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268 comments on DrumBeat: September 19, 2007

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Darkstorme on September 19, 2007 - 12:32pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

Paal, you're being reactionary and doom-focused again, as you were with the windmill/transport truck comparison.

First, a few flaws in your approximations and assumptions:

  • The specific gravity of crude oil is closer to 900 than 1000, so cut 10% off your estimation for oil amounts from the get go.
  • You assume that the only source for biofuels is grain - foodstuffs and feedstock. Alternatives like switchgrass grow well in arid or inhospitable regions, where grain cannot be grown, and produce quite acceptable quantities of ethanol for the effort entailed in their groth. (Also algae, but that's as yet unproven.)
  • You're talking about biofuels, so that cubic mile of oil has to shrink again. When biofuel is extracted from biomass, it's ready to roll. Crude has (at best, from the article you sourced) an 89% efficiency in its conversion to fuel oil, so we're down to 80% of that effective fuel you spoke of in that cubic mile.
  • Finally, you're once again making the "things are hopeless" generalization by saying "this one technology will not solve our problems". Barring huge advances in farming technology, biofuels cannot replace all the fuel oil consumed in the world wholesale. This is true. However, biofuels are a handy supplement to buy time, and to replace some of the oil in a long-term manner. Electric transport gives us more options. Increases in efficiency act as a multiplier on the effectiveness of any energy source. All you're doing is trolling by decrying the effectiveness of any one source, and, though I've fallen for it (again), I feel that someone ought to point out the flaws in your argument for the benefit of those reading what you write.

Incomplete information, a limited worldview, and calculations based on sketchy numbers trotted out as proof - just as before.

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eric blair on September 19, 2007 - 1:06pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

Alternatives like switchgrass grow well in arid or inhospitable regions, where grain cannot be grown, and produce quite acceptable quantities of ethanol for the effort entailed in their groth.

Proof for this please? In the form of links showing plants that are running making industrial quantities.

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GreyZone on September 19, 2007 - 1:38pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

How about plants that make industrial quantities year over year? Because any biomass scheme that fails to return to the soil what it extracts is doomed to failure as well.

"The greatest shortcoming of the human race is our inability to understand the exponential function." -- Dr. Albert Bartlett
Into the Grey Zone

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Sterling on September 19, 2007 - 3:39pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

Right. Apparently there are huge yield differences between growing alternatives like switchgrass on agricultural land with plenty of water and natural gas based fertilizer from what you would get in arid regions without fertilizer. However, the former conditions have used in most estimates of switchgrass production. Also you need to consider how growing it on marginal lands, year after year, without added nutrients would deplete the already poor soil.

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btu on September 19, 2007 - 7:02pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

Thousands of years of tallgrass prairie formed some of the richest soils in the world, Iowa, Illinois, Minnesota for example. To say that copious amounts of switchgass or any other warm season grass will be produced on degraded soils is BS, but once established, the soil will get more fertile even with an annual harvest of the biomass. This is more the case with a diverse prairie planting than a monoculture.

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mcgowanmc on September 20, 2007 - 10:20pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

"...the soil will get more fertile even with an annual harvest of the biomass."

No. You would have to graze and burn it/prairie circa
1865 to get that.

You're taking and not giving back.

Arkansaw of Samuel L Clemens

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paal myrtvedt on September 19, 2007 - 1:53pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

Hi Darkstorme, you say ...

“Incomplete information, a limited worldview, and calculations based on sketchy numbers trotted out as proof - just as before” –

(good golly miss molly)

Yeah Darkstorm - I’m using the sketchy numbers from EIA, IAE and USDA, what numbers are you running ?

You demand a lot and don’t read too much into my post Darkstorme, please – my post is NOT any EU , US gvt or UN report – its just my little private observation , not more BUT not less either

If being realistic is being doomish, so be it. When you again read me as a doomer I see that as your problem, not mine. I’m just putting up a couple of numbers, which seem to freak you out….. which is good, but my intent was to freak you out, the other way around..

You seem to brand me as a doomer, because I’m not a cornucopian like yourself, so lets meet in the middle and agree that some realistic measures has to be urged today – before some stupid mistakes are made on a too large scale, shall we ?

In following the global energy situation -from my neck of the woods - AND the corresponding and upcoming squeeze for the same – I see a power down scenario alongside conservations – What do you see Darkstorme?

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