<Concentrating Solar PowerThe Oil DrumDrumBeat: June 1, 2007>

66 comments on This Week in Petroleum (5-30-2007)

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Nate Hagens on May 31, 2007 - 4:50pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

Ill tell you one thing for certain. The energy return on cow manure to methane will be much higher if we just throw the cow in the biodigester, and higher still if we use whatever we feed the cow directly in the biodigester, and produce no cows at all.

The energy return in this situation is predicated on societies choice to eat meat/dairy. If that part of the equation is relaxed, it allows the other variables to move higher.

Thats why straight energy return, out of context, doesnt give you the whole story (though more than just dollars do)

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mr f on May 31, 2007 - 10:28pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

"no cows at all"?

Wait until NCBA gets wind of their new slogan "Beef is not what's for dinner..."

How about we make an an exception for Kobe cows? I mean, while we're using up energy on cows, lets at least throw in beer and massages for 'em before it's "off with their heads". Uhrmmm, marbling.

Just a thought...

/me runs from rabid vegans

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charrick1 on June 1, 2007 - 3:26am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

Excellent comment, Nate. Just like we all learned in school, from the sun's rays to plants to herbivores to carnivores, energy is lost every step of the way. Getting more from a cow than was put into feeding the cow would mean that energy was created out of nothing, and that's impossible. Even oil, which would not be around if not for the sun and is great because it has soaked up solar energy for millions of years (and is thus more dense than solar energy), is terribly inefficient, too. The best bet is to go directly to the source.

I've said before that 80% of American cropland is dedicated to feeding livestock, and there are many other reasons why growing livestock (at the very least the way we're doing it) is in no way beneficial to humanity (much less to the livestock, themselves).

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Cid Yama on June 1, 2007 - 4:03am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

I have the solution. We just need a gene therapy that will make us capable of photosynthesis. Then we can skip the intermediate stages and not have to eat at all. Throw in some cheetah genes so we can run real fast and we won't need cars.

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Noizette on June 1, 2007 - 5:00am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

Nah, we should just take Alice’s magic potion and become 1/10 th of our size. Then we’d only need 1/10th of the oil we consume today. Oops, we’d have to shrink the world as well to cut down transport ...oh, then we’d be shrinking the oil fields too, oh dear, back to the drawing board! Something will come up!

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Cid Yama on June 1, 2007 - 5:23am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

No, No. I think you have something there. Small, photosynthetic, and fast.

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Lanterne rouge on June 1, 2007 - 9:15am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

Once it goes transgenic in the wild we'll have ... Triffids!

That really would serve us right!

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