BIODIESEL, Try it youll like it.

Now now timber.That's a bit oversimplified I fear.

The basic difference is the millions of years of stored sunshine up against this year's sunshine.It's no contest until the oil runs down.It will never run out.Rationing will see to that.

I know never say never.I mean in the foreseeable.

Changing lifestyles seems to me much the most obvious approach.You can hardly ask the 7 billion to control their egos without setting them an example.It's a cold turkey job like all addictions or it's a "going all the way till the wheels fall off and burn" as Dylan said in about 1987-9.

I'd start choking telly down a bit.

I believe spendius' skepticism is jusatified, but I am persuaded that bio fuels will indeed become a significant component of vehicle fuel in this country over the coming decade. There are several important "ifs" in the equation, as spendius notes, but the historical trends suggest that change is coming.

There is much interest now in hybrid autos. They are a good deal more complex & expensive than conventional internal combustion powertrains, and it wilol be interesting to see whether they or new lightweight deisel engines win out in the marketplace. Diesels are limited by the environmental effects of the particulate matter in their exhaust. If biofuels are able to solve or significantly reduce that problem, then the combination is likely to grow substantially in the market, and biofuels will offer an important advantage over petroleum. Very likely the resultiung fuel will be a mixture of petroleum and biofuel, but even so the demand for biofuel will be significant.

By the way, through what chemical pathway are cows breaking cellulose down into smaller carbohydrate molecules? They can obviously run the process with a positive energy balance. Maybe humans can learn from that process?

Thomas made the point. Craig Venter, the CEO of the co that cracked the human genome, is now out there searching for the right enzymes that will break and make available more of the carbohydrates and locked up sugars for ethanol. The more biofuels we seek to make, the more natural processes we emulate.
Predigestion enzymes lead to more complete fermentation and thence to a higher %alcohol to distill. Its already costing 2 barrels of crude to make 1 bbl product and the biofuel production has a lower energy footprint. Biodiesel is already a positive because oil from soybeans is extracted and converted to the ester and the soybean meal is STILL available as cattlefeed. Cattle get enough fats from grass, since they are ruminants their stomachs can change internal structure to better extract essential nutrients . Thats why we can not quickly change makeup of cattle or sheep feed overnight, their papillae in their rumen could cause them to bloat and die.


Spendi-my comment about taxes was a follow up to your "quiz show" comment. In Us , aprize is considered ordinary income (so if you win a 50K Hummer on some quiz show, you, the winner, owe taxes on it like you earned 50K, even though the tv show got the Hummer for free as a promotional gimmick)

georgeob, do I detect that you feel that oil is inexhaustible? I hope youre not buying Russ Humphries or Hayseed Hancocks lines of bullshit. The amounts of abiogeniclong chain aliphatics is always limited by the anaerobic reaction called the Tropsch process , this is accomplished in a very limited natural environment , maybe at ends of subduction zones. It will never even come close to being a marketable resource.
It was a valid reaction in the early earth and maybe kick started life , but theres too much air and not enough free hydrogen ions (assuming an acidic environment)

dadpad, in the US we have **** trees like creosote and oil rich lumber an algae and all sorts of stuff to make biodiesel and ethanol outta.

I am very impressed with the technical know-how displayed on this thread and thank you all for it.

However-the question I posed to which I think the answer is 2,100 barrels has been entirely ignored.

In the 19th century family sizes were often large.I have heard of one lady who had 22 children.The Soviet government awarded a Mother Of The Soviet Union medal to women who had five.Augustus embarked on a policy of encouraging a higher birth rate.I could cite other instances closer to home.

What I am exercised with here is that the birth rate is self evidently subject to manipulation by a variety of factors.

Abortion in the US in 2003 is given as 1.4 million.This represents a saving in potential oil use of 1,400,000 X 2100 barrels which is 2,540 million barrels.And that is just for the abortions of one year.I realise that upward price spikes would alter this figure and probably considerably but that would have a severe impact on consumption patterns generally,wages and stock markets.

Also,a certain official encouragement of homosexuality and self gratification and the availability of affordable birth control methods will add to the "potential conceptions that never happen".

But all this only goes to make the point.It isn't the point itself,which is that social policies dwarf all the admired expertise on this thread when it comes to alternative energy sources.

Obviously,had all the potential conceptions taken place the resulting people could not possibly have been allowed to consume oil at the 2,100 barrels /lifetime rate.It is thus quite obvious that your ability to consume at the rate you have become accustomed to is dependent on abortion,homosexuality,masturbation and probably a few other things which are classed as perversions usually by those consuming oil at a higher rate than average.

I now realise why the post quoted above has been ignored and why you are all hiding behind smokescreens of supposed technical expertise which conveniently allow you to think you are making a solid contribution to this ridiculous debate which can hardly be said to be even on the margins though I will admit it might pass as impressive to those who Veblen said were born at the rate of one per minute.

The gigantic assumption being made on this thread is that social policy will be constant and what you are used to.Which is tantamount to saying that you are thinking in a vacuum.

You could,for example,segregate the sexes as is happening to military personnel serving overseas and to those potential mothers below the age of consent.
The projections of glacier melt might already be having an effect on birth rates in those sections of the population which read and watch serious media studies thus shifting the balance towards the less responsible sections of the community.

In the UK a policy to build 4 million single person accomodation units in the south-east is underway.If the lifestyle provided by these is satisfactory,even luxurious,women will be less inclined to allow themselves to be impregnated.One advert I saw for them depicted a young woman wearing earphones lounging on a sofa surrounded by objects of opulence and looking very satisfied.Whether these object were coded signals for lesbianism I don't know as I'm just an innocent country boy who is not up to date on these matters.

Nice Segway, Spendius.

Rap

he drives a bus.

When I lived out in Clif. I lived near Fosom and then later in atwon called Half Moon Bay. Both towns were pleasant but smelled like cat piss because of all the eucalyptus tees. I recall that whenerver the brush fires season occured any eucalyptus trees would just explode . I dont now what the flash point was but it had to be like room temp.

If the flash point of eucalyptus trees are that low, it might not be a source if of biodiesel it could be a sourse of bio-otto.

Half Moon Bay--did you get to meet mayor Squint?

Rap

Rap-

I thought fm was making a bit of a metaphor.

spendius,

You are working hard merely to be argumentative. I don't think anyone here has even speculated about the likely relative effects of technological innovation and what you call "social policy" . Instead we have a series of comments reinforcing the very likely introduction of biofuels to replace a portion of the petroleum consumed in transportation systems.

The population trends to which you referred are well known. Human behaviou in this area is indeed vartiable and there is always risk in projections that reach out more than a generation. That said, the current denographic trends point to a very significant depopulation of Europe (or perhaps the replacement of Europeans by other more competitive peoples). Even China's population is projected to peak by mid-century, and the same process, resulting from the modernization of economies and lifestyles is yielding similar effects across South Asia. Birthrates in the Moslem world are starting (slowly) to decline, but they remain much higher than those of surrounding peoples, particularly Europeans. From Russia to Spain female fertility in Europe hovers around 1.4 - 1.5, about 30% below the value required for population equilibrium . (In the U.S. the figure is about 2.1) Overall the human population of the earth appears to be headed for a levelling sometime late in the century.

How this may effect energy consumption, I can't reliably project. However it is not at all clear to me just where you want to go with this argument.

farmerman,

No, I dont think we have an infinite supply of petroleum. However we aren't about to runn out of it for some time. It certainly is a "marketable product" , and, as you undoubtedly know, the store of recoverable reserves is a very stronf function of the projected market price. Higher prices make large marginal sources, such as tar sands useful.

George wrote-



It isn't all that clear to me either.But debates between technical experts can sometimes lose sight of the human behaviour they are supposed to be dealing with and take on an abstract life of their own which I'll admit is sometimes necessary.

I was simply bringing humans back into the equation and taking the opportunity to compose what I thought a rather tasty piece of prose which I hoped would provide some readers with food for thought.

georgeob, The Hubbert curve predicts essentially being tapped out by 2050 with the decline beginning in the mid 1990's. Thats a trip point that says that biofuels can begin to compete. The OPECkers are really not in control and they arent making too many strategic investments now. Although I did see that a Japanese electronics giant bought Westinghouse Nuke. The Japanese really do think strategically.

This mornings NYT has an article about the comments that Thomas brought up on Sun, and we didnt follow up with much interest.

In biofuels or in situ coal gasification or coal/diesel conversion, we can make a product and astill have a product in reserve. Coal technology takes away the volatiles , like tar sands, but were lim ited to certain fractions of product. Biofuels give us a fuel and produce a backup product like cattle feed or bioplastic feedstock. Its efficiency.

The manufacturers of biodiesel are now making money and are now competitive. Petroleums on a down spiral in volume and consumption is rising. Some airlines are alrewady testing the fuels like JP-90 which is a coal derived diesel/ kero. It has different burning properties so I suppose some jet engines will need modifications (I dont know) But the source is almost 500 years worth and the production doesnt require mining but in situ retorting.
It involves a pyrolytic distillation at about 200C. Yes theres energy involved but no more than that required in cracking crude.

The Saudis can pump oil at $5 so where investment comes from in bio when faced with that defeats me.

I am inclined to be very skeptoical of doomsday predictions that we will run out of petroleum in a decade or so. These predictions have been around in more or less the same form for many decades, and throughout that period data for "proven reserves" have indicated an uncanny constant value in terms of years available at current consumption rates. No doubt a sea change will come, but I believe it will be more characterized by steadily rising prices as more and more costly extraction is pursued, than it will be a sudden loss of supply.

It is also true that the current price of petroleum is only rather weakly tied to the cost of production -- just as spendius has noted. The world market prices petroleum more at the value it has to consumers than it does to the costs to the producers, In this situation alternate fuels do indeed give consumers. who are able to produce them, added market power vis a vis producers. That said, the producers are not without their own powers and can reduce their price to limit the growth of alternatives - also as spendius noted. However, if you reflect a bit on this situation I believe you will agree this is, in the long run, a losing game for the producers.

Aircraft turbine engines are a good deal more tolerant of fuel properties than IC engines - as long as they remain volatile at the low temperatures & pressures in the stratosphere. There is no doubt that biomass or coal derived fuels could be used for them as long as the economic cost is tolerable.

There will be alot of opportunities for diesel to "bridge" any fuel gaps. We only think of gasoline when in reality, most of the big in place energy production is coal nuke and straight oil and diesel. Tar sands and coal diesel has a life for low end distillates for many centuries.
PS, nobody at AIPG is able to discount Hubberts predictions. The panic of the 70's was pretty much media driven, it was then that Hubbert developed his "reserve decline" and increased use currves. If anything, he was on the low side a bit.

We have tools now to estimate field capacities (not the field capacity you think of in hydrology) but the capacity for a particular field to keep producing , including secondary recovery strategies.

Pumping at 5$ a barrel (if that is indeed the cost) has nothing to do with anything when you know that youve got less than x hundred billion barrels left in proven reserve and nothing new except little 5 and 10 billion barrel fields here and there