Work is being done at the University of Illinois, suggesting we can get 3 gallons a day of oil from pig poop, per pig.
Dude, just think about that for more than 30 seconds, and you'd realize how ridiculous it is. The laws of thermodynamics hold, even for pigs. You don't get anything out of them that you're not putting into them.
For disposing of pig wastes, fine, it may be worth doing. But as a scalable energy source? Read up on that turkey parts plant, and get back to us.
If you take out energy from pig poop, you are taking energy from somewhere else.
The feed, the water, the farm implements, the diesel trucks to haul said pigs and poop. Building the collectors, and all the other infrastructure.
Cheap energy is cheap because we are burning fossil sunlight. There will be no energy bonanza from algae, pig poop, turkey guts, switchgrass, or any other solar budget energy scheme because the amount of sunlight we can capture and turn into the liquids which drive our drive-in shopaholic lifestyle will be insufficient.
STOP BEING SCIENTIFICALLY OBLIVIOUS!!! You must include ALL the knock on effects. You must include ALL the energy inputs, including the food the farmer eats while sitting in his airconditioned John Deere, the cost of the clothes he wears, and the gasoline he burns to drive over to the south-forty.
The next paradigm shift in science will revolve around holistic thinking. Too bad this shift may come too late to save the narrow, fix-the-problem-in-front-of-me-ignore-the-problems-the-solution-causes mindset people and their cheerleaders from the dieoff.
Bravo!! Your's is the first comment I've seen (by anyone, anywhere) that doesn't arbitrarily ignore inconvenient facts in order to promote a pet idea. Thank you!!
It is not "reserves". It is not "production". It is cycles that matter.
It all has to go all around.
But I disagree that there is no energy bonanza. There is 1kW/m2, everywhere, all the time. That is way much more than whatever we need. And not only in the Earth, but in a 1.5e11 m sphere.
"STOP BEING SCIENTIFICALLY OBLIVIOUS!!! You must include ALL the knock on effects. You must include ALL the energy inputs, including the food the farmer eats while sitting in his airconditioned John Deere, the cost of the clothes he wears, and the gasoline he burns to drive over to the south-forty"
That's fair enough Cherenkov, but I want the same thing done with the fossil fuels....
Count the steel in the rigs, the pumps, the pipe, all of it.....count the computers that are used to hunt for the oil, the man hours in computational time world wide, the food it takes to feed them....count the aircraft carriers and the patrols by the fighter planes and rader carrying AWACS....count the supertankers, the steel, the men, the portage facilities to onload and offload the oil....the refineries, the tractor trailers and railcars, the cost of excavatign the storage tanks down at the 24 hour bright white lit retail store, the pumps, the concrete pads and giant steel canopies that would not be needed if folks were not out there pumping gas in the rain....
And even with that, I know I have left out at least HALF the items needed to keep the oil flowing from the desert to the customer.....
Count fair and square and see if the worshipped holy oil is still so superior....
That old saw may have fooled people once, but no matter how much the oil industry apologists repeat in an attept to kill any alternative in it's crib, people are starting to take a closer look at that whole argument....
Oh, one more thing.....and this is strictly a personal observation....if your final argument is always going to be to try to scare somebody with that dieoff hysteria, that one don't work anymore either.....we're all gonna' die, it's how you want to live that matters. I have as much faith in pig manure as I do in the oil industries string of shiit......
Roger Conner Jr.
Remember, we are only one cubic mile from freedom
The cost has been factored in, Roger. That's what the market does - factor in costs. And that's the point of fossil fuels - we are taking fuels that have been stored over hundreds of millions of years by slow natural processes and using them now. We didn't have to account for the creation, burial, and conversion of vegetable matter to fossil fuel because it all occurred before we even existed. THERE WAS NO COST TO HOMO SAPIENS! DO YOU UNDERSTAND THAT YET, ROGER?
Biodiesel is an attempt to recreate the same process in a few weeks or months that nature took millions of years to do. This requires INPUTS, Roger. Inputs of energy, material, etc. There IS a cost to homo sapiens to CREATE biofuels.
The fact that you totally fail to understand this is demonstrative of how disconnected from reality you actually are. Go back to cheerleading for KSA, Roger. At least there you didn't sound like you were completely scientifically illiterate.
Ghawar Is Dying The greatest shortcoming of the human race is our inability to understand the exponential function. - Dr. Albert Bartlett
You have indeed been moody for the last couple of days....cheer up! :-)
"The cost has been factored in, Roger. That's what the market does - factor in costs."
My, how the worm has turned! On a board that lives and breathes to prove that the market is a complete failure (otherwise, how could we still be at these low oil prices right as we come onto the catastrophe?) you suddenly become a "market guru", ala CERA?!
The market had trouble remembering three days ago, and it suddenly factors in a century of sunk cost and externalities?
Allow me to ask you simply to ask yourself if you really believe that the current price of oil reflects a century of military protection, port and road building, refinery construction, pipeline construction (including the eminent domain that allowed property to be purchased on agreeable terms), construction of retail outlets, pumps, tanks, not to mention the funding poured to the universities to assist the industry in research in drilling......
Greyzone, do you really believe that? That there are no externalities, all the costs are reflected in the price? Do you really?
If you do, after considering your position carefully, then we simply will have to agree to disagree. Because I most certainly in no way believe it. If I did, I would not be here. Why would I be concerned? The price would reflect all, and look at the price...still the cheapest gas in most of the world (excepting some oil producers themselves!), and flat over the last year, I would assume the price run up has been currency weakening on the U.S. dollar and a bit of war premium (we are still at war, by the way, as a war time price, the current price is STEALING THE OIL)
"THERE WAS NO COST TO HOMO SAPIENS! DO YOU UNDERSTAND THAT YET, ROGER?"
But was there a cost in setting up the infrastructure to extract, move, refine, redistribute the oil? Is there now a cost in attempting to police the system that gets the oil to us? Is there a cost in dealing with the carbon and other byproducts of said production and use?
Your position does not seperate oil from any other potential energy supply. Allow me to take the same sentence:
"THERE WAS NO COST TO HOMO SAPIANS IN CREATING THE SUN, DO YOU UNDERSTAND THAT YET, GREYZONE!
Thus, solar energy is free! All you have to do is develop a way to capture and convert the energy! How is that different from oil, except that it is distributed over the surface of the Earth and it's cleaner? Oil did NOT gather and refine itself. And due to it's distribution, it has brought massive costs in foreign policy and human suffering.
By the way, on a more personal note: There are a short list of posters here at TOD whom I hold in enough regard to give them the allowence of calling me ill informed or ignorant, and based on the quality of their work, I will accept it and attempt to review my position and find my error.
It is a short list, and no offense GreyZone, but no post of yours has come near earning you a place on it. Do not assume that because I defer to some I defer in the same way to all.
Roger Conner Jr.
Remember, we are only one cubic mile from from freedom
Of course there are externalities, Roger. But the cost of creating the raw fuel was never a cost to homo sapiens. There is a cost to creating the raw biofuels. This cost entails doing everything that nature did in those hundreds of millions of years. Now you get to add that cost onto refining, and all the other externalities that already exist for fossil fuels.
You either do not or refuse to understand that. Why? God alone only knows. Your analogy about the sun totally misses that prehistoric plants converted that sunlight into kerogen, which was then, through natural processes, converted to petroleum. This is a major cost that biofuels incur. Then biofuels incur every other cost that fossil fuels have as well, including transportation, refining, sales, etc. Remember the topic, Roger? It is biofuels from pig manure, with which you were heartily in agreement until BenjaminCole found better data that refuted it. Benjamin at least had the honesty to apologize for being wrong. You, on the other hand, sit here trying to look right about biofuels when even the original poster has walked away from those absurd claims.
Finally Roger, I do not care whether I am on any list of yours. The fact that you didn't even check the data before agreeing with it, cheerleading it because it supported your position, is why I don't care. The fact that you are unwilling to recognize that you were flat out wrong and admit it is another reason why I don't care. I simply want to make sure that other readers see you for what you are and that your uninformed posts do not always go unchallenged.
Ghawar Is Dying The greatest shortcoming of the human race is our inability to understand the exponential function. - Dr. Albert Bartlett
"It is biofuels from pig manure, with which you were heartily in agreement until BenjaminCole found better data that refuted it."
The nature of my "hearty" agreement was this statement:
"I have as much faith in pig manure as I do in the oil industries string of shiit......"
I will stand by that, given that I have 0% faith in the oil companies string of shiit, less with each passing day if that were possible.
As far as biofuels from pig manure, cow manure, chicken parts, hog by product, human manure in the form of sewer gas, waste methane from landfills, or any other source of free methane and waste, I have tried and tried to figure out why I would be against any of the above. I cannot. Can you find anywhere at anytime that I have said I felt they were the answer to the world or the U.S. energy problem? I don't think so, but your welcome to try (I always appreciate a dedicated reader!)
I still think that animal waste and byproduct should be captured when possible and used for methane, rather than releasing raw methane into the air. As I said, the greenhouse gas capture alone would be worth it, the energy is just a byproduct. And yes, before you begin again to set up straw man arguments to knock down, I am well aware that the net energy will be negative, the pigs, cows, chickens, etc have to be fed, watered, and the sun has to shine on their back, but again, I am talking about capturing byproduct since I am still (perhaps wrongly), convinced that people are going to keep eating beef, chicken, pork, etc. for as long as they possibly can.
Now, you go on to a lot of insinuation and useless insult about "my position" and your new found duty to "make sure that other readers see you for what you are and that your uninformed posts do not always go unchallenged."
If you are going to attempt to insult as to "what i am", by all means, please define. If you are going to say that what I posted was uninformed, demonstrate in what way. Again, I stand ABSOLUTELY by my belief that methane recapture does work, has always worked and will always work, and that of course we should be all for it. If you differ then that's your right.
What we seem to be confronting more here is a willingness to attempt to scream down anyone who does not share the hystrerical rantings of those who for some reason want to believe that there can be no solution to anything, and by browbeating attempt to force others into the same pathetic defeatism, or off the board, which ever they can achieve. This is generally the messiah complex writ large, the guy who stands in public with the "world is coming to an end" sign. Again, that's a persons right. But in the known history of the world, I have never heard of one of those defeatist prophets of doom coming up with any real solutions to anything.
The sad part is, newcomers may mistakenly judge those concerned about real, serious energy issues and real potential solutions by these types of mad ramblings if that is all they see here. The whole issue has been turned into a clown show of late by what has been nothing short of outright hysteria, to the point that any educated person can see it as comedy. This combined with the neo-primitivism of the radical greens occupies space that could better be used to discuss real possibilities for change. Will some of the ideas put forth by those who propose real ideas be wrong? Of course. That's the danger of proposing something other than hysterical defeatism. I have been wrong on MANY occasions, and will be again. So, if the goal is to make someone cry uncle, I have been wrong and caught myself out more times than anyone else has caught me out. (On methane recapture, I am not sure I have been proven wrong just yet, I still think it's a good idea :-)
But, it must be admitted, GreyZone, that if a peculiar kind of victory in which you insult, scream down and drive off all differing opinions, then the victory seems to be coming your way. When I first came here a year ago, the spectrum of discussion was wide, and the catastrophist hysteria had not yet taken hold. I was even able to recommend some friends I know personally to come here. Those days are gone, and that is an error I can no longer afford to repeat.
In my own case, I take responsibility for what I say. That is why I sign my posts. I would not feel it is responsible to say things and be unwilling to take credit or blame for my own words.
But there is a down side to that. Since I do acknowledge coming here, the concern is growing that simply by participating in a forum that has moved off to the radical edge of the sprectrum, one is contributing to the madness by simply being here "egging it on", than perhaps some of us should allow your camp to have it's little victory and move on. A person could stay, just to prove they are willing to, but I do not feel that my ego really needs the boost of arguing with those who are arguing with only the point of shutting up all opposition.
But, it has been fun and educational, and from the best here I have learned much, and made some fascinating new connections! :-)
And, as the old proverb goes, "one shoould listen also to even the dull and ignorant for they too have their story".
As far as biofuels, I am in an interesting problem there. Those who support biofuels see me as an enemy because I have grave doubts about that being the way to go, and those who are rabidly anti-biofuel see me as an enemy because I have not yet proven to my own satisfaction that they are completely without value. The old moderate's problem, as they say "out in the middle of the road, where all the dead animals lay." :-)
Roger Conner Jr.
Remember, we are only one cubic mile from freedom
Actually Roger, I enjoy factual debate. I challenge Robert and he answers with facts. I ask Alan a question and he answers with facts. You might take a lesson from them, Roger. Or you might not.
If you find disagreement to be "insulting" then you have a thin skin. I have not called you some of the names that have been thrown around here. I simply identified that you are ignorant of facts OR willfully ignoring those same facts. I have not even suggested which it is, leaving that open to you to rectify yet you refuse to correct any of your own errors instead going off on wild tangents yet again. Same old Roger.
Ghawar Is Dying The greatest shortcoming of the human race is our inability to understand the exponential function. - Dr. Albert Bartlett
Better idea....since you are the one who is finding so many "facts" that I may have supposedly stated in error, you correct them, and I'll learn....have at it! :-)
Roger Conner Jr.
Remember, we are only one cubic mile from freedom
(that one is from a post by Khebab, not me, by the way....:-)
When I first came here a year ago, the spectrum of discussion was wide, and the catastrophist hysteria had not yet taken hold. I was even able to recommend some friends I know personally to come here. Those days are gone, and that is an error I can no longer afford to repeat.
Um....yeah, sure.
I remember your first post. I remember it because it was a "Goodbye, Cruel TOD" post. Indeed, I assumed that that was why you chose the username you did. "That's it, I'm out of here, 'cause you guys are a bunch of doomer losers."
It was on February 13, 2006, and it was a rant against Deffeyes and other peak oilers. You said you were forced to "disavow and disown the so-called 'peak oil' movement."
So, more than a year ago, you were just as disgruntled as you are now. You're looking back at a glorious past that never existed.
Dude, you're starting to remind me of those Creationists who claim they used to be evolutionists who have since "seen the light." But if you check, they never really believed in evolution. They just like to say they did, because they think the conversion adds weight to their position.
Leanan
Well, that wasn't my first post, I have been here over a year, and that one was in August, so I had posted many previous to that (I don't know if they got lost in one of the upgrades....my first post was, by own dating, concerning the war in Iraq and Qatar, natural gas, and the U.S.'s declining strategic position.
The one you reference Leanan, was the "Dr. Deffeyes sets a date" string in which Deffeyes declared "Stone Age by 2025"
Now how was any intelligent person to react to that!? How insane was a sentence like that from one of the leading "voices" of the peak movemen?
Deffeyes words were used, by the way, over and over again by those who only wanted to make fools of anyone concerned about energy issues.
You win the point, But I fault myself for overreacting. I was completely outraged by Deffeyes words, and still think he did huge damage to the concept and words "peak oil".
But I fault myself for overreacting
(the only thing that allowed me to accept it was the realization that he is an old man, and was saying things he did not understand. We will all be there someday, if we live long enough.)
Roger Conner Jr.
Remember, we are only one cubic mile from freedom
Quite agree, when we are part of the loop it all works. How far we can push that loop is another question. Right now our loop is in a state hyperbolic.
Well, actually, the pigs don't poop as much as the article I read indicated. After e-mail conversing with the actual researcher, a Dr. Zhang, it turn out we can get only one-third of one liter per pig per day. Some pigshit reporter was off by a factor of 50 or so.
We have to feed the pigs anyway to raise them for slaughter. A good idea is to feed them potato mash, taken from a ethanol plant running on potatoes. You get really good vodka this way too, but also ethanol. The pig poop helps fire the plant.
Okay, I am hugely red-faced at overestimating the pig poop solution based on some sloppy reporting. Maybe we will freeze in the dark after riding our bicycles home in the cold sleet.
Don't be too red in the face, the press often reports these things and gives some very wobbly numbers.
As you said, despite the dreams of the vegetarian crowd, we are not going to stop eating pork, chicken, turkey, or beef anytime soon. All these animals make methane gas, which can be captured in digesters and compressed to the closest thing you have ever seen to an artificicial natural gas. The chemical structure is very close between first, hydrogen (no carbon) and then methane, nat gas and propane. The best part is that by capturing the methane you are capturing and burning one of the most powerful greenhouse gases on earth, in other words, this would be worth doing purely from an environmental viewpoint, and you are NOT using the nutrients from the waste that need to go back into the soil.
This is the "closed loop" cycle that is often spoken of. If sun is captured with any efficiency at all, and some wind is used, the loop becomes fantastic in that it produces food and energy, reduces greenhouse gas release, and fertilizes the soil in a closed system. Robert Rapier has discussed it, as has several others here, (the so called bio solar habitat idea)
This is engineer-poets fascinating opus on bio sustainability that takes in most objections right in the original plan, and amazingly survived the "buzz saw" here and in other forums relatively well! I am still digesting it, some half year after my first reading so it wil give you something to work on.
Engineer-poets work is one of the few bio plans I have seen that makes sense. The other is bio-butanol. This holds huge promise, in particular if cultivated in a "closed loop" type system, taking advantage of the confluence of animal and plant waste and solar and wind assist where possible.
The danger with bio fuels is that you have to be careful not to end up in a net negative situation, where you are giving up valuable fertilizer, i.e., natural gas, to create a fuel that is not as clean and handy as natural gas!
Bio-butanol, by all indications is still a challenge in getting the yield needed per amount of imput crop (preferred right now is sugar beet), and Robert Rapier says as much. Given his personal experience on this subject I am not about to disagree. It is interesting that the big players BP and DuPont seem to see possibility however, and one wonders what they have up their sleeve.
The beauty of butanol is that it is a 4 carbon alcohol, and thus, interchangable with gasoline on an almost perfect one to one basis, with no loss of heat content and no need to change pumps, tanks, engines, etc. If it can be done, production of bio butanol would produce a far better finished fuel than ethanol ever could.
Of course, my personal view is very controversial here, but with day of study, I am becoming more convinced of it. All the above are simply bridges to where we will have to go, that being hydrogen by renewable energy. Any other path keeps us on the "depletion chase" and creates environmental and carbon release issues. As thin film solar panels begin to drop in price and in amount of raw material needed to make them, and rise in efficiency, they will be able to generate hydrogen at lower and lower prices. This is already moving very, very fast. Nano technology in this area is no promotional device, it is a real breakthrough in solar panels and batteries, two of the critical areas needed for advanced grid based transportation. Investor excitement is in the air, technology is moving fast, and competing formats are emerging. Thin film solar and advanced batteries are getting that "silicon valley" buzz of the 1970's-early '80's :-)
Solar hydrogen is the "straight line between two points". Clean, distributed power, it end runs almost every problem encountered with other alternatives.
The argument is often made that it is an inefficient way to use solar power.
There is some truth in this, given that solar direct to electricity or thermal solar show higher raw numbers. But the advantage that solar to hydrogen has is in making a containable transportable fuel. Until batteries get greatly better, it is the path, and even then, there will be many applications in which batteries simply cannot answer the call for fast burst of controllable energy.
yep, this is going to be fun! Notice the difference in the faces of people who know what is really going on....the doomers worry and frown.....the people in these businesses of the future smile. :-)
Roger Conner Jr.
Remember, we are only one cubic mile from freedom
I am interested in many of these topics, not academically, as I am buying land in Thailand, and actually want to implement better ways of farming – but only if they make money. I have lost money for years running a "green" furniture making operation. And I have had my heart broken over pig poop.
I am also happy to see someone looking for solutions, rather than disaster.
And I still say, fossil crude demand – if this price regime holds – is in for a long, slow decline. There are tons of wonderful business opps if OPEC can keep the price up, and they are avaricious SOBs to be sure.
Unfortunately, oil prices tend to collapse after big run-ups. This time different? Maybe. But what would Hubbert's Peak look like if the US had taken Canada in 1812 and Mexico in 1847? What does a graph of North American oil production look like? I guess a plateau.
It looks like a peak in the US as we went elsewhere to pick low-hanging fruit. When all the low-hanging fruit is picked, we go up into the middle of tree (where we are getting now, thanks to Libya, Iran, Nigeria, Iraq and Venezuela being run by nutcases). The price of oil goes up – flatlining demand, so you no longer have a peak, but plateau.
Happily, the world can adjust to stable (not growing) supplies of oil. Bios are coming on, and hybrids and other devices promise major reductions in fossil crude demand. Bring on the nukes bigtime. France does it, so it must be doable.
Just do not count on pig oil. It will solve about about one-half of one percent of our crude needs. More, if we cut consumption. Oink oink
Reading the back and forth here it struck me just how much effort gets spent focussing on keeping these motorized machines alive. Sure they are nice and would be nice in the future but how about less? Less TV, less plastic crap, less drive in coffee shacks, less magazines, less less less. I grew up with less, seemed OK to me at the time. I do remember binge-ing on fresh fruits in season. Strawberry shortcake 3 x a day. Cherries until your stomach hurt. Canned fruit and veggies during winter.
I think there are alot of people dis-satified and unfulfilled with techno-life, maybe less will be more...
As soon as he called cereal straw/stover "waste" in his paper it is obvious he is clueless in agriculture and making things up from his armchair from research papers. There is no "waste" straw or stover. If there is any excess straw/stover than can be re-incorporated in the field where it grew, it should be going to improve organic content of marginal land or low-straw stubble like canola or soybeans.
The EERE USA biomass report he based his paper on is garbage. The USDA is now suggesting the available corn stover numbers have to be cut by half. In reality all agricultural biomass should be going to improve soil organic content and marginal land and the straw/stover for fuel is probably sustainable at 10% of the 1.3 billion tonnes he is using is his paper. Thinking there are millions of acres of marginal land that is going to go into biomass crops is a sure sign he has never tried to grow anything on marginal land.
Takes nothing into account for the huge amount of effort to bale and load millions of tonnes of straw. Baling and moving the straw takes as much effort as harvesting the grain. Loading the bales on flat deck semi trailers is a lot of work. He doesn't get that bales are distributed evenly across the field. Moving a billion tonnes of low-energy-density straw/stover to anywhere is a major energy investment.
No concept of the amount of NG/urea required to continuous crop and produce 150 bu/acre of corn or 60bu/acre of wheat when you start removing all of the organic matter.
Weed transport would be a major issue in bailing straw with the mature weed seeds and transporting the volumes he is talking about.
Jim Burke said "any discussion about the primary reason why this concept is deeply flawed" and was ignored.
vtpeaknik made the same type of comments on soil erosion, EROEI counting agricultural inputs, etc.
Again ignored and EP went off on some story about a farmer in Maine he read about on the Internet.
To EP's credit he did account for hauling the straw, he doesn't realize the effort and expense of baling and loading it. I would think because he has never even seen a baler, never mind baled and hauled straw. A modern round baler is a $45k piece of equipment. Baling wheat straw and loading the bales is as much effort as harvesting the grain. There is also the additional soil compaction of baling and transporting the straw/stover.
We used to own and lease out "hay hikers":
which improve the effort to transport round bails. Large square bails are another option or handling the straw loose like silage, but it is still a huge amount of effort to start transporting this volume of straw and stover.
If you take his paper and cut everything he said by 90% to account for proper soil stewardship and the effort to move this amount of biomass, it is solid work and everything he said as far as agricultural biomass for electricity is valid. The paper is very naive on effort to move the biomass and the output is extremely over-estimated based on references that don't take proper soil stewardship into account.
A lot of the "meatgrinder" here is Engineer-Poet himself. He thinks that name calling and berating people is a proper discussion form and people shy away from making comments on his armchair farmer bullshit because he starts quoting calculations from side issues while calling names and insulting anyone that disagrees with him. He is a schoolyard bully and behaves like at 12 year old behind an assumed identity. If he tried acting like he does in a farming community coffee shop and yapping the he had "reseach papers" to back up his nonsense, he would be eating lunch through a straw for the rest of his life.
opps, sorry, didn't realize I had stepped into someone elses fight....
and I didn't ignore Jim Burke and vtpeaknik, I just somehow missed their commentary...
So we are back to our old issues, topsoil, fertility and biomass returned to the land and fertilizer, the big three issues that make bio energy a tough challange.
Your just making me more and more a fan of the renewable hydrogen, all these conversions in bio mass still seem like a snake trying to eat it's own tail...we simply have to tap into all that heat and light falling on our head everyday more directly! :-)
RC
Remember, we are only one cubic mile from freedom
we simply have to tap into all that heat and light falling on our head everyday more directly! :-)
Which looks sensible, but I wonder if we replace the fossil fuels by solar aren't we in essence storing a lot of that energy that would otherwise be reflected into space. I am sure that a stable state would occur sometime but how much would this heat the planet in the meantime. (couldn't figure out how to add 'in between time ain't we got fun, so I'll cheat and just add it here anyway.)
If anything, converting sunlight into stored energy using solar panels reduces heating of the planet. Solar panels prevent the sunlight that falls on them from heating the ground. In the U.S., Only about 1/3 of electrical energy is used for heating and air-conditioning.
Nice try, looks like everyone else is asleep or too bored by my small point to put up a good fight. Sorry but I would say that energy reflected is energy reflected, and energy that is trapped, that would otherwise be reflected by whatever means is trapped (by trapped I mean temporarily stored until eventually re radiated).
panels prevent the sunlight that falls on them from heating the ground.
Part of that energy falling on the ground is immediately re radiated into space but Im afraid that once that energy is stored as electricity it still will eventually degrade on earth, and quickly, to lower forms of energy ie.heat This is a difference between using solar panels and wind power. Wind power is the use of energy that has already been converted from light into the mechanical energy of wind and would have only a slight effect of storing 'trapped' energy, it is part of the loop and therefore not like much of photoelectric which would imitate petroleum in that they both are bringing 'new' energy into what otherwise is a closed loop.
Today is ,'Be Mean to: Almost Green Photon day'.
Thatsit,
Is it you that has promoted lake storage of wind power? If so, Have you had any thoughts about doing this sort of thing on a wind tower by tower basis using individual cisterns? The tower directing surplus energy to pumping water instead of generating electricity.Many towers could be dedicated to direct mechanical water pumping (no tower generators) for peak load times. I don't know what size the storage tanks would be but they would be close to tower, or small farms of towers, and so not be involved in pumping water any great distance (cisterns would be closed to prevent evaporation). I don't know much efficiencies would be effected by turning wind to water storage to electrical generation in this way.
The earth's average reflectance is 29.7%. That means that about 60% of sunlight is absorbed (actually higher on land than the ocean). Therefore, solar panels absorb the sunlight, > 60% of which would heat the land underneath if the panels were not present. About 1/3 of the electricity derived from solar panels is used for heating and air conditioning which does contribute to earth warming. The rest is used to run appliances, industrial processes, etc. which is mostly mechanical work, .i.e., it does not contribute significantly to heating. (For example, the electricity that runs a fan is mostly doing the mechanical work of moving air and does not contribute much heat.) Therefore, on balance, solar panels which generate electricity contribute to cooling the earth.
As for lake storage of wind power, no, you've mistaken me for someone else.
And average reflectivity is dropping anyway since a large fraction of reflected light is from the poles, and the north pole at least is melting to blue water (which is a real efficient absorber of energy).
Ghawar Is Dying The greatest shortcoming of the human race is our inability to understand the exponential function. - Dr. Albert Bartlett
But all energy degrades to heat anyway, even the kinetic energy embodied in moving air (wind). Converting this energy to electricity and using it to run a fan or dishwasher or whatever has the same effect on the heatcontent of the earth as letting the wind blow freely in the first place.
The only way I can think of that would cool the earth using wind energy would be to try to send the energy into space as electromagnetic radiation using a wavelength that isn't blocked by our atmosphere, visible light would be a good choice I believe. Incidentally, with all the lightpollution on this planet, that is excactly what we're doing :)
Wrong. Mechanical work dissipates energy by moving things around. It does not necessarily produce heat (unless there is a lot of friction present). For example, if I use an electric wench to lift up a heavy object, I expend energy, but I don't create any significant heating (except a small amount due to friction). A fan creates a small amount of heat due to friction, but it is very small. Mostly the energy is expended as mechanical work -- moving the air around. (In addition, moving air can have a cooling effect by increasing evaporation.)
The point is, the electrical energy (from the solar panel) is largely used to do mechanical work, as opposed to >70% going to heat the earth if the sunlight struck the earth directly (instead of the solar panel). Only about 30% is reflected back to space. So, on balance solar panels would have a cooling effect unless the electricity produced is used mainly for heating and air conditioning.
I don't mean to pull rank, but I'm a physicist and electromagnetic energy measurement is my specialty (infrared, visible, x-ray, gamma-ray). I've been doing it for over 25 years.
Dude, just think about that for more than 30 seconds, and you'd realize how ridiculous it is. The laws of thermodynamics hold, even for pigs. You don't get anything out of them that you're not putting into them.
For disposing of pig wastes, fine, it may be worth doing. But as a scalable energy source? Read up on that turkey parts plant, and get back to us.
You are right about scalability, but it is an interesting way to deal with manure.
Iron Creek Hutterite Pig Manure Methane->electricity, in production since 2001.
Biogas in Aberta
My dad had 500 feeder pigs until I was 5 years old, all I remember is they poop a lot.
They may poop a lot, but I seriously doubt it's 3 gallons of oil a day per pig.
CLOSE THE LOOP, PEOPLE!!!
If you take out energy from pig poop, you are taking energy from somewhere else.
The feed, the water, the farm implements, the diesel trucks to haul said pigs and poop. Building the collectors, and all the other infrastructure.
Cheap energy is cheap because we are burning fossil sunlight. There will be no energy bonanza from algae, pig poop, turkey guts, switchgrass, or any other solar budget energy scheme because the amount of sunlight we can capture and turn into the liquids which drive our drive-in shopaholic lifestyle will be insufficient.
STOP BEING SCIENTIFICALLY OBLIVIOUS!!! You must include ALL the knock on effects. You must include ALL the energy inputs, including the food the farmer eats while sitting in his airconditioned John Deere, the cost of the clothes he wears, and the gasoline he burns to drive over to the south-forty.
The next paradigm shift in science will revolve around holistic thinking. Too bad this shift may come too late to save the narrow, fix-the-problem-in-front-of-me-ignore-the-problems-the-solution-causes mindset people and their cheerleaders from the dieoff.
Bravo!! Your's is the first comment I've seen (by anyone, anywhere) that doesn't arbitrarily ignore inconvenient facts in order to promote a pet idea. Thank you!!
It is not "reserves". It is not "production". It is cycles that matter.
It all has to go all around.
But I disagree that there is no energy bonanza. There is 1kW/m2, everywhere, all the time. That is way much more than whatever we need. And not only in the Earth, but in a 1.5e11 m sphere.
We just need to figure the cycle.
"STOP BEING SCIENTIFICALLY OBLIVIOUS!!! You must include ALL the knock on effects. You must include ALL the energy inputs, including the food the farmer eats while sitting in his airconditioned John Deere, the cost of the clothes he wears, and the gasoline he burns to drive over to the south-forty"
That's fair enough Cherenkov, but I want the same thing done with the fossil fuels....
Count the steel in the rigs, the pumps, the pipe, all of it.....count the computers that are used to hunt for the oil, the man hours in computational time world wide, the food it takes to feed them....count the aircraft carriers and the patrols by the fighter planes and rader carrying AWACS....count the supertankers, the steel, the men, the portage facilities to onload and offload the oil....the refineries, the tractor trailers and railcars, the cost of excavatign the storage tanks down at the 24 hour bright white lit retail store, the pumps, the concrete pads and giant steel canopies that would not be needed if folks were not out there pumping gas in the rain....
And even with that, I know I have left out at least HALF the items needed to keep the oil flowing from the desert to the customer.....
Count fair and square and see if the worshipped holy oil is still so superior....
That old saw may have fooled people once, but no matter how much the oil industry apologists repeat in an attept to kill any alternative in it's crib, people are starting to take a closer look at that whole argument....
Oh, one more thing.....and this is strictly a personal observation....if your final argument is always going to be to try to scare somebody with that dieoff hysteria, that one don't work anymore either.....we're all gonna' die, it's how you want to live that matters. I have as much faith in pig manure as I do in the oil industries string of shiit......
Roger Conner Jr.
Remember, we are only one cubic mile from freedom
The cost has been factored in, Roger. That's what the market does - factor in costs. And that's the point of fossil fuels - we are taking fuels that have been stored over hundreds of millions of years by slow natural processes and using them now. We didn't have to account for the creation, burial, and conversion of vegetable matter to fossil fuel because it all occurred before we even existed. THERE WAS NO COST TO HOMO SAPIENS! DO YOU UNDERSTAND THAT YET, ROGER?
Biodiesel is an attempt to recreate the same process in a few weeks or months that nature took millions of years to do. This requires INPUTS, Roger. Inputs of energy, material, etc. There IS a cost to homo sapiens to CREATE biofuels.
The fact that you totally fail to understand this is demonstrative of how disconnected from reality you actually are. Go back to cheerleading for KSA, Roger. At least there you didn't sound like you were completely scientifically illiterate.
Ghawar Is Dying
The greatest shortcoming of the human race is our inability to understand the exponential function. - Dr. Albert Bartlett
GreyZone,
You have indeed been moody for the last couple of days....cheer up! :-)
"The cost has been factored in, Roger. That's what the market does - factor in costs."
My, how the worm has turned! On a board that lives and breathes to prove that the market is a complete failure (otherwise, how could we still be at these low oil prices right as we come onto the catastrophe?) you suddenly become a "market guru", ala CERA?!
The market had trouble remembering three days ago, and it suddenly factors in a century of sunk cost and externalities?
Allow me to ask you simply to ask yourself if you really believe that the current price of oil reflects a century of military protection, port and road building, refinery construction, pipeline construction (including the eminent domain that allowed property to be purchased on agreeable terms), construction of retail outlets, pumps, tanks, not to mention the funding poured to the universities to assist the industry in research in drilling......
Greyzone, do you really believe that? That there are no externalities, all the costs are reflected in the price? Do you really?
If you do, after considering your position carefully, then we simply will have to agree to disagree. Because I most certainly in no way believe it. If I did, I would not be here. Why would I be concerned? The price would reflect all, and look at the price...still the cheapest gas in most of the world (excepting some oil producers themselves!), and flat over the last year, I would assume the price run up has been currency weakening on the U.S. dollar and a bit of war premium (we are still at war, by the way, as a war time price, the current price is STEALING THE OIL)
"THERE WAS NO COST TO HOMO SAPIENS! DO YOU UNDERSTAND THAT YET, ROGER?"
But was there a cost in setting up the infrastructure to extract, move, refine, redistribute the oil? Is there now a cost in attempting to police the system that gets the oil to us? Is there a cost in dealing with the carbon and other byproducts of said production and use?
Your position does not seperate oil from any other potential energy supply. Allow me to take the same sentence:
"THERE WAS NO COST TO HOMO SAPIANS IN CREATING THE SUN, DO YOU UNDERSTAND THAT YET, GREYZONE!
Thus, solar energy is free! All you have to do is develop a way to capture and convert the energy! How is that different from oil, except that it is distributed over the surface of the Earth and it's cleaner? Oil did NOT gather and refine itself. And due to it's distribution, it has brought massive costs in foreign policy and human suffering.
By the way, on a more personal note: There are a short list of posters here at TOD whom I hold in enough regard to give them the allowence of calling me ill informed or ignorant, and based on the quality of their work, I will accept it and attempt to review my position and find my error.
It is a short list, and no offense GreyZone, but no post of yours has come near earning you a place on it. Do not assume that because I defer to some I defer in the same way to all.
Roger Conner Jr.
Remember, we are only one cubic mile from from freedom
Of course there are externalities, Roger. But the cost of creating the raw fuel was never a cost to homo sapiens. There is a cost to creating the raw biofuels. This cost entails doing everything that nature did in those hundreds of millions of years. Now you get to add that cost onto refining, and all the other externalities that already exist for fossil fuels.
You either do not or refuse to understand that. Why? God alone only knows. Your analogy about the sun totally misses that prehistoric plants converted that sunlight into kerogen, which was then, through natural processes, converted to petroleum. This is a major cost that biofuels incur. Then biofuels incur every other cost that fossil fuels have as well, including transportation, refining, sales, etc. Remember the topic, Roger? It is biofuels from pig manure, with which you were heartily in agreement until BenjaminCole found better data that refuted it. Benjamin at least had the honesty to apologize for being wrong. You, on the other hand, sit here trying to look right about biofuels when even the original poster has walked away from those absurd claims.
Finally Roger, I do not care whether I am on any list of yours. The fact that you didn't even check the data before agreeing with it, cheerleading it because it supported your position, is why I don't care. The fact that you are unwilling to recognize that you were flat out wrong and admit it is another reason why I don't care. I simply want to make sure that other readers see you for what you are and that your uninformed posts do not always go unchallenged.
Ghawar Is Dying
The greatest shortcoming of the human race is our inability to understand the exponential function. - Dr. Albert Bartlett
"It is biofuels from pig manure, with which you were heartily in agreement until BenjaminCole found better data that refuted it."
The nature of my "hearty" agreement was this statement:
"I have as much faith in pig manure as I do in the oil industries string of shiit......"
I will stand by that, given that I have 0% faith in the oil companies string of shiit, less with each passing day if that were possible.
As far as biofuels from pig manure, cow manure, chicken parts, hog by product, human manure in the form of sewer gas, waste methane from landfills, or any other source of free methane and waste, I have tried and tried to figure out why I would be against any of the above. I cannot. Can you find anywhere at anytime that I have said I felt they were the answer to the world or the U.S. energy problem? I don't think so, but your welcome to try (I always appreciate a dedicated reader!)
I still think that animal waste and byproduct should be captured when possible and used for methane, rather than releasing raw methane into the air. As I said, the greenhouse gas capture alone would be worth it, the energy is just a byproduct. And yes, before you begin again to set up straw man arguments to knock down, I am well aware that the net energy will be negative, the pigs, cows, chickens, etc have to be fed, watered, and the sun has to shine on their back, but again, I am talking about capturing byproduct since I am still (perhaps wrongly), convinced that people are going to keep eating beef, chicken, pork, etc. for as long as they possibly can.
Now, you go on to a lot of insinuation and useless insult about "my position" and your new found duty to "make sure that other readers see you for what you are and that your uninformed posts do not always go unchallenged."
If you are going to attempt to insult as to "what i am", by all means, please define. If you are going to say that what I posted was uninformed, demonstrate in what way. Again, I stand ABSOLUTELY by my belief that methane recapture does work, has always worked and will always work, and that of course we should be all for it. If you differ then that's your right.
What we seem to be confronting more here is a willingness to attempt to scream down anyone who does not share the hystrerical rantings of those who for some reason want to believe that there can be no solution to anything, and by browbeating attempt to force others into the same pathetic defeatism, or off the board, which ever they can achieve. This is generally the messiah complex writ large, the guy who stands in public with the "world is coming to an end" sign. Again, that's a persons right. But in the known history of the world, I have never heard of one of those defeatist prophets of doom coming up with any real solutions to anything.
The sad part is, newcomers may mistakenly judge those concerned about real, serious energy issues and real potential solutions by these types of mad ramblings if that is all they see here. The whole issue has been turned into a clown show of late by what has been nothing short of outright hysteria, to the point that any educated person can see it as comedy. This combined with the neo-primitivism of the radical greens occupies space that could better be used to discuss real possibilities for change. Will some of the ideas put forth by those who propose real ideas be wrong? Of course. That's the danger of proposing something other than hysterical defeatism. I have been wrong on MANY occasions, and will be again. So, if the goal is to make someone cry uncle, I have been wrong and caught myself out more times than anyone else has caught me out. (On methane recapture, I am not sure I have been proven wrong just yet, I still think it's a good idea :-)
But, it must be admitted, GreyZone, that if a peculiar kind of victory in which you insult, scream down and drive off all differing opinions, then the victory seems to be coming your way. When I first came here a year ago, the spectrum of discussion was wide, and the catastrophist hysteria had not yet taken hold. I was even able to recommend some friends I know personally to come here. Those days are gone, and that is an error I can no longer afford to repeat.
In my own case, I take responsibility for what I say. That is why I sign my posts. I would not feel it is responsible to say things and be unwilling to take credit or blame for my own words.
But there is a down side to that. Since I do acknowledge coming here, the concern is growing that simply by participating in a forum that has moved off to the radical edge of the sprectrum, one is contributing to the madness by simply being here "egging it on", than perhaps some of us should allow your camp to have it's little victory and move on. A person could stay, just to prove they are willing to, but I do not feel that my ego really needs the boost of arguing with those who are arguing with only the point of shutting up all opposition.
But, it has been fun and educational, and from the best here I have learned much, and made some fascinating new connections! :-)
And, as the old proverb goes, "one shoould listen also to even the dull and ignorant for they too have their story".
As far as biofuels, I am in an interesting problem there. Those who support biofuels see me as an enemy because I have grave doubts about that being the way to go, and those who are rabidly anti-biofuel see me as an enemy because I have not yet proven to my own satisfaction that they are completely without value. The old moderate's problem, as they say "out in the middle of the road, where all the dead animals lay." :-)
Roger Conner Jr.
Remember, we are only one cubic mile from freedom
Actually Roger, I enjoy factual debate. I challenge Robert and he answers with facts. I ask Alan a question and he answers with facts. You might take a lesson from them, Roger. Or you might not.
If you find disagreement to be "insulting" then you have a thin skin. I have not called you some of the names that have been thrown around here. I simply identified that you are ignorant of facts OR willfully ignoring those same facts. I have not even suggested which it is, leaving that open to you to rectify yet you refuse to correct any of your own errors instead going off on wild tangents yet again. Same old Roger.
Ghawar Is Dying
The greatest shortcoming of the human race is our inability to understand the exponential function. - Dr. Albert Bartlett
Better idea....since you are the one who is finding so many "facts" that I may have supposedly stated in error, you correct them, and I'll learn....have at it! :-)
Roger Conner Jr.
Remember, we are only one cubic mile from freedom
(that one is from a post by Khebab, not me, by the way....:-)
Um....yeah, sure.
I remember your first post. I remember it because it was a "Goodbye, Cruel TOD" post. Indeed, I assumed that that was why you chose the username you did. "That's it, I'm out of here, 'cause you guys are a bunch of doomer losers."
It was on February 13, 2006, and it was a rant against Deffeyes and other peak oilers. You said you were forced to "disavow and disown the so-called 'peak oil' movement."
So, more than a year ago, you were just as disgruntled as you are now. You're looking back at a glorious past that never existed.
Dude, you're starting to remind me of those Creationists who claim they used to be evolutionists who have since "seen the light." But if you check, they never really believed in evolution. They just like to say they did, because they think the conversion adds weight to their position.
Leanan
Well, that wasn't my first post, I have been here over a year, and that one was in August, so I had posted many previous to that (I don't know if they got lost in one of the upgrades....my first post was, by own dating, concerning the war in Iraq and Qatar, natural gas, and the U.S.'s declining strategic position.
The one you reference Leanan, was the "Dr. Deffeyes sets a date" string in which Deffeyes declared "Stone Age by 2025"
Now how was any intelligent person to react to that!? How insane was a sentence like that from one of the leading "voices" of the peak movemen?
Deffeyes words were used, by the way, over and over again by those who only wanted to make fools of anyone concerned about energy issues.
You win the point, But I fault myself for overreacting. I was completely outraged by Deffeyes words, and still think he did huge damage to the concept and words "peak oil".
But I fault myself for overreacting
(the only thing that allowed me to accept it was the realization that he is an old man, and was saying things he did not understand. We will all be there someday, if we live long enough.)
Roger Conner Jr.
Remember, we are only one cubic mile from freedom
Quite agree, when we are part of the loop it all works. How far we can push that loop is another question. Right now our loop is in a state hyperbolic.
Well, actually, the pigs don't poop as much as the article I read indicated. After e-mail conversing with the actual researcher, a Dr. Zhang, it turn out we can get only one-third of one liter per pig per day. Some pigshit reporter was off by a factor of 50 or so.
We have to feed the pigs anyway to raise them for slaughter. A good idea is to feed them potato mash, taken from a ethanol plant running on potatoes. You get really good vodka this way too, but also ethanol. The pig poop helps fire the plant.
Okay, I am hugely red-faced at overestimating the pig poop solution based on some sloppy reporting. Maybe we will freeze in the dark after riding our bicycles home in the cold sleet.
The ethanol plants here are either integrated directly with a feedlot or the biproduct is sold to feedlots.
Maybe we will freeze in the dark after riding our bicycles home in the cold sleet.
Ah! Now you're not cooking with gas. See how easy that was?
The news is all bad.
BenjaminCole,
Don't be too red in the face, the press often reports these things and gives some very wobbly numbers.
As you said, despite the dreams of the vegetarian crowd, we are not going to stop eating pork, chicken, turkey, or beef anytime soon. All these animals make methane gas, which can be captured in digesters and compressed to the closest thing you have ever seen to an artificicial natural gas. The chemical structure is very close between first, hydrogen (no carbon) and then methane, nat gas and propane. The best part is that by capturing the methane you are capturing and burning one of the most powerful greenhouse gases on earth, in other words, this would be worth doing purely from an environmental viewpoint, and you are NOT using the nutrients from the waste that need to go back into the soil.
This is the "closed loop" cycle that is often spoken of. If sun is captured with any efficiency at all, and some wind is used, the loop becomes fantastic in that it produces food and energy, reduces greenhouse gas release, and fertilizes the soil in a closed system. Robert Rapier has discussed it, as has several others here, (the so called bio solar habitat idea)
For a completely integrated line of thinking, go to
http://ergosphere.blogspot.com/2006/11/sustainability-energy-independenc...
This is engineer-poets fascinating opus on bio sustainability that takes in most objections right in the original plan, and amazingly survived the "buzz saw" here and in other forums relatively well! I am still digesting it, some half year after my first reading so it wil give you something to work on.
Engineer-poets work is one of the few bio plans I have seen that makes sense. The other is bio-butanol. This holds huge promise, in particular if cultivated in a "closed loop" type system, taking advantage of the confluence of animal and plant waste and solar and wind assist where possible.
The danger with bio fuels is that you have to be careful not to end up in a net negative situation, where you are giving up valuable fertilizer, i.e., natural gas, to create a fuel that is not as clean and handy as natural gas!
Here are some beginning links on bio-butanol:
http://www.butanol.com/
http://www2.dupont.com/Biofuels/en_US/index.html
http://i-r-squared.blogspot.com/2006/05/bio-butanol.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1-Butanol
The bug that makes it:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clostridium_acetobutylicum
Bio-butanol, by all indications is still a challenge in getting the yield needed per amount of imput crop (preferred right now is sugar beet), and Robert Rapier says as much. Given his personal experience on this subject I am not about to disagree. It is interesting that the big players BP and DuPont seem to see possibility however, and one wonders what they have up their sleeve.
The beauty of butanol is that it is a 4 carbon alcohol, and thus, interchangable with gasoline on an almost perfect one to one basis, with no loss of heat content and no need to change pumps, tanks, engines, etc. If it can be done, production of bio butanol would produce a far better finished fuel than ethanol ever could.
Of course, my personal view is very controversial here, but with day of study, I am becoming more convinced of it. All the above are simply bridges to where we will have to go, that being hydrogen by renewable energy. Any other path keeps us on the "depletion chase" and creates environmental and carbon release issues. As thin film solar panels begin to drop in price and in amount of raw material needed to make them, and rise in efficiency, they will be able to generate hydrogen at lower and lower prices. This is already moving very, very fast. Nano technology in this area is no promotional device, it is a real breakthrough in solar panels and batteries, two of the critical areas needed for advanced grid based transportation. Investor excitement is in the air, technology is moving fast, and competing formats are emerging. Thin film solar and advanced batteries are getting that "silicon valley" buzz of the 1970's-early '80's :-)
Just a bit of what's going, but only the tip of the iceberg!
http://www.solarforecast.com/ArticleDetails.php?articleID=322
http://www.solarforecast.com/ArticleDetails.php?articleID=322
http://www.aleo-solar.de/index.php/page_id/54/language/en
http://www.daystartech.com/
(‘German)
http://www.wuerth-solar.com/website/frames,LA,EN,KA,226.php
Solar hydrogen is the "straight line between two points". Clean, distributed power, it end runs almost every problem encountered with other alternatives.
The argument is often made that it is an inefficient way to use solar power.
There is some truth in this, given that solar direct to electricity or thermal solar show higher raw numbers. But the advantage that solar to hydrogen has is in making a containable transportable fuel. Until batteries get greatly better, it is the path, and even then, there will be many applications in which batteries simply cannot answer the call for fast burst of controllable energy.
yep, this is going to be fun! Notice the difference in the faces of people who know what is really going on....the doomers worry and frown.....the people in these businesses of the future smile. :-)
Roger Conner Jr.
Remember, we are only one cubic mile from freedom
Roger--
thanks for your leads and comments.
I am interested in many of these topics, not academically, as I am buying land in Thailand, and actually want to implement better ways of farming – but only if they make money. I have lost money for years running a "green" furniture making operation. And I have had my heart broken over pig poop.
I am also happy to see someone looking for solutions, rather than disaster.
And I still say, fossil crude demand – if this price regime holds – is in for a long, slow decline. There are tons of wonderful business opps if OPEC can keep the price up, and they are avaricious SOBs to be sure.
Unfortunately, oil prices tend to collapse after big run-ups. This time different? Maybe. But what would Hubbert's Peak look like if the US had taken Canada in 1812 and Mexico in 1847? What does a graph of North American oil production look like? I guess a plateau.
It looks like a peak in the US as we went elsewhere to pick low-hanging fruit. When all the low-hanging fruit is picked, we go up into the middle of tree (where we are getting now, thanks to Libya, Iran, Nigeria, Iraq and Venezuela being run by nutcases). The price of oil goes up – flatlining demand, so you no longer have a peak, but plateau.
Happily, the world can adjust to stable (not growing) supplies of oil. Bios are coming on, and hybrids and other devices promise major reductions in fossil crude demand. Bring on the nukes bigtime. France does it, so it must be doable.
Just do not count on pig oil. It will solve about about one-half of one percent of our crude needs. More, if we cut consumption. Oink oink
Reading the back and forth here it struck me just how much effort gets spent focussing on keeping these motorized machines alive. Sure they are nice and would be nice in the future but how about less? Less TV, less plastic crap, less drive in coffee shacks, less magazines, less less less. I grew up with less, seemed OK to me at the time. I do remember binge-ing on fresh fruits in season. Strawberry shortcake 3 x a day. Cherries until your stomach hurt. Canned fruit and veggies during winter.
I think there are alot of people dis-satified and unfulfilled with techno-life, maybe less will be more...
"Engineer-Poet's" "Opus" on Sustainability, Energy Independence and Agricultural Policy:
Jim Burke said "any discussion about the primary reason why this concept is deeply flawed" and was ignored.
vtpeaknik made the same type of comments on soil erosion, EROEI counting agricultural inputs, etc.
Again ignored and EP went off on some story about a farmer in Maine he read about on the Internet.
To EP's credit he did account for hauling the straw, he doesn't realize the effort and expense of baling and loading it. I would think because he has never even seen a baler, never mind baled and hauled straw. A modern round baler is a $45k piece of equipment. Baling wheat straw and loading the bales is as much effort as harvesting the grain. There is also the additional soil compaction of baling and transporting the straw/stover.
We used to own and lease out "hay hikers":
which improve the effort to transport round bails. Large square bails are another option or handling the straw loose like silage, but it is still a huge amount of effort to start transporting this volume of straw and stover.
If you take his paper and cut everything he said by 90% to account for proper soil stewardship and the effort to move this amount of biomass, it is solid work and everything he said as far as agricultural biomass for electricity is valid. The paper is very naive on effort to move the biomass and the output is extremely over-estimated based on references that don't take proper soil stewardship into account.
A lot of the "meatgrinder" here is Engineer-Poet himself. He thinks that name calling and berating people is a proper discussion form and people shy away from making comments on his armchair farmer bullshit because he starts quoting calculations from side issues while calling names and insulting anyone that disagrees with him. He is a schoolyard bully and behaves like at 12 year old behind an assumed identity. If he tried acting like he does in a farming community coffee shop and yapping the he had "reseach papers" to back up his nonsense, he would be eating lunch through a straw for the rest of his life.
opps, sorry, didn't realize I had stepped into someone elses fight....
and I didn't ignore Jim Burke and vtpeaknik, I just somehow missed their commentary...
So we are back to our old issues, topsoil, fertility and biomass returned to the land and fertilizer, the big three issues that make bio energy a tough challange.
Your just making me more and more a fan of the renewable hydrogen, all these conversions in bio mass still seem like a snake trying to eat it's own tail...we simply have to tap into all that heat and light falling on our head everyday more directly! :-)
RC
Remember, we are only one cubic mile from freedom
From your,
Which looks sensible, but I wonder if we replace the fossil fuels by solar aren't we in essence storing a lot of that energy that would otherwise be reflected into space. I am sure that a stable state would occur sometime but how much would this heat the planet in the meantime. (couldn't figure out how to add 'in between time ain't we got fun, so I'll cheat and just add it here anyway.)
If anything, converting sunlight into stored energy using solar panels reduces heating of the planet. Solar panels prevent the sunlight that falls on them from heating the ground. In the U.S., Only about 1/3 of electrical energy is used for heating and air-conditioning.
ahem?
Boris
London
IFeelFree,
Nice try, looks like everyone else is asleep or too bored by my small point to put up a good fight. Sorry but I would say that energy reflected is energy reflected, and energy that is trapped, that would otherwise be reflected by whatever means is trapped (by trapped I mean temporarily stored until eventually re radiated).
Part of that energy falling on the ground is immediately re radiated into space but Im afraid that once that energy is stored as electricity it still will eventually degrade on earth, and quickly, to lower forms of energy ie.heat This is a difference between using solar panels and wind power. Wind power is the use of energy that has already been converted from light into the mechanical energy of wind and would have only a slight effect of storing 'trapped' energy, it is part of the loop and therefore not like much of photoelectric which would imitate petroleum in that they both are bringing 'new' energy into what otherwise is a closed loop.
Today is ,'Be Mean to: Almost Green Photon day'.
Thatsit,
Is it you that has promoted lake storage of wind power? If so, Have you had any thoughts about doing this sort of thing on a wind tower by tower basis using individual cisterns? The tower directing surplus energy to pumping water instead of generating electricity.Many towers could be dedicated to direct mechanical water pumping (no tower generators) for peak load times. I don't know what size the storage tanks would be but they would be close to tower, or small farms of towers, and so not be involved in pumping water any great distance (cisterns would be closed to prevent evaporation). I don't know much efficiencies would be effected by turning wind to water storage to electrical generation in this way.
The earth's average reflectance is 29.7%. That means that about 60% of sunlight is absorbed (actually higher on land than the ocean). Therefore, solar panels absorb the sunlight, > 60% of which would heat the land underneath if the panels were not present. About 1/3 of the electricity derived from solar panels is used for heating and air conditioning which does contribute to earth warming. The rest is used to run appliances, industrial processes, etc. which is mostly mechanical work, .i.e., it does not contribute significantly to heating. (For example, the electricity that runs a fan is mostly doing the mechanical work of moving air and does not contribute much heat.) Therefore, on balance, solar panels which generate electricity contribute to cooling the earth.
As for lake storage of wind power, no, you've mistaken me for someone else.
And average reflectivity is dropping anyway since a large fraction of reflected light is from the poles, and the north pole at least is melting to blue water (which is a real efficient absorber of energy).
Ghawar Is Dying
The greatest shortcoming of the human race is our inability to understand the exponential function. - Dr. Albert Bartlett
Sorry, that was 70% of sunlight absorbed.
But all energy degrades to heat anyway, even the kinetic energy embodied in moving air (wind). Converting this energy to electricity and using it to run a fan or dishwasher or whatever has the same effect on the heatcontent of the earth as letting the wind blow freely in the first place.
The only way I can think of that would cool the earth using wind energy would be to try to send the energy into space as electromagnetic radiation using a wavelength that isn't blocked by our atmosphere, visible light would be a good choice I believe. Incidentally, with all the lightpollution on this planet, that is excactly what we're doing :)
Wrong. Mechanical work dissipates energy by moving things around. It does not necessarily produce heat (unless there is a lot of friction present). For example, if I use an electric wench to lift up a heavy object, I expend energy, but I don't create any significant heating (except a small amount due to friction). A fan creates a small amount of heat due to friction, but it is very small. Mostly the energy is expended as mechanical work -- moving the air around. (In addition, moving air can have a cooling effect by increasing evaporation.)
The point is, the electrical energy (from the solar panel) is largely used to do mechanical work, as opposed to >70% going to heat the earth if the sunlight struck the earth directly (instead of the solar panel). Only about 30% is reflected back to space. So, on balance solar panels would have a cooling effect unless the electricity produced is used mainly for heating and air conditioning.
I don't mean to pull rank, but I'm a physicist and electromagnetic energy measurement is my specialty (infrared, visible, x-ray, gamma-ray). I've been doing it for over 25 years.
Wow… wish I had one of those in my workshop… was it expensive? What model did you get? :-)
And I don’t wish to pull rank on you but as a fellow physicist… don’t you think