A Fuel Depleted Economy?

[Billy T]

BTW, Rural India is a "Fuel Depleted Economy" - why they burn sun dried cattle dropings instead of use them much more profitably as fertalizer.

 

[Carcano]

No with GPS guidance the ICBM or cruise missile fired from ship can have a circle or error at target of less than a foot radius. But a land launched missile, trying to hit a zig zagging ship even if using GPS guidance to where the ship was a few minutes ago.

Except GPS is updated onboard the missile every second or so. Zig-zaging wont help I'm afraid.

 

[Billy T]

Except GPS is updated onboard the missile every second or so. ...

The inflight missel can learn its own postion every second or so, but not where its zig zagging target is. That is why a moving target is much harder to hit than a land based one who´s GPS coordinates remain constant.

 

[Carcano]

Another grain that could do well in the future of American agriculture is Einkorn. It is extremely tolerant of salty soils and is likely to be grown in Utah which has VAST acreages of dry salt pans currently unused and vacant of production.

All the details here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=50-CJGkgjF8

 

[billvon]

Another grain that could do well in the future of American agriculture is Einkorn. It is extremely tolerant of salty soils and is likely to be grown in Utah which has VAST acreages of dry salt pans currently unused and vacant of production.

That's more loss of fresh water than oil, but it's still a good point. As water becomes more scarce, and we use more of it for fracking, we might see a shift in crops to more drought-tolerant ones.

 

[Carcano]

Obviously the internal combustion engine will continue to be employed for however much vegetable oil can be spared from the arable land available. However, there will be tremendous effort applied over the next 30 years to improve its efficiency.

One very promising concept and prototype comes from the lab of Dr. Norbert Muller at the engineering department of Michigan Sate University...called the Wave Disc Generator.

Rotary motion, one moving part and minimal friction yields higher efficiencies compared to existing tech.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nIPSTTvHfLs

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uf_-IMgla34

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tmkf-bQbXHc

 

[Carcano]

Should the government DO SOMETHING NOW about an impending depletion of liquid fuel? Of course, and it is...to the tune of 130 million dollars.

Wha...what!!! 130 million dollars??? The national offence budget is 644 BILLION dollars!

Yup, several thousand times higher than what the government is investing in energy solutions.

Here's the list of which companies are getting government grants to research innovative technologies.

http://arpa-e.energy.gov/Portals/0/Documents/Projects/OPEN2012_ProjectDescriptions_FINAL_112812.pdf

The firm getting the most money is, you guessed it...battery research.

http://www.polyplus.com/company.html

 

[billvon]

Should the government DO SOMETHING NOW about an impending depletion of liquid fuel? Of course, and it is...to the tune of 130 million dollars.

Or you could do something now for a whole lot less.

Put in solar hot water heating and save hundreds of gallons of fuel oil a year. Get a Leaf and a solar power system and save up to a thousand gallons of gas a year. Or get a Volt if you still want to use gas occasionally to go long distances. And you'll be prepared for the gas-pocalypse!

 

[Carcano]

Put in solar hot water heating and save hundreds of gallons of fuel oil a year.

Let's examine two different scenarios.

1. You invest 5000 dollars for solar water heating which pays for itself in 5 years, and save 5000 dollars in total costs over 10 years.

2. The government requires everyone to install solar water heating for 5000 dollars. The price of fuel will drop on less overall demand, and as a result, each individual household saves 9000 dollars on total costs over ten years.

Individuals can help themselves a little...governments can help a lot.

 

[billvon]

Let's examine two different scenarios.

1. You invest 5000 dollars for solar water heating which pays for itself in 5 years, and save 5000 dollars in total costs over 10 years.

2. The government requires everyone to install solar water heating for 5000 dollars. The price of fuel will drop on less overall demand, and as a result, each individual household saves 9000 dollars on total costs over ten years.

And the people who cannot afford it end up in jail. Result - economic penalties as taxes go up (to build more prisons and hire more guards) and available labor goes down (due to all those people being in jail.)

Or the government pays for the people who cannot afford it. Result - everyone's taxes go up to pay for it. The price of fuel drops a little and taxes go up a lot. No savings.

Individuals can help themselves a little...governments can help a lot.

And hurt a lot.

Individual elective action is always a better option than actions mandated by the government. We learned that during the solar hot water heater bust of the 1970's.

 

[Carcano]

And the people who cannot afford it end up in jail.

Not at all...the government simply arranges that the costs for those who cant afford it be spread out over a long enough time span until the savings catch up.

 

[Carcano]

Is there anything better than generating both fuel AND clean water from what is wasted?

A project under testing in France seeks to do just that within the confines of a single office building. Note also the blurb about legal mandates towards energy conservation in new architectural developments.

http://vimeo.com/54975036#

 

[billvon]

Not at all...the government simply arranges that the costs for those who cant afford it be spread out over a long enough time span until the savings catch up.

That idea failed miserably in the 1970's.

 

[Carcano]

This is how people used to live before the advent of automobiles changed the structure of urban design. Instead of separate buildings for commercial space miles away requiring hundreds of trips to work or shopping, wasting oceans of fuel...people lived in an integrated fashion.

Even a supply of fresh water was collected from the roof and drained into central cisterns every resident could draw from.

http://postimage.org/image/qm6y916tn/

 

[Billy T]

Sun gives much more energy than electric requirements but that may not help met our needs:

According to the Energy Information Administration, total energy from all renewable sources accounted for 9% of total U.S. energy in 2011. Solar accounted for 2% of that 9%.

That minuscule .18% of total energy is absurdly expensive.

The Institute for Energy Research calculated the subsidies for each energy source normalized to the amount of energy produced, in dollars per megawatt hour ($/Mwhr). In 2011 $0.64/MWhr was given for fossil fuels, $0.82/MWhr for hydro, $3.14/MWhr for nuclear, $56.29/MWhr for wind, and $775.64/MWhr for solar.

SUMMARY: Solar gets more than 1000 time more government support than conventional fuels and nearly 14 times more than wind energy!

 

[billvon]

This is how people used to live before the advent of automobiles changed the structure of urban design. Instead of separate buildings for commercial space miles away requiring hundreds of trips to work or shopping, wasting oceans of fuel...people lived in an integrated fashion.

People still live that way in smaller cities. Most of San Diego, for example, follows that model. (We don't get nearly enough rain for cisterns to work though.)

 

[kmguru]

This is a thread about what a typical western city would (or will) look like under conditions of severe fossil fuel depletion. By that I mean very high prices for oil and natural gas...but not for electricity.

...but not for electricity....I hope so...I am designing several major systems...and hope to get more natural gas from earth. That is part of Earth System....so we shall see how that goea. But since everyone is on Facebook...we may not travel as much???