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Food prices (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Food prices (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:Food prices (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:Food prices (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Food prices (Score:4, Insightful)
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Re:Food prices (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:Food prices (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:Food prices (Score:5, Insightful)
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Wait wait wait (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Wait wait wait (Score:5, Insightful)
"So yes, industrialisation made everyone better off"
The 3rd/2nd world is our real labor class.Some of that is because we just changed where our poor are. The minimum wage in the Guangdong province, China (2004) is about $50-100 dollars a month, assuming 40 hours a weeks, is about $0.63-0.31 an hour. Which is about 12% of the current US minimum wage; roughly 8 times less.
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Re:Wait wait wait (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm reminded of an experiment someone did a while back (don't care to find the link), where people were allowed to play a gambling game where you could see you winnings and everyone else's. The game was rigged of course and set up so that the player would win some, but could also see that other people won less or even lost and some people won more. At the end of the game, they were given the option to reduce the winnings of the top winners and give it back to the "house", but it would cost the player a smaller percentage of their winnings. An overwhelming percentage of people (75% or something) chose to reduce the winnings of the top winners, even though it did not benefit them at all, and even actually cost them some of their own winnings. Maybe it's human nature to want poverty over prosperity as long as everyone suffers equally.
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Re:Wait wait wait (Score:5, Insightful)
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It's not a religion (Score:5, Funny)
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Actually you are both quite wrong. (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Actually you are both quite wrong. (Score:5, Informative)
Peak Oil is _not_ "that stuff running out". It is the production of oil reaching a plateau and then going into decline. The peak of a mountain doesn't happen when you reach the valley, it happens when you've got to the top and can't go higher.
Consider this - since 2005 oil production has been on a bumpy plateau with a slight downward trend. There's tons of publicly available data you can research to confirm this. In the meantime worldwide demand continues to go up - where's your magical creation of new oil via supply and demand? Oh yes, Bakken. I'll believe that one when its up & running and producing a few million barrels a day.
You should also realise that the USA's oil production peaked in 1973 - its been all downhill ever since. Even opening up Alaska didn't reverse the decline for long. North Sea peaked in 2000 and its plummeting now. Mexico's Cantarell field is doing the same. Perhaps you should clear your head of the economic "demand will create supply" nonsense and wake up to the geological realities of living on a finite planet with finite resources. Have you checked out the EIA's reports on US inventory levels lately?
Yes it won't run out for ages, probably not in our lifetime. I wouldn't say the same for the chances of being able to fill up at your local service station though.
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Re:Actually you are both quite wrong. (Score:5, Insightful)
Peak oil doesn't mean that there is less and less oil, but that the cost of getting to it gets more and more expensive and at some point we end up producing as much as we can. Well, with technology innovations and advances, that peak can be moved to higher levels of production until a point where we actually run out. Canada is pulling bituminous oils for sand which was unheard of or highly impractical 20 years ago. And this totally negates the fact that we can make the fuels produced by oil from coal which means that peak oil is mitigated even more.
The US is still the number 3 oil producer in the world behind Saudi Arabia and Russia. We have fields not in production, one of which China has got a lease from Cuba on off the coast of Florida. New types of drilling technology and and processing has allowed us to tap into fields once thought to have been out of reach or too costly to use. Peak oil is a red herring of sorts.
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Re:Actually you are both quite wrong. (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Actually you are both quite wrong. (Score:5, Informative)
My coworker did some research on this over the last week, using data from the Department of Energy website. The stuff he printed out says, pretty clearly, that if we continue using oil at the same rate we are currently using it -- that is, not increasing usage -- the United States would use up its entire domestic supply in three years, and the world would use up its entire available supply in 38 years. Note this is not the amount of proven crude oil: this is the amount of oil extractable from crude oil, oil shale, and currently-existing technology for oil extraction from coal. That's *everything*, all the oil there is, and it'll be gone in under 40 years.
I'm trying to find a mistake in the Department of Energy's numbers, but haven't yet.
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Re:Actually you are both quite wrong. (Score:5, Funny)
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Are you saying that the dead zone did not exist... (Score:5, Interesting)
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Re:Food prices (Score:5, Insightful)
Your post started of by making a good deal of sense, but then you brought politics into it and fucked it up. I am assuming you have done this because it's a popular US pastime to bash environmentalists and not because you have actually done any reasearch into climate science.
The AGW 'cult' have been telling the neo-cons that corn to ethonol is a bad idea since before the first government subsidy cheque was cut. Yes the 'giant dead zone' is caused mainly by fertilzer run-off, but how about pointing out it existed well before the corporate welfare crowd started sponsering hairbrained biofuel schemes?
OTOH, lets not let facts stand in the way of yet another contorted excuse to bash environmentalists, most of whom would agree with your stance that corn for fuel is an exceptionally bad idea.
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Re:Food prices (Score:5, Insightful)
Say we're only using domestic fuel and none can be exported. Yes, that's not realistic, but it makes things less complicated.
As fuel efficiency is raised, the demand for oil dips, as the demand dips the price or supply must do so as well. Oil companies don't want to settle for less money so they're not going to lower production until they need to.
The result is that in general people start to driver farther than they were, and the savings in efficiency disappears.
In a scenario like this the government would step in and introduce a tax on the fuel being sold, to keep the price from dipping.
In terms of the real world, you'd have OPEC reducing the supply to keep the fuel price from dropping and the incentive for people to be more efficient. Realistically, OPEC knows perfectly well that the oil will eventually dry up completely, and it's really in their interest to keep the rest of the world hooked as long as possible.
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Re:Food prices (Score:5, Insightful)
- Everyone who didn't plan is screwed
- You are not
If we don't plan ahead by investing heavily in alternatives, we'll have to figure it out at a time when resources are more scarce, energy is vastly more expensive, foreign firms have already patented things out the wazoo, and our society is struggling to reinvent itself on short notice.Surely it isn't controversial to say that you should generally plan ahead for a big, ugly change that you already know is coming. I'm not the smartest cookie, but even I know that.
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Re:Food prices (Score:5, Insightful)
But if you want to just heap contempt on liberals without actually trying to help... well, continue what you were doing.
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Re:Food prices (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Food prices (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Food prices (Score:5, Insightful)
One reason is diversity. There's some risk in putting all your eggs in one basket. If the weather is wrong, or if your crops get hit by disease, planting two crops instead of one means you'll probably have something left instead of nothing.
Another is the market. If a significant number of farmers stopped growing food crops in favor of switchgrass, the price of switchgrass would go down and the price of food crops would go up, and then it'd be profitable to switch back (or start new farms). So even if some farmers do switch, it'll balance out.
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Re:Food prices (Score:5, Interesting)
On another note, Farmers usually plant 20,000-60,000 (Even as high as 80,000) corn plants per acre. Typically, 35 - 40k is common, at least in my area. With a 40,000 plant population, you are going to get around 200-210 bushels of corn which translates into about 28 tons or 25 metric tons (tonne) per acre (65% moisture). Now, according to this site [sciam.com], you can get about 5.2 metric tons of switch grass per hectare (around 7 acres). So that is around 175 tonnes for corn compared to around 5 tonnes for switch grass. You don't need to plow and seed switch grass, I assume it is the typical 2-3 cuttings a year like with hay though so some bailing and repeated cutting passes would probable make up for the plowing and seeding and it would probably be equal in fuel usage because fuel rate is calculated by PTO work.
Now the interesting part, you get around 28% product above what it costs to make the ethanol (the article says 25%) with corn. With the switch grass, you would get around 540% (per the article). Now the article is considering using the pulp as fuel for the refining process with switch grass but I assume that using silage from the corn crop could produce similar results if it wasn't ground up and left in the field. But you would likely gain around 49 tonnes of potential energy using the corn compared to 28 tonnes of potential energy going with switch grass in it's place. Now assuming the end product is going to be worth the same amount and the costs would be adjusted to reflect this in the pricing which means it would be better off to plant the switch grass on marginal lands in flood planes or other non-tillable and poor producing lands. Specking Soybeans in it every so often could possible take care of the nitrogen problems but a lot of the low lying marginal lands are already run off filters for existing crops which means they get carryover from fertilizers already in use.
I really don't think it would be beneficial to plant that instead of an existing crop unless the land is already so poor that it doesn't yield right on existing crops like corn. I don't see too much difference between silage and switch grass so an added benefit of planting corn might be a small amount of usable cellulose material that could be sold in addition to existing crop prices. You wouldn't want to do it every year but every other or maybe even every 3 years in between the last rotation might be a considerable source of product. It would take some work to store it but you might get about the same amount of material as if you harvested switch grass. There should be about 1 ton of silage ( metric tonne) for every 5 or 6 or so bushels of corn which translates to around 40 tons (about 36 tonnes) per acre (280 tons and 256 tonnes per hectare) which surprisingly is more then a crop of switch grass and is currently a by product tossed on the ground (it serves more of a purpose then waste though).
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Re:Food prices (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't know if switchgrass is a legume or not. Legumes make their own nitrogen fertilizer; and cellulosic ethanol could be made from some kind of leguminous grass. You wouldn't need much of the other nutrients (phosphorous, potassium, etc.)
fertilizer is a safe, renewable source that is completely independent of petroleum...
No more dependent on oil than other products. Ammonia for nitrogen fertilizer is made from natural gas; not oil. That stupid oil company TV ad that lumps the two together ("Two-thirds of the oil and natural gas consumed in the U.S. is produced in North America") is very misleading.
The best alternative is to develope communities in a fashion that is conducive to both mass-transit as well as manual-transit (such as walking, biking, &c.)
AC's Law of Real Estate: The housing you can afford is 50 miles from where the jobs are.
Oh, and try walking or biking to work in Wisconsin in February.
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Re:Food prices (Score:4, Funny)
But not to and from work.
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Re:Food prices (Score:5, Funny)
Oh yeah? What about sherpas, then? ; )
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Re:Food prices (Score:4, Informative)
According to TFA, while they can make it from almost any plant, they're starting with sorghum:
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Re:Food prices (Score:4, Funny)
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Correction (Score:5, Insightful)
There. Fixed it for ya.
Re:Correction (Score:5, Funny)
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Oil != Gas (Score:4, Informative)
If this is made using ethanol from corn, then diesel is used in the production of this, and it causes food prices to increase.
What is wrong with using a vegetable oil in a diesel engine? That is a bio-fuel with low processing requirements.
Re:Oil != Gas (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:Oil != Gas (Score:5, Informative)
That is wrong. In a new diesel, it will run pure biodiesel with no modifications. In a used diesel, the biodiesel will clean out the fuel system, so the fuel filter will get plugged. That is the only change needed.
Ferment into what? It is running in a diesel engine, not a ethanol engine.
For vegetable oils, it needs to be warmed up before running in the diesel engine, but that is also the only thing needed to do when the vegetable oil is heated up before being sent to the engine.
One [journeytoforever.org] reference for running only straight vegetable engine in a car. There it did need modifications like different injectors and glow plugs, mostly to compensate for the increased viscosity.
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How about one of these... (Score:5, Insightful)
I usually cycle to work in the summer, in Stockholm its quicker than driving or taking the subway, and parking is not a problem. It's easy to stay fit cycling and, provided you find a good route, probably a lot safer than driving.
There's bound to be a bunch of excuses about not having a great route to work, or living too far from work etc. But it's something to think about if you re-locate or change jobs. I have not owned a car for over 10 years, and for 9 of them i have commuted on an old city bike a got for $60. I've probably spent another $50 on maintainance in that time. Add in all the health benifits, and money saved, and it does seem to be a pretty sane option to consider.
So what about these guys? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Australian Government Fuel Excise (Score:4, Informative)
Per the article (Cringely, so not exactly trustworthy, but I don't feel like verifying the numbers) wholesale ethanol costs $1.42 a gallon and SwitftFuel production costs are ~40 cents/gallon. 1 Barrel of oil (42 gallons) currently goes for $130. That's converted to 20 gallons of gasoline (plus 20 gallons of other useful stuff), so the raw cost of gasoline is ~3.09/gallon. That's reasonably consistent with these [ca.gov] numbers from the California gov't. Refinery costs for gasoline are slightly less, but not too far out of line.
Therefore, IF the ethanol price and ethanol conversion costs are accurate, the end user cost could easily be $1.50-1.60/gallon less than gasoline.
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Re:No, No, No, No, No... (Score:5, Interesting)
kpppppffffffffft. Like running solar power through the electric grid into batteries isn't triply inefficient itself? Guess again.
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Which is why you preserve dense energy resources.. (Score:5, Interesting)
You're right - we'll never see a battery powered Hummer. But electric vehicles that serve the needs of 90% of the population have been in mass production (even if subsequently shut down) since 1996. All because the government of California demanded that car companies deliver them.
Now consumer demand and energy awareness are at an all time high. They're backordering SmartCars and Apteras and even high-performance Tesla Motors sports cars into two and three year waits.
And I have to say, I hope gas goes to it's true cost where it covers our involvement in the middle east. Anyone who wants to stick with their 6 liter engine after gas hits $12 a gallon is getting exactly what they deserve.
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Did you even read the article? (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:No, No, No, No, No... (Score:5, Informative)
a) fuel reprocessing.
b) breeder reactors
And the fuel cycle improvements give another 10^3 increase over current model. So its 10^8 increase over what figure people talk about the current economic reserves just by one cent electricity price increase since last study. Or that much reductions in operating costs by making all parts of nuclear economy higher volume production.
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I just ate an aspirin pancake. (Score:5, Insightful)
Here's a hint: it's all dead organic material, which originally gathered energy from something that gathered energy from what original source? Yes, that's right kids! It's the sun! Revered for millenniums for a reason...
Wind generation? Another form of solar energy. No sun, no wind. Lakes and rivers? No sun, no rain, no fresh water, no lakes and rivers! Not to say you can't harness these different manifestations of the sun's energy...
Passive solar plants are already in use all over the world, and even store energy using gravity or other passive methods that waste very little energy. Many small power plants can decentralize the grid, improve efficiency since the grid is smaller, and are much more viable than millions of little ICEs.
Imagine, Wal-Mart borrows ten billion dollars to install solar panels to cover their parking lots, which stop local heating effects, decrease A/C usage in all customer cars, and provide them with another revenue stream all in one master stroke.
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Re:I just ate an aspirin pancake. (Score:5, Funny)
Okay, sounds good. I'll need a cost estimate on that for Monday's meeting.
Also, do you know any consultants who have done this before?
Thanks,
Management
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Which vehicles? (Score:5, Insightful)
We need to conserve energy dense fuels for situations where they are are truly needed (emergency vehicles, long-haul transportation through sparse landscapes, aviation).
What people are upset about is that life is much less convenient when we're all not driving powerful vehicles than can carry 10 folks and tow a boat on a whim. Well, tough shit. You may have to carpool or take the bus. You may not be able to keep your own jetski in a garage a hundred miles from your lake house. These are privileges, not rights.
Algae based biodiesel is interesting, but again, we need to get away from ICEs except where they are absolutely necessary. An electric car can receive power from any source - nuclear, coal, and even biodiesel through small on-board generators. ICEs will always be addicted to one type of depletable resource - that derived from dead organic material.
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Re:SwiftFuel sounds like a bad idea. (Score:5, Informative)
Lead is currently added to avgas to retard premature detonation in the cylinders, and to increase the octane rating. One of the problems with unleaded fuels is that they produce higher compression than avgas. Today's unleaded gas would increase compression to the point where it would literally blow the seals out of the engines. They also have different chemical effects on materials that may cause deterioration in such parts as fuel lines and gaskets. Another difference is that the lead additives help protect the engine valve seats from eroding.
Airplane engines were designed to run on a very specific fuel, that had very specific properties. Avgas produces a precise amount of compression when it's burnt. The old engines were designed to be run at 100% of their potential power, so there is no tolerance for out-of-spec components, such as unleaded fuel.
In order for SwiftFuel to be an acceptable replacement, it will have to have very similar characteristics to today's avgas. Either that or it will have to be "close enough" so that older engines can at least be modified to burn it, and that would promise to be an unpopular, expensive decision (airplane repairs are never cheap.)
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Re:SwiftFuel sounds like a bad idea. (Score:5, Informative)
Unleaded fuels without other octane boosters are prone to predetonation. That might be what the guy was talking about - that "pinging" noise of a so-called knock condition is the sound of the piston vibrating in the cylinder as it tries to compress an expanding mixture. Hard to say.
As for eroding lines and such, this is true, especially of Ethanol. A lot of that aeronautic stuff is pretty damned antiquated. I wouldn't be surprised to find that replacement parts are still sold with leather seals and whatnot. It wasn't an airplane, but my 1960 Dodge Dart (2dr, "Phoenix", 318ci big block hemi) had a 650 CFM Carter carburetor which had a leather acceleration pump flap. When the switch from leaded occurred, a lot of these cars sort of fell apart. Not mine though. Must have gotten lucky. Also I used the expensive lead substitute, maybe it was good.
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