<CSIRO Future Fuels ForumThe Oil DrumDrumBeat: January 28, 2008>

64 comments on Matt Simmons, a Sasquatch, and a Chimp in Texas Monthly and History Channel 'Doomer Porn' Day

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ThatsItImout on January 27, 2008 - 9:43pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

So just to clarify then, we are NOT taking into account the millions of man hours around the world that have been given to energy extraction, or the millions more spent in the factories to create the "conversion devices", i.e., gasoline, Diesel and oil engines and gas turbines that are the only way we have been able to power the world by way of oil and gas? Are we to assume that those blue collar lives in the oil patches of the world, the refineries of the world and the factories that are the very definition of the industrial age, these millions of hours working, bought and paid for with the sweat of the blue collar factory class, were for nothing and contributed nothing to the age of fossil fuels in your calculations?
A century of human labor in sunk costs, unaccounted for?

Just checking.

RC

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NZSanctuary on January 28, 2008 - 5:05am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

Wow - millions of man hours? I would guess billions... but at a few hundred barrels per million hours of labour, that's not much in return for the energy we've got from a trillion + barrels...

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DRAGONDONK on January 28, 2008 - 6:00am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

I think waht you are trying to get to is the term EMERGY or EMbodied enERGY as proposed by Howard T Odum.

http://www.greatchange.org/footnotes-emergy.html

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