x-ray/gamma-ray radiation with a standard radiation detection system because "the activity occurs in bursts, so if you have a burst of activity and a lot of nothing, it averages all out". Therefore, they used a type of dosimeter, CR-39, and are basing their claims on results with the CR-39. This smells of bullshit. Standard radiation detection equipment is fully capable of integrating x-ray/gamma-ray/charged-particle events over long periods of time. (I've personally made such measurements extending over many days.) If the integrated count-rate is not above normal background levels, then the conclusion is obvious -- there is no excess radiation.
The dosimeter evidence was unconvincing. While a comparison with natural background counts was made, the speaker doesn't say anything about higher count rates in