Neural Gourmet Archives | Feed Your Brain
Neural Gourmet Archives | Feed Your BrainYes, today's question is: "Do you think dependence on oil will be eliminated in your lifetime?" The overwhelming majority votes "No", but I voted "Yes".
Why? Well, it sure as hell isn't because I believe that bullshit Il Douche and Herr Gropenfuhrer are putting out about Hydrogen, and I don't believe Corn Squeezin's or french fry oil are going to help, either. Sorry, Mitch Daniels, but you've got about another 2 years before you become the FORMER Governor of Indiana, so you better get humpin' on your Biofuel Initative.
I'm about 50 years old. Worst case, I'll live maybe another 15 years, best case, I'll be here for another 1/2 century. We WILL cure ourselves of our oil dependence before I check out, simply because there won't BE any oil left to be dependent on! Oh, there will still be oil left in the ground, but it's going to take more than a barrel's worth of energy to get a barrel of it out of the ground. That's why the BFEE is in such a sweat to settle things down in Iraq and pick a fight with Iran, because Bush and Cheney figure if there's an end to cheap oil coming, they want to be in control of it. How they figure they will be in control of Iran when they can't even get their hand-picked puppet circus to control things in Baghdad is beyond my comprehension, but then, this is the same bunch that thinks spending more than 1,000 BTU's to produce 1,000 BTUs of Hydrogen is going to "save" us.
What do expect out of a drunken frat boy and a steroid-rotted former musclehead who's first major motion picture dialog line was "Crom...."
So you see, Fellow Babies, I'm not the optimist my poll answer presented me as, am I?
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Yet another area where the myths, lies and distortions are flying left and right. If you follow the news on energy, you end up with a wholly unhelpful picture of energy production and costs and not enough real information to make any kind of informed decision. I know I do. At this stage in the game I think good old nuclear fission is our last, best alternative in the short to medium run. It's got a lot of problems but I don't see those problems nearly as insurmountable as certain "green" technologies and it has the added bonus that we can start building more nuke plants tomorrow. If we had the will, which we don't of course since the public has been scared shitless by Chernobyl, 3 Mile (even though it was actually a relatively minor accident with no real results) and greenies. And, oh yeah, they're aided in that by being totally ignorant of some basic science. Again.
Is an accurate statement of how many BTUs, Calories, KWs, whatever unit of energy you want to use it takes to produce 1,000 BTUs of the various Bio-Saviors that are supposed to save us from ourselves and allow us to just keep boppin' along, driving our "green" GMC Grande Viagras 15 miles to get a pizza to bring back home to eat while we watch our 100" warp-drive bigscreen.
I made the mistake of quoting the "Cornell Study" which stated that it took 1300 BTUs of energy to create 750 BTUs of Ethanol. Well! guess they told me! You'd had thought I had dropped into the middle of a "Chemtrail" discussion, I was told in no uncertain term that the Cornell stuff was bogus, and called everything but a Human for having the temerity to repeat such garbage. Funny, I don't remember my critics coming up with any numbers to dispute Cornell.
Probably the same people soiling themselves trying to drive 100 miles on half a cup of Dihydrogen Oxide.
I really don't think there are enough wastesuff available to run the stills or fuel the boilers to make the juice to crack the water to make the hydrogen to fuel the SUV that AHH-Nuld drives. We COULD try making methane from chickenshit and cowflops, but would it be enough? Cheap electricity woulkd work, but there are really only 2 currently feasible sources of that, Hydro and (gasp!) NUKES! Take about your ultimate NIMBY... How long to get new Nuke plants on line? In the short-term, that may be the only option available to us, because by the time we get off our collective asses and decide to get serious about solar panels or wind power, there won't be enough energy available to run the machine shops to build this stuff.
Round and Round it Goes...
You know that's going to get the site flooded with like 10,000 comment spam for fake penis pills don't you? 
I'd say we could use the promise of good paying jobs to counter the NIMBY on nuke plants (metric butt load of construction jobs + plant personnel) but it's going to take a whopper of a PR campaign. And of course, the PR campaign would be relentlessly attacked by the luddites as propaganda. Still, in 30 years we might start getting some new nuke plants built. Or not.
Solar is still fraught with problems too, including that solar PV panels are made out of a silicon doped with rare earth minerals (they're not called rare because they're common). Solar PV panels have a limited lifespan too (~20 yrs. IIRC).
Wind is good, and I think wind could be used on a small scale wherever it makes sense to do so. Yet we have the NIMBY thing again, and at least in my state NIMBY seems to be on the payroll of libertarian billionaire Thomas Golisano via the lovely little fear-factor site Save Upstate NY (I wonder if Tom Golisano owns any National Grid or other energy company stock).
Oh yeah, and how dare you use science! Don't you know you're supposed to feel the green? 
