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Blasts from the 2012 to 2013 past when there was more HOPE
🌟
DIR By: AGelbert
Date: July 6, 2018, 5:53 pm
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Agelbert NOTE: The "Oil Drum" mentioned in this article was a
web site that pitched happy talk about hydrocarbons and a steady
stream of disinformation about Renewable Energy technologies.
They closed down years ago. Nevertheless, the propaganda they
pitched still continues unabated from the Fossil Fuel Industry
paid liars and crooks. Learn about their 😈 mendacious
modus operandi.
July 17, 2012
Written by me. 8)
[center]Hope for a viable biosphere: Why fossil fuels were NEVER
cheap or cost effective[/center]
[center]Hope for a Viable Biosphere of Renewables[/center]
[center]Why They Work and Fossil & Nuclear Fuels Never
Did[/center]
Published July 17, 2012 | By A. G. Gelbert
Quote
The biosphere is the global sum of all ecosystems. It can also
be called the zone of life on Earth, a closed (apart from solar
and cosmic radiation) and self-regulating system.[1]
[center]
HTML http://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/gallery/renewablerevolution/3-080718151137.png[/center]
[center]File:Seawifs global biosphere.jpg[/center]
This is a “Big Picture” article about energy resources and use
by humanity. In the article I question the most basic
assumptions that have become “common wisdom” in our culture in
regard to the celebrated “cost effectiveness” of fossil and
nuclear energy products and the view that renewables are not a
suitable replacement due to alleged “low” EROI (Energy Return on
Energy Invested – sometimes shown as EROEI in the literature). I
even question the assumptions used in the EROI methodolgy for
quantifying exothermic chemical processes (how much energy is
released when rapid oxidation, otherwise known as an explosion,
occurs in a given energy product).
I will prove that the EROI methodology is, not simply flawed,
but unscientifically skewed to narrowly define energy input and
output boundaries so as to favor fossil and nuclear fuels and
simultaneously delegitimize renewable energy product cost
effectiveness. It is most telling that the EROI documents and
discussions at The Oil Drum web site are the ones that first
show up when you do an EROI google search for fossil fuels
and/or renewables.
The claim of scientific objectivity in regard to fossil fuels at
a web site called The Oil Drum can only be considered acceptable
in a country like ours, where the oil and nuclear lobbies
control much of the narrative and just about all of the
governmental policies energywise.
Tell me, dear readers, would you consider taking advice on the
efficacy of a vegan diet from the owners of a steak house? Do
you think they would celebrate the fact that rice and beans
provide a balanced protein intake that covers all essential
amino acids? Do you think they would, after you provided
evidence of the facts, offer chickpeas, which are equivalent in
protein density to meat without the fat, as a replacement for
the kiddy burgers?
Quote
Chickpeas have 361 calories per 100g, and are a good source of
protein containing about 20 percent in content, which is
equivalent to meat.
Read more:
HTML http://www.livestrong.com/article/306862-chickpea-diet/#ixzz20d229B5z
Quote
Rice and beans are both nutritious yet inexpensive foods that,
when combined, form a complete protein.
Read more:
HTML http://www.livestrong.com/article/351077-the-protein-in-rice-beans/#ixzz20d8EofWj
Somehow, I think you will agree that the steak house owners are
just a tiny bit biased in favor of meat and will attempt to
undermine the vegan diet by the following reactions: 1) Ignore
it. 2) Ridicule it. 3) Attack it with false propaganda. Provided
enough people can be kept in the dark about the benefits to the
body and the pocketbook of a vegan diet, the steak house owners
and the entire chain of profit generating meat production
facilities from raising cattle, hogs and chickens to every fast
food burger joint in the country can continue to enjoy the
status quo and their profits. I am not a vegetarian. I bring
this example to you (remember the time Oprah had to back down on
her claim that red meat was bad for you because of the cattle
rancher outcry? – She was referring to scientifc studies but the
beef industry prevailed anyway – truth be damned when profits
are threatened is the predatory capitalist motto) simply because
it shows how mendacity is used to defend a bias, regardless of
the truth.
I will prove here that the same mechanism has corrupted, not
only our government energy use, subsidy and research and
development grant allocation policies, but the very mathematics
used by scientists to define energetic exothermic processes.
The Procrustean Bed gaming of the boundaries for the EROI
methodology is where we begin. I am not a mathematician but I
can add, subtract, divide and multiply. Regardless of the
calculus formulas or other advanced mathematics and statistical
tools used by the scientists doing the EROI math, I will show
that every energy cost they leave out favors the fossil fuel and
nuclear energy industries in their flawed EROI comparison with
renewables. At the end of the article, after having presented
the case which, not simply justifies, but requires a switch to
100% renewables in order to guarantee a viable biosphere, I will
point you to some excellent videos from Germany (you have to go
to the German web site to see them – they are free but they sell
the DVDs of the videos for those who wish to spread the word)
where renewables providing power to industrial processes, as
well as consumer energy demands, are paving the way to an energy
future free of disruptions, price gouging from contrived fuel
shortages and price shocks/hikes from wars (mostly contrived as
well) and/or speculators. P
arts of this article may be a bit boring. Please try to remember
that your thorough understanding and use for dissemination of
the data here to others out there may enable you, after you
verify it’s veracity, to effectively counter some status quo
victim of brainwashing in the “follow the herd” school of
“that’s how the world works and we just have to live with it”
tradition. Your efforts to wade through this and digest it’s
contents will, I firmly believe, help attain a sustainable
future. An unsustainable world is a world that isn’t “working”.
What I want is for it to work.
[center]ENERGY RETURN ON ENERGY INVESTED (EROI or sometimes
EROEI)[/center]
Quote
Procrustean bed is an arbitrary standard to which exact
conformity is forced.
HTML http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Procrustes
Measuring the EROEI of a single physical process is unambiguous,
but there is no agreed standard on which activities should be
included in measuring the EROEI of an economic process. In
addition, the form of energy of the input can be completely
different from the output. For example, energy in the form of
coal could be used in the production of ethanol. This might have
an EROEI of less than one, but could still be desirable due to
the benefits of liquid fuels.
HTML http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_returned_on_energy_invested
This is the general formula: EROEI = Usable Acquired Energy
(output) DIVIDED BY Energy Expended (input) The formula appears
pretty straightforward, does it not? If you get less energy out
than you put in then you will get a number below “1” (i.e. 1/2 =
0.5 EROI not good, 10/1 = 10.0 EROI good). Since the units in
this formula are energy units, let’s define those:
Quote
Because energy is defined via work, the SI unit for energy is
the same as the unit of work – the joule (J), named in honour of
James Prescott Joule and his experiments on the mechanical
equivalent of heat. In slightly more fundamental terms, 1 joule
is equal to 1 newton-metre and, in terms of SI base units:
HTML http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Units_of_energy
What’s a newton-metre? What are SI units? Don’t worry about it.
Anybody that wants to do an in depth discussion in the comments
of how scientists came up with the units from observing the heat
effect of lots of energetic molecules in a measured volume of
some gas, liquid or solid is free to do so. In the meantime,
readers only need to remember that more Joules (J) = more
energy.
So taken with the “fabulous fossil fuels” are some people out
there that they have the audacity to start using “barrel of oil
equivalent” and “ton of oil equivalent” to measure energy rather
than sticking with Joules (J).
Quote
In discussions of energy production and consumption, the units
barrel of oil equivalent and ton of oil equivalent are often
used.
HTML http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Units_of_energy
To the credentialed scientists in the EROI study published at
The Oil Drum’s credit, they appear to have used Joules and
MegaJoules(MJ) in their energy units. Use your own imagination
as to how objective it would have looked to claim EROI in
ethanol and other renewables is too low in terms of “barrel of
oil equivalent” units. Okay, so we’ve decided to use “J” units
as the input and output energy units in the EROI formula. How do
we know how much energy is in a given measure of gasoline?
For you oldy goldies here, do you remember leaded gasoline?
Gasoline was goosed (increased octane rating) by adding
tetra-ethyl lead. Lead hurt the environment and caused serious
health issues and developmental disorders for humans (and surely
a lot of animals that were never considered in the studies) so
unleaded gasoline became the norm with the lower octane rating.
The reason I bring this up is because changes in octane rating
change the activation energy needed to start the chemical
reaction/explosion.
A low octane gasoline technically has more energy than a high
octane gasoline does because a lower octane rating requires less
energy (lower energy of activation) for the reaction to begin.
The energy density per mole in a high octane gasoline is assumed
to be lower due to the higher energy of activation. This is a
half truth. This half truth is used by the EROI experts to claim
ethanol, which has a high octane rating, has a lower EROI than
gasolene.
Simply changing the compression ratio in an engine to a high
compression makes ethanol equivalent in MJ/L to gasoline. But,
of course, the Hall study arbitrarily stopped at the octane
rating “energy of activation” differences between gasoline and
ethanol with zero discussion of high compression engines.
That was very convenient for gasoline EROI and very inconvenient
for ethanol EROI. Furthermore the Hall study studied oil and
“conventional” natural gas together in computing EROI:
Quote
Oil and conventional natural gas are usually studied together
because they often occur in the same fields, have overlapping
production operations and data archiving.
Quote
.. authors also estimated through linear extrapolation that the
EROI for global oil and conventional natural gas could reach 1:1
as soon as about 2022 given alternative input measurement
methods
Sustainability 2011, 3, 1796-1809; doi:10.3390/su3101796
www.mdpi.com/journal/sustainability The authors of the above
study made a reasoned assumption that the energy density per
mole of global oil and conventional gas is, for all practical
purposes, identical. Though one is a gas and the other a liquid,
after processing inputs and putputs with similar infrastructure
costs, that appears to be a logical approach.
The problem with this approach is that the petroleum industry
energy density numbers which predictably apply quite well to
hydrocarbons result in bad data (low EROI) when applied to a
renewable like ethanol.
There was a study done at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory:
“BIOMASS AS FEEDSTOCK FOR A BIOENERGY AND BIOPRODUCTS INDUSTRY:
THE TECHNICAL FEASIBILITY OF A BILLION-TON ANNUAL SUPPLY”,
Perlack, Wright, Turhollow, Graham, Stokes and Erbach – 2005.
The conclusion of the Oak Ridge study was that the U.S. could
meet at least 30% of its transportation fuel needs from biomass
sources by 2030 “…with relatively modest changes in land use and
agricultural and forestry practices.”. But the Oak Ridge
Laboratory study, assumed, in error, that biofuels
(specifically, ethanol) should be compared to petroleum
fuels (specifically, gasoline) on a heat content basis
(e.g. British Thermal Units) when estimating fuel efficiency.
The Heat Value of ethanol is 65% of that of gasoline. Almost all
researchers on this subject assume that ethanol’s fuel
efficiency is 65% of that of gasoline. Even the U.S. Dept. of
Energy thinks this is a valid assumption. Perhaps this is
because so many of the studies pertaining to biofuels
feasibility are done by individuals with economics backgrounds.
The property of fuels known as the Octane rating indicates a
fuels capacity for being combusted under pressure without
pre-igniting. This is of great importance because fuels with
higher octane ratings can be burned at higher combustion chamber
pressures and produce more power which results in more work
output (i.e. miles per gallon) than a fuel with a lower octane
rating that cannot be consumed at higher combustion chamber
pressures.
Ethanol has an octane rating of 115. Gasoline‘s is 93-95 for
high test gasoline. This means that ethanol can be burned in a
higher compression engine or an engine with combustion chamber
pressures boosted using turbocharging or supercharging. The
Department of Energy continues to base its estimates of fuel
efficiency (and greenhouse gas emissions) for ethanol
based on the Heat Value of ethanol relative to gasoline.
This is entirely in error as it does not recognize the
importance of octane rating and the characteristics of the
engine the fuel in question is used in. The fact is, ethanol’s
higher octane rating than gasoline enables it to be consumed in
a higher pressure combustion chamber and obtain comparable (or
better) fuel efficiency than that obtained with gasoline. This
also means that the estimates of how much of the fuel supply we
can meet using ethanol are significantly low.
The estimate of the Oak Ridge study assumes ethanol can only
achieve fuel efficiency relative to gasoline that is equivalent
to ethanol’s “heat value” relative to gasoline’s or 65% of
gasoline’s. But in actuality, ethanol used in an engine that
takes full advantage of ethanol’s higher octane achieves
comparable fuel efficiency to gasoline’s and thus the amount of
the fuel supply that can be met with ethanol is not 30% but 46%
(1/.65).
So, returning to the EROI numbers published by the SUNY ESF
study at The Oil Drum, you can see that they are way too low
(from 1.29–1.70 ) because they low balled the OUTPUT in Joules
of ethanol. Output is the top number on the EROI equation.
I refuse to believe that these math wizards over there did not
know that ethanol’s higher octane rating would result in equal
or greater energy output than gasoline given a proper engine
combustion chamber. This was a deliberate attempt to undermine
the EROI of the corn ethanol renewable in the service of fossil
fuels.
The EROI number for sugar cane ethanol (8.0) that Brazil has
achieved would be even higher if the output energy was corrected
to the level of gasoline in the EROI formula. Furthermore, corn
is a really poor choice for biomass because it requires so much
energy to prepare the ground, fertilize chemically and harvest.
This biomass crop may not have been deliberately set up to fail
as a bonafide competitor to gasoline, but it has certainly
worked out that way.
The precise point where The Oil Drum continues to have it wrong
on ethanol is this assumption which totaly ignores the FACT that
gasoline ONLY has more useable energy than ethanol if you use it
to boil water in a lab! In an internal combustion engine the
effective MJ/L difference used to transform heat energy to
mechanical energy is NEGLIGIBLE:
Quote
“New Perspectives on the Energy Return on (Energy) Investment
(EROI) of Corn Ethanol,” Adjusting for the lower energy content
of ethanol (21.46 MJ/L etoh vs. 34.56 MJ/L gasoline = 0.62), we
calculated that the net energy from ethanol is roughly 0.99
billion ‘‘gasoline-equivalent’’ liters.
HTML http://www.countercurrents.org/murphy100810.htm
The actual figure, since ethanol’s high octane rating makes it
equivalent to gasoline in an easy to obtain higher pressure
combustion chamber in internal combustion engines, should be
34.56 MJ/L as a minimum. I say this because ethanol burns much
cleaner than gasoline and reduced costs in simpler catalytic
converters (or none at all) for cars would, in a sane world,
increase EROI for ethanol from cleaner burning and increased
mileage per liter.
Now add to this the other biomass crops out there like Lemna
minor (Duckweed) that grow 8 times faster than corn with no
tilling and cheap harvesting as well as many perennial grasses
that can be converted to ethanol and you have an irrefutable
argument for replacing gasoline with ethanol.
But there’s more. Scientific assumptions about energy release
during rapid oxidation are surface or substrate dependent as
well as temperature dependent.
We all know that when you strike a match, the chemicals on the
match head increase to what is called kindling temperature. At
the molecular level, what is occurring is that the Oxygen
molecules floating around the match head combine with the match
head chemicals as soon as they are all expanded (that’s what
heat does to them) sufficently to combine.
Once the “energy of activation” is achieved, the chemical
reaction proceeds at a previously, scientifically measured and
predictable rate. Think of it as pushing a boulder off a cliff.
You need some exertion (small amount of heat) to get the boulder
to begin falling and accelerating at 32 feet per second squared
until terminal velocity (air friction prevents further
acceleration) is achieved (a lot of heat is produced until it
reaches a self sustaining oxidation which then proceeds until
all the reactants are oxidized).
The “cliff” can be a vertical drop (very explosive) or a gentle
slope (slow oxidation with a gradual heat release). Rust is an
example of slow oxidation.
What I ‘m trying to get across to you is that the fossil and
nuclear fuel industry never want to talk about is that the
reaction can be slowed down or speeded up by controllling the
distance from each other and distribution of more molecules of
the fuel and oxygen.
You can also introduce a catalyst which reduces the energy
needed to “push” the “boulder” off the “cliff”. This means you
need less heat to get the reaction going. In this case you end
up with a higher energy output for a given amount of input.
Surely you see how this can affect the EROI formula.
But once again zero attention is paid to any renewables using
catalysts to increase the energy output by these EROI studies.
No, the standard everything must be measured from some
thermodynamic straight jacket for a given simple exothermic
rapid oxydation. This is ridiculous. But, it makes criticizing
the current fossil fuel and nuclear paradigm difficult because
the numbers are quite accurate for hydrocarbons and also nuclear
fission heat release.
If a more scientifically broad view of thermodynamics in
exothermic processes was embraced, the EROI formulation would
have to be modified to favor the separate, but slower energy
producing processes of e.g. biomass products from crops that are
presently considered waste.
The added energy input from using all of the crop for, not just
ethanol, but heat from “waste” would raise the EROI.
The mono mania with a long hydrocarbon chain like petroleum has
pushed the “experts” into always attempting to discard
multiprocess approaches to determining EROI for one crop. I
don’t think it’s because they can’t count to two or three; I
think it is because of fossil and nuclear fuel bias.
These people are not stupid; they are compromised by the EROI
Procrustean Bed that arbitrarily has excluded inputs that lower
fossil and nuclear fuel EROI and included outputs that raise it.
I have mentioned only fossil fuels in regard to the gaming of
the EROI but nuclear fuel is a far more blatent example.
Quote
The SUNY ESF study summarized the EROI of nuclear power from
previous studies [26]. The review concludes that the most
reliable information is still from Hall et al.’s [7] summary of
an EROI of about 5–8:1 (with a large part of the variability
depending upon whether the electricity is corrected for
quality), and that the newer studies appear either too
optimistic or pessimistic with reported EROIs of up to almost
60:1, to as low as even less than 1:1.
Sustainability 2011, 3, 1796-1809; doi:10.3390/su3101796
www.mdpi.com/journal/sustainability
Since nuclear fuel has a foot in the grave and another on a
banana peel, I won’t spend much time on it except to say that
the EROI is a blatent falsehood. That nuclear fuel EROI can be
1.0 or higher is pure fantasy. In order to run a nuclear
reactor, you need to build and insure it. These costs can
certainly be converted to energy inputs but are excluded from
nuclear EROI. The energy required to store used nuclear fuel rod
waste and other nuclear waste generated at the plant and keep it
from overheating or contaminating the environment for centuries
is not included in the EROI either.
Then there’s the energy to mine, concentrate and mill the
uranium followed by manufacturing the fuel assemblies with
multiple rods and the uranium pellets in them. Nope, not
included.
The day to day operation of the nuclear plant is included,
period. This is ridiculous.
Add to that the energy used in cleaning up nuclear pollution and
you have an energy black hole combined with a horror story in
negative health impact to the population.
Finally, there are many studies that have clearly proven that
the uranium fuel cycle is not carbon neutral so any attempt to
claim nuclear power plants are “green” and CO2 free energy
sources is a pure fiction.
Quote
A big 1,250 megawatt plant produces the equivalent of 250,000
tons of carbon dioxide a year during its life.
[center]
HTML https://youtu.be/XWJwcuQK_Dg[/center]
HTML http://pec.putney.net/issue_detail.php?ID=15
What about gas fracking energy costs? I ask you all reading
this who just watched the above video, how do the EROI experts,
like the one I had some trouble with when I complained (Nicole
Foss 😈 alias Stoneleigh – this means you) that she left
out aquifer poisoning in her EROI calculations, separate the
science from the emotion? How can these people fall back on a
formula that so narrowly defines energy inputs and outputs that
they can blithely ignore the energy costs of cleaning up
aquifers and dispensing health care to cancer victims?
WTF is wrong with these people? The article I complained about
on unconventional fuels not being a game changer was an insult
to the intelligence of any thinking human being that knows
anything about gas fracking. Don’t let anyone tell you that gas
fracking has an EROI of 1.0 or better. It’s another Procrustean
Bed fabrication. Gas fracking is an obsenity.
Quote
Alongside the growth in drilling, reports of fouled water, bad
odors and health complaints also have increased. In the few
places where basic environmental sampling has been done, the
results confirm that water and air pollution are present in the
same regions where residents say they are getting sick. Last
spring, the EPA doubled its estimates of methane gas leaked from
drilling equipment and said the amount of methane pollution that
billows from fracking operations was 9,000 times higher than
researchers had previously thought.
Quote
In Colorado, the ATSDR sampled air for pollutants at 14 sites
for a 2008 report, including on Susan Wallace-Babb’s property.
Fifteen contaminants were detected at levels the federal
government considers above normal. Among them were the
carcinogens benzene, tetrachloroethene and 1,4-dichlorobenzene.
The contamination fell below the thresholds for unacceptable
cancer risk, but the agency called it cause for concern and
suggested that as drilling continued, it could present a
possible cancer risk in the future. Even at the time of the
sampling, the agency reported, residents could be exposed to
large doses of contaminants for brief “peak” periods.
HTML http://www.propublica.org/article/science-lags-as-health-problems-emerge-near-gas-fields<br
/>
How did we get this fracking nightmare besides the spineless
lackeys that do happy EROI calculations for gas fracking? In the
video above these frontmen for predatory capitalism were
mentioned: Hill & Knowlton. They are famous for the Tabacco
commercials in the 50s. Nothing has changed. Fracking and the
Gas & Oil Industry
Quote
In 2009, members of ANGA (America’s Natural Gas Alliance), a
lobbying organization for the gas industry, spread $80 million
in funds across several agencies that included Hill & Knowlton
to try to influence decisions on the process of gas extraction
known as hydraulic fracturing[15] Similar to the strategy used
for the pro-cigarette campaigns run in the 50s and 60s, the
tactic the company is using for the issue is to simply raise
doubt in the public’s mind about the dangers of the fracking
process.
HTML http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hill_%26_KnowltonDo
any of these
EROI experts figure what the following does to EROI numbers for
fossil fuels or is this more stuff that doesn’t fit in the
Procrustean Bed?
Quote
Duke Energy CEO Bill Johnson resigns after one day, gets $44
million in severance For his eight-hour tenure as top dog at
Duke, Bill Johnson made a cool $44.4 million.
HTML http://grist.org/news/duke-ceo-bill-johnson-resigns-after-one-day-gets-44-million-in-severance/
I haven’t mentioned the tar sands EROI but these “unconventional
oil resources” are estimated by Professor Charles Hall to be
abot 5.0 or less. Try a lot less, professor; less than 1.0 when
all the energy costs in cleaning up the horrible mess they are
creating in Canada come due. Oh yeah, you don’t include that in
the formula, do you? What about those huge EROI numbers (up to
100.0!) that the EROI experts claim were the norm in fossil
fuels when oil was easy to get out of the ground and you didn’t
have to destroy so much land and lop off mountain tops to get to
the coal? Yeah, the EROI experts lament all these added MJ/L of
energy inputs needed these days and celebrate the good old days.
Those were the days before automobiles when Rockefeller would
flush his waste (gasoline, among other refinery poisons)
products from refining into the rivers at night. Those were the
days well into the early 20th century when coal miners worked
for slave wages and suffered from myriad lung diseases. Those
were the days when miners got shot for wanting to work in decent
conditions with decent pay.
Those were the days that the heat energy overload on the
biosphere began and the CO2 pollution began in earnest. I firmly
believe that the huge EROI numbers for early fossil fuel of
nearly 100 are inaccurate because many energy input costs,
energy extracted from the public in form of subsidies and handed
to oil corporations, energy to build infrastructure and energy
to care for an increasingly sickened population from fossil fuel
pollution as well as energy to clean polluted lands was, right
from the start, offloaded from the fossil fuel balance sheets
and on to we-the-people.
Fossil fuels were never cost effective. The captains of industry
stifled renewables in their infancy in the late 19th century.
Writers, even back then, were discussing the possiblity of clean
and renewable energy from electrolysis of water to use hydrogen
as fuel. Sure, the technology needed to be refined and developed
but the subsidy money went to oil. There was a real interest in
electrification through renewables.
Cleveland had wind generators in the late 19th century.
Scranton, the town incorporated as a city of 35,000 in 1866 that
is now facing bankruptcy from financial shenanigans of predatory
capitalism, became known as the electric city in 1880.
Electric trolleys were all the rage in many U.S. cities. Had
these avenues been pursued, we would not be saddled with this
polluted world. Now, despite the flawed EROI methodolgy which
produces numbers above 1.0 for fossil and nuclear fuels, some
people in the engineering field are waking up to the fact that
the writing is on the EROI wall for them and renewables are the
future.
Quote
Our society faces the colossal challenge of rapidly developing
alternative energy sources that generate sufficient surplus
energy to replace fossil fuels. Otherwise, material standards of
living will decline – beginning with those of poorer people – as
ever more resources have to be devoted to generating useful
energy rather than to producing other goods and services. EROI
figures indicate that the future lies in renewables like wind
and solar, not unconventional hydrocarbons.
HTML http://www.engineeringnews.co.za/article/energy-return-on-energy-invested-2012-06-15<br
/>
So, to summarize all the above, the following “Energy Expended”
inputs (the bottom part of the EROI formula*) have been
arbitrarily left out by those EROI experts like Professor
Charles Hall and the people from The Oil Scum ;D (sorry, I meant
the Oil Drum – really) web site:
1) Energy required to bioremediate pollution impacts from energy
resource extraction.
2) Energy required to ameliorate negative health effects due to
dangerous working conditions.
3) Energy required to counter negative effects on national GDP
from slave wages.
4) Energy expended in wars to defend fossil fuel resources in
foreign countries.
5) Energy equivalent in government subsidies taken from the
populace and given to fossil and nuclear fuel producers. * If
you get less energy out (top of the formula) the than you use to
get the finished product (bottom of the formula) then you will
get a number below “1” (i.e. 1/2 = 0.5 EROI not good).
Procrustean bed is an arbitrary standard to which exact
conformity is forced.
HTML http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Procrustes
The Procrustean bed “real world” of these experts is, and always
was, a predatory capitalist, destructive and inhuman contrived
“world” that they and all the lackeys that have benefited at the
expense of the overwhelming majority of the human race and the
biosphere cling desperately too by claiming it’s “the way the
world works and we just have to live with it”.
No, (Ashvin, Stoneleigh and Ilargi: pay attention) that is not
“the way the world works”; That is “how a predatory capitalist
con works”.
Any mathematician worth his salt can, given a standard upstream
and downstream time frame from energy extraction of e.g. ten
years before and ten years after, quantify all the above Energy
Expended Inputs in Mega Joules per Liter.
But because that would shrink the EROI numbers for all fossil
and nuclear fuels to a fraction of 1, well below any
justification there ever was for making use of these poisons,
they won’t do it.
Furthermore, the improper use and interpretation of
thermodynamics by arbitrarily assuming that things that go boom
(rapid explosive oxidation) are the gold standard in defining
energy per se, they have made important “energy of activation”
and “reaction velocity” variables seem irrelevant.
The science of hydrocarbon chemistry and nuclear fission
benefits from this flawed view that the more HEAT density in an
exothermic process, the greater the potential EROI. That’s
certainly true with hydrocarbons and nuclear fuels.
That is NOT true with renewables. The best example I can think
of is the internal combustion engine. The purpose of this
machine is to use the energy of the explosions in the combustion
chambers to drive a piston and produce mechanical energy. An
electric motor produces mechanical enegy without wasting over
80% of the energy input on useless heat.
The internal combustion engine, not only loses massive amounts
of heat energy in the burning of fuel, but also must use part of
the mechanical energy from the combustion to cool the engine.
The EROI experts will certainly acknowledge that an internal
combustion engine is only about 20% efficient but they flat
refuse to see that the electric motor, because it doesn’t
produce all that useless heat energy, can do the SAME AMOUNT OF
WORK FOR LESS ENERGY.
They may counter that I’m playing thermodynamic games here and
the electricity to power the electric motor is coming from a
fossil fuel or nuclear power plant so I’m just passing the
energy buck, so to speak.
Again, that shows the prejudice of these EROI experts to
polluting fuel sources. In the subsequent paragraphs I will show
how world electrification complete with electric motors being
the motive force in industry and transportation, can achieve
exactly the same amount of “useful work” (at a minimum) now
produced by fossil fuels with less energy inputs because the
resource is PV, geothermal, wind and wave.
You would NOT have all the useless heat energy now contributing
to an overheated planet.
Along with all the CO2 and other greenhouse gases, we sure don’t
need billions of engines spewing 80% useless heat energy into
the biosphere.
Combustion has it’s place with the use of ethanol in furnaces to
provide heat in winter where ALL the heat energy output is made
use of.
Biomass ethanol used as fuel in high compression engines should
be seen as a step in weening us away from gasoline but the whole
approach to energy systems that is married to the “more heat is
is better forever!” view is scientifically bankrupt because it
refuses to address the damage to the biosphere that waste heat
imposes.
As I said in a previous article, nature paces living energy
systems with enzymes that lower the energy of activation and
control the biochemical reactions to avoid overheating living
tissue.
It’s high time the EROI experts accepted that the future lies in
an energy extraction paradigm that does not go boom (explosive,
rapid oxidation). We need, for our very survival, to use direct
and indirect solar and geothermal energy in a manner so fine
tuned that there is zero waste heat. We need to electrify
⚡ all mechanical energy systems and provide them with
electricity from renewable and truly efficient, non explosive
energy processes.
Let us now see what our global energy requirements are and how
renewables can satisfy them. Remember that our new paradigm has
a huge energy debt from all the pollution caused by fossil and
nuclear fuels, the chemical industry pollution and many dirty
industrial processes. Even as we begin to power the world
cleanly, we will need to be expending a LOT of Mega Joules per
Liter to bioremediate the mess the dirty fuel industries have
left us with.
Note: The EROI reference below is stated as EROEI but it is the
same thing. The “10:1” number convention is a way of stating an
EROI of 10.0 with a reference value of “1” as signifying that
1.0 EROI equals equivalent inputs and outputs. All the EROI
numbers I have mentioned previously have the “:1” implied after
the number so I have simply left them out.
Quote
Given the strong dependence of current technologically advanced
economies on oil, Peak Oil may be a distress for entire economic
sectors (Hamilton, 2009) if no alternative primary energy is
made available during the next decades to take the place of
fossil fuels (Hirsch et al., 2005). In a recent report, Heinberg
(2009) defined four conditions that a future primary energy
source substitute should satisfy: i. must be able to provide a
substantial amount of energy— perhaps a quarter of all the
energy currently used nationally or globally; ii. must
have an Energy Return on Energy Investment (EROEI) of 10:1 or
above (see Appendix A); iii. cannot have unacceptable
environmental (including climate), social or geopolitical
impacts; iv. must be renewable. Moreover, as discussed in this
manuscript, an additional requirement must be also considered:
v. Must not depend on the exploitation and use of scarce
materials.
HTML http://www.imedea.uib-csic.es/master/cambioglobal/Modulo_1_03/Ballabrera_Diciembre_2011/Articulos/Garcia-Olivares.2011.pdf
The above authors are being too conservative. As of this
writing, renewables already are at 19% of the global energy pie
and that information is probaly somewhat dated due to the
several month lag on data collection. Because renewable use and
their technical efficiency is constantly increasing through
added infrastructure and research and development, while fossil
and nuclear fuels are in a state where their EROI numbers, even
by the gamed formula standards, are heading below 1.0, the
renewable percentage of the energy pie will probably increase
exponentially, rather than linearly. The fact that renewables,
in the early studies nearly a decade ago, had a mere 1% of the
global energy pie is strong evidence that the growth is
exponential. For those pathetic, parochial clingers to the
status quo ante who arrogantly dismiss renewables and their 10.0
PLUS EROIs with the claim that renewables are a mere drop in
the world energy bucket, I suggest you get some metaphorical
floatation gear because there is a renewable tsunami coming.
Let us now return to the world energy requirements study and how
renewables can fill the gap:
Snippet1:
Quote
All combined, these authors assume that only 11.5 TW (the 68% of
the total mean power) should be produced by the renewable mix to
satisfy the 2030 demand of an electrified society. This is close
to the 2010 production of 12.5 TW. Current electric generation
is only 2 TW, so a six-fold increase is required.
Snippet 2:
Quote
The potential primary power sources that remain after this first
screening process are wind and concentrating solar thermal (CSP)
devices. Besides, the engineering of both technologies is well
known and understood and do not actually depend on rare earth
elements (REE) and/or scarce materials.
Snippet 3:
Quote
2.1. Wind, water and solar proven technologies Windmills of 3–5
MW are being currently built and installed; this is a proven
technology in expansion.The EROEI of wind turbines has been
estimated in the range 15:1–40:1 (Kubiszewski and Cleveland,
2007). The capacity factor (CF, i.e. the ratio of the power
actually produced to the theoretical maximum) of commercial
turbines has improved overtime, from 0.22 for units built before
1998, to 0.30 for units in 2000–2001, and 0.36 for those
operating after 2004–2005 (US DOE, 2008, p.27). The EROEI of CSP
stations is close to 20:1 (Vant-Hull, 1985). Parabolic trough
stations are more extended and proven CSP technology.
Snippet 4:
Quote
From now to 2030, plausible technology developments would permit
colonising continental shelves up to 225 m depth with both
founded and floating offshore windmills. In addition, two hybrid
wind-wave systems could enhance the yield and power stability of
offshore wind turbines: (i)attaching attenuator floaters at the
base of windmills and (ii)deploying floating platforms with
attenuators at the base and wind turbines above. An example of
this technology is the Green Ocean Energy Ltd. prototype of
0.5MW (see:
HTML http://www.greenoceanenergy.com/index.php/wave-treader).
Another
example of attenuators is the Pelamis floaters, from Ocean Power
Delivery Ltd. (Drewetal., 2009), which generate 0.75 MW with a
120 m long device. An example of the second approach is the
Floating Power Plant prototype (see:
HTML http://www.floatingpowerplant.com/),
designed to produce 10 MW,
56% from waves and 44% from three windmills.
Notice the use of hybrid energy systems to increase efficiency
of energy collection. This is a giant paradigm shift from the
mono mania that the fossil and nuclear fuel industries pursue
with their “one size fits all” approach to the detriment of
the environment (this inefficient approach to energy extraction
also simplifies EROI math. ;D). Fossil and nuclear fuel
advocates hate hybrid energy extraction techniques. I guess it
confuses them or perhaps their predatory capitalist mindset is
too consumed by monopolising one energy source in order to
achieve price control and then squelch competitors. Whatever
their flawed rationale, their modus operandi is unsustainable.
Snippet 5;
Quote
The three main advantages of hybrid installations are: increased
energy return per square kilometre; reduction of maintenance
costs of equipments and undersea transmission cables; and
compensation of wind generation intermittency, as wind and waves
are not necessarily correlated (with the exception of storms).
[center]
HTML http://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/gallery/renewablerevolution/3-080718151217.png[/center]
Quote
Fig. 2. Annual average (July 1983–June 2005) of incident
insolation on a horizontal surface in kWh/m2/day. Data
downloaded from the NASA Surface Meteorology and Solar Energy
site (SSE,
HTML http://eosweb.larc.nasa.gov/sse/,
release 6.0). Grey
and blue dots have twice the real areas occupied by the CSP
stations to improve the readability of the figure (see text for
details). White lines represent main distribution grid lines.
The length scale corresponds to latitude 45°N. (For
interpretation of the references to colour in this figure
legend, the reader is referred to the web version of this
article.)
The above jpg shows where we will get much of our energy from
renewables. As you all know, the sun, directly or indirectly, is
our energy power source. We now have the technology, even in
it’s infancy as to achievable levels of efficiency, that is
proven, durable and being installed in the high renewable energy
extraction potential points throughout the globe. This is no
pipe dream; this is real, practical and happening,
unfortunately, for financial reasons (cheap reliable energy free
of price shocks) rather than our desperate global climate
situation killing various lifeforms in our biosphere at an
increasing rate. But even if it’s just being done for profit, my
attitutde is, “Any Port In The Environmental Collapse Storm”. If
the profit motive is needed to have a sane energy extraction
standard, so be it. This is a table of the proposed Energy
infrastructure: Snippet 6:
[center]
HTML http://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/gallery/renewablerevolution/3-080718153532.png[/center]
I have, in a previous article, mentioned the roaring forties
(area of the earth in the 40 degrees south latitudes with
powerful winds and constantly turbulent seas). Take a look at
the huge amount of wind power available sustainably there
(there’s a lot in the North Atlantic too):
[center]
HTML http://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/gallery/renewablerevolution/3-080718151252.png[/center]
Quote
Fig. 1. Annual average of wind speed at 50 m above the surface
of the Earth in m/s. Data downloaded from the NASA Surface
Meteorology and Solar Energy site (SSE,
HTML http://eosweb.larc.nasa.gov/sse/,
release 5.0). Light blue, blue
and dark blue correspond to regions where the wind speeds are in
the ranges 6–8 m/s, 8–10 m/s and >10 m/s, respectively. The red
line delineates the 200 m isobath, representing the continental
shelf.(For interpretation of the references to colour in this
figure legend, the reader is referred to the web version of this
article.) A. Garcı´a-Olivares
etal./EnergyPolicy41(2012)561–574 563
Snippet 7:
Quote
In addition to hybrid systems, other techniques are being
proposed for power consistency: 2.4. Intermittency constraints
The unwelcome power variability associated with renewable
sources may be mitigated by: (i) geographical interconnection
(Zhou, 2009); (ii) use of hydroelectric power to smooth out
supply (Czisch and Giebel, 2006); (iii) using reversible
Electrical Vehicle (EV) recharging as grid storage (Kempton and
Tomic, 2005); (iv) using other electric storage systems, as for
example, water pumping, air compression, batteries, hydrogen
production and storage and (v) using smart demand-response
management and weather prediction to better match inflexible
loads to the power supply (Delucchi and Jacobson,2011).
HTML http://www.imedea.uib-csic.es/master/cambioglobal/Modulo_1_03/Ballabrera_Diciembre_2011/Articulos/Garcia-Olivares.2011.pdf
The study referenced above is thorough. So thorough that it
lists every metal used in the energy infrastructure today as
well as their uses in wind turbines, PV and CSP to list a few.
They even project when these metals will be exhausted at current
extraction rates. They warn that the renewable solution requires
a steady state economy and not the continuous growth paradigm of
capitalism and energy extraction corporations. In other words,
it’s time to stop being pigs. We live in a finite world and
pretending otherwise for environmental degradation and predatory
capitalist profits threatens human society and the biosphere.
Yes, we can go full renewable and meet today’s total energy
demands. Full electrification will reduce the unusable heat
polluting the atmosphere from inefficient internal combustion
engines that must go the way of the Dodo bird. The savings from
newfound efficiencies with renewables will provide some limited
room for growth in addition to a lower overall energy load for
exactly the same mechanical energy previously used to run
civilization because renewables don’t produce massive wastes in
heat energy at all steps of the extraction and use process that
fossil fuel and nuclear energy products do. Where I disagree
with the authors is on their insistence that the renewable
energy sources must be scalable. I believe that scalabilty of an
energy source, unless it is a government utility (i.e. fully
socialized and non-profit), will lead to unscrupulous short cuts
and new externalized costs for the populace for the benefit of
private power corporations. The promise of renewables must go
hand in hand with decentralized power sources. The authors
recognized PV panels could make a huge contribution but did not
consider them cheap enough yet and voiced concerns with the
future availability of the somewhat rare metals used to make
them. This issue is being addressed and overcome so I believe
the authors will be pleasantly surprised with the massive
contribution PV will make to the total picture. The authors
discarded alleged low EROI renewables for consideration because
of their scalability bias. As I stated early in this article,
biomass ethanol, if properly used, has an EROI of at least that
of gasoline without the environmental baggage of gasoline. And
other biomass products like Lemna minor (Duckweed), that grow
eight times faster than corn without heavy industrial chemical
fertilization or pesticides will certainly produce EROI numbers
far above 10.0. Passive geothermal (also discarded by the
authors because it isn’t scalable) and other renewable heat
sources such as e.g. placing mirrors a short distance from the
north side of house in winter to reflect sun onto the north
facing wall to drastically lower heating costs will play a very
important role in the picture of total sustainability. In
addition, decentralized renewable energy infrastructure provides
jobs, not in the feast or famine pattern of ethics free, dog eat
dog, vicious predatory capitalist “business” model, but in a
sustainable, predictable and humane way. While we are busy
bioremediating all the damage Rockefeller and the nuclear nuts
have saddled us with, we will be dealing with violent and
unpredictable weather for a century or more. Decentralized
renewable energy infrastructure has the added bonus that it
provides resiliency to communities in the event of a disaster
because “something” is always going to be working and neighbors
with some working renewable energy infrastructure will be able
to help those without access to energy. Embracing sustainability
is embracing a caring society and rejecting the mindless and
destructive wars and erosion of trust that is destroying our
civilization from the evil wrought by corporations and the
psychopaths that run them. We must reject these human predators
who constantly pit everyone against their neighbor for profit.
There are still so many goodhearted, thinking people out there
that take the stewardship of this planet seriously. We can do so
much to live in harmony with the biosphere if we could only
constrain the insanely greedy psychopaths among us. Just look at
the beauty and harmony with nature we are capable of:
[center]
HTML http://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/gallery/renewablerevolution/3-080718151335.png[/center]
[center]Overpass for Animals, Highway A50 in the
Netherlands[/center]
[center]
HTML http://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/gallery/renewablerevolution/3-080718151409.png
[/center]
[center][i]Banff,Alberta,Canada[/center]
HTML http://grist.org/list/these-beautiful-bridges-are-just-for-animals/
Germany is the world leader in turning the dream of a world 100%
powered by renewable energy sources into a reality. I invite you
now to proceed to this German web site and watch the following
free videos. These videos are not about proof of concept or
pilot programs. These videos are about nuts and bolts
applications going on today. To show you how fast things are
changing, the largest wind turbine available that is referenced
in the above study about a year old has already been increased
by over 1MW in energy generating capacity. The switch to
renewables is really happening and these videos prove it: There
are five videos. They are all immensely enjoyable and filled
with details of interest about several renewable energy
technologies but if you are rushed for time, the last one on
Wind Energy does a good job of putting them all together. Those
new Wind turbines are BIG! When you click on the link below,
scroll to the following sentence:
Quote
Watch the film online! If you are interested in watching the
Spanish or French version please change the language-option of
this website.
Below that sentence you can click and watch each video, one at a
time. I recommend you watch them in sequence from top to bottom
as they are listed. You won’t be disappointed.
Quote
Solar energy Hydropower Geothermal energy Bioenergy Wind energy
HTML http://www.renewables-made-in-germany.com/en/publications/dvd-renewable-energy-technologies.html
I hope you have enjoyed this article. I am certain there are
some people out there clinging to the status quo ante that will
not be pleased. What will be the reaction from people with
vested interests in the fossil and nuclear fuel bankrupt
paradigm be? See the beginning of the article for the reaction
of the Steak House restaurant owners to replacing the kiddy
burgers with chickpeas. So prepare for the ignore, ridicule and
attack sequence. The “Steak House” owners are not about to
change their name to “Chickpea Heaven” or something like that.
But, if all these people so invested in the horror that is
fossil and nuclear fuels would sit down and really think that
what they are doing will eventually kill their descendants and
much of the biosphere, then “The Oil Drum” web site would morf
to “Sustainability From The Sun” web site. And maybe dear
Professor Charles Hall and friends would stop their Procrustean
Bed mathematics celebrating things that go boom and denigrating
passive sustainable renewable energy processes that don’t.
A big thank you to the Doomstead Diner web site and those that
work it and comment on it. like Reverse Engineer (alias Josey
Wales! ;D) and Peter who designed an outstanding forum and
thread architecture. Print this and plaster it everywhere you
can.
The planet Earth is our home and we need to do everything we can
to save it. Challenge the deniers to argue the points made here.
Demand proof rather than some huffy dismissal about not
understanding the laws of thermodynamics, capitalism or free
enterprise. Ask them how many Mega Joules per Liter will we
expend in dealing with THEIR “GIFT” TO US of 400 parts per
million of CO2, increased cancer rates, excess heat from
internal combustion engines that are only about 20% efficient,
erosion of democracy through monopoly oil corporation price
control and purchase of of our representatives and laws and
useless wars that get our children killed for their GOD DAMNED
profits (no, I am not swearing; I am certain the creator is not
amused by humans trashing his garden or those who, like some
poor deluded souls, claim that this is the way the world works
and we just have to live with it).
And tell them to stuff it when they say we-the-people are
responsible because we consumed their products. If they return
all the profits and swag from subsidies made by big oil and
nuclear, then we’ll consider that possibility but otherwise it
was THEY who corralled us into consuming their crap so they
could centralize riches and power and turn the USA into a
plutocracy ruled by ruthless oligarchs.
Call them cowards for drinking the koolaid. Force them to face
responsibility for ruining the future for their offspring with
ther blindness and greed. When the Biased Bums at The Oil Scum
claim you don’t know what you are talking about when you claim
that ethanol (otherwise known as ethyl alcohol) is a superior
fuel to gasoline because it gets better mileage in high
compression engines and burns cleaner translating to a GREATER
effective EROI than gasoline, push this into their face and ask
them why they never got the memo:
Quote
Ethyl alcohol in the early 20th century
The following excerpt is from a Paper to the American Society
for Environmental History, Annual Conference March 26-30, 2003
By William Kovarik, Ph.D. “Studies of alcohol as an internal
combustion engine fuel began in the U.S. with the Edison
Electric Testing Laboratory and Columbia University in 1906.
Elihu Thomson reported that despite a smaller heat or B.T.U.
value, “a gallon of alcohol will develop substantially the same
power in an internal combustion engine as a gallon of gasoline.
This is owing to the superior efficiency of operation…” (New
York Times Aug. 5, 1906) Other researchers confirmed the same
phenomena around the same time. “USDA tests in 1906 also
demonstrated the efficiency of alcohol in engines and described
how gasoline engines could be modified for higher power with
pure alcohol fuel or for equivalent fuel consumption, depending
on the need. The U.S. Geological Service (USGS) and the U.S.
Navy performed 2000 tests on alcohol and gasoline engines in
1907 and 1908 in Norfolk, Va. and St. Louis, Mo. They found that
much higher engine compression ratios could be achieved with
alcohol than with gasoline. When the compression ratios were
adjusted for each fuel, fuel economy was virtually equal despite
the greater B.T.U. value of gasoline. “In regard to general
cleanliness, such as absence of smoke and disagreeable odors,
alcohol has many advantages over gasoline or kerosene as a
fuel,” the report said. “The exhaust from an alcohol engine is
never clouded with a black or grayish smoke.” USGS continued the
comparative tests and later noted that alcohol was “a more ideal
fuel than gasoline” with better efficiency despite the high
cost.”
HTML http://www.americanenergyindependence.com/alcoholengines.aspx
Quote
Ethanol Engine efficiency exceeds gasoline engines, giving
greater miles per gallon (MPG) with ethanol fuel: High
Efficiency and Low Emissions from a Port-Injected Engine with
Alcohol Fuels— By Matthew Brusstar, Mark Stuhldreher, David
Swain and William Pidgeon, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency
size: 70 Kb – 7 pages
HTML http://www.epa.gov/otaq/presentations/sae-2002-01-2743-v2.pdf
When they fall back on the EROI formula Procrustean Bed with the
claim that EROI only deals with energy density in fuels and not
efficiency coefficients in different engine types, calmly remind
them (hopefully, two by fours will be unnecessary to knock some
sense into their heads but you never know ;D) that gasoline is
not customarily used for furnaces, room lighting, barbeque
grills or to boil water; it’s used almost exclusively in the ICE
(internal combustion engine).
For these fossil fuel lakeys, water carriers and quislings to
refuse to measure gasoline’s EFFECTIVE USABLE ENERGY when it is
actually used in an ICE to do work is the height of duplicity.
But this subterfuge by Rockefeller’s admirers is not new. As I
have mentioned before, way back at the end of the 19th century,
Rockefeller was flushing his gasoline waste product in the
rivers by his refineries at night. He could not avoid producing
gasoline in his refinery cracking towers (about 19 gallons of
gasoline for every 42 gallon barrel of crude refined)*.
When the automobile came out in the early twentieth century, the
early car fuel called benzene had to be eliminated because that
hydrocarbon is a carcinogenic. As you read above in the 1906
Edison lab study, ethanol was considered competitive energywise
with gasoline.
What did Rockefeller do? He lowered the price of gasoline
(remember his cost was near zero because it had been a waste
product of the refining process) so much that ethanol was priced
out of the market**. It was a win-win for Rockefeller.
It was only a matter of time before his nasty habit of flushing
gasoline into rivers at night was going to get him and his
refinery employees facing the wrong end of a shotgun from some
irate farmer who noticed his horses and cows getting sick or
dying when drinking the river water downstream of an oil
refinery.
So, Rockefeller managed to change the flush operation from the
rivers to the atmosphere and make a bundle out of it too.
But this predatory capitalist wasn’t done killing ethanol yet.
He gave millions to a temperance group that ultimately succeeded
in Prohibition legislation banning the production and use of
ethanol (ethyl alcohol), not just for drinking, but for ICE fuel
as well (and you thought Prohibition was just the fundies not
wanting you to get high on booze. Rockefeller USED the fundies
to block ethanol competition).
The reality was that the “cheap” gasoline was far, far more
expensive than ethanol due to the atmospheric poisons
introduced. It got even worse when tetra-ethyl lead entered the
mix in the 1920s. It wasn’t until about 1973 that the
severe damage from leaded gasoline was recognized and even so,
to this day, unleaded gasoline is not mandatory in off road
vehicles.
Now that ethanol is out there and available once again as a
competitor to gasoline, the fossil fuel enablers return with the
familiar FALSE claims that ethanol is not competitive with
gasoline and the poppycock that gasoline gets better mileage
than ethanol.
Call out these overeducated, Procrustean Bed, creative
thermodynamics “geniuses” carrying water for the fossil fuel
industry on their lies and distortions. Accuse them of being
well aware of the above and deliberately distorting the fuel
facts when they are actually applied to their use in engines.
Tell them their Procrustean Bed EROI Bullshit isn’t going to fly
anymore.
Quote
*On average, about 19.5 US gallons (16.2 imp gal; 74 L) of
gasoline are available from a 42-US-gallon (35 imp gal; 160 L)
barrel of crude oil (about 46% by volume), varying due to
quality of crude and grade of gasoline. The remaining residue
comes off as products ranging from tar to naptha.[4]
HTML http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gasoline
Quote
**The gasoline engine became the preferred engine for the
automobile because gasoline was cheaper than alcohol, not
because it was a better fuel. And, because alcohol was not
available at any price from 1920 to 1933, a period during which
the sale, manufacture, and transportation of alcohol was banned
nationally as mandated in the Eighteenth Amendment to the United
States Constitution. The amendment was repealed by the
Twenty-First Amendment on December 5, 1933. In time to produce
alcohol fuels during World War II. By the time World War II
ended, the gasoline engine had become “entrenched” because
gasoline remained cheaper than Alcohol, and widely distributed –
gas stations were everywhere.
HTML http://www.americanenergyindependence.com/alcoholengines.aspx
Tell anybody with fried logic circuits that claims this is “the
way the world works” that the REAL WORLD, not the predatory
capitalist hell hole they so love, is the BIOSPHERE.
That world has a set of rules and, for most of our human
existence on this planet, we followed them. For over a century
and a half, a level of insanity not seen in human history has
produced a greed fest so blind, so stupid and so incorrigible
that it can only be labelled what it is: EVIL. Fossil and
nuclear fuel advocates and their pseudo scientific Procrustean
Bed EROI happy number formulations NEVER WORKED. The backers of
these poisoned energy sources lied about absolutely everything
related to their extraction and use from day one and they are
lying through their teeth now to sabotage the truth about
renewable energy sources.
Renewable energy sources are practical, sustainable and healthy
for the planet and humans. Fossil and nuclear fuels have brought
us pollution, wars and corrupted democracy.
Renewable energy sources WORK! Fossil and Nuclear Fuels NEVER
DID.
HTML http://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/gallery/renewablerevolution/3-130418202709.png<br
/>
Posted in Energy, Home | Tagged EROI, Fossil Fuels, Fracking,
NaturalGas, Oil, Renewables
#Post#: 10214--------------------------------------------------
Re: Blasts from the 2012 to 2013 past when there was more HOPE
🌟
DIR By: AGelbert
Date: July 6, 2018, 6:27 pm
---------------------------------------------------------
--- Quote from: agelbert link ---
>
> This is totally visual and may not be that factual but I still
believe it is an excellent example of the capacity for human
beings to attempt to mold reality through denial and wishful
thinking.
>
>
HTML http://www.testosteronepit.com/home/2012/2/26/nuclear-contamination-as-seen-by-japanese-humor.html
>
--- End Quote ---
#Post#: 10215--------------------------------------------------
Re: Blasts from the 2012 to 2013 past when there was more HOPE
🌟
DIR By: AGelbert
Date: July 6, 2018, 6:31 pm
---------------------------------------------------------
--- Quote from: agelbert link ---
>
> [center]Embryogenesis in living color[/center]
> [center]
HTML https://youtu.be/7G8Jbdqvi08[/center]
--- End Quote ---
#Post#: 10216--------------------------------------------------
Re: Blasts from the 2012 to 2013 past when there was more HOPE
🌟
DIR By: AGelbert
Date: July 6, 2018, 6:41 pm
---------------------------------------------------------
--- Quote from: agelbert link ---
>
> [quote]For the first time in 26 years, seven Sumatran rhinos
were filmed on hidden cameras this week in an Indonesian
national park. Some feared the critically endangered species had
become extinct in the region.
>
--- End Quote ---
--- Quote ---
> Sumatran rhinos, which are the smallest of their species, have
dropped in population by 50 percent over the past 20 years due
to poachers and the logging industry that has destroyed much of
their habitat.
>
>
HTML http://www.care2.com/causes/photos-prove-nearly-extinct-sumatran-rhino-is-still-alive.html
--- End Quote ---
[/quote]
#Post#: 10217--------------------------------------------------
Re: Blasts from the 2012 to 2013 past when there was more HOPE
🌟
DIR By: AGelbert
Date: July 6, 2018, 6:45 pm
---------------------------------------------------------
--- Quote from: agelbert link ---
>
>
> [center]Tortoise, 98, Witnessed Gallipoli and Outlived
Owner[/center]
>
> A retired tortoise breeder is seeking to return a 98-year-old
tortoise, Blake, to his native home, the beaches of Gallipoli in
Turkey.
>
> According to the Telegraph, back in 1916, a British serviceman
now only remembered as Mr. Marris took the tortoise from the
beach in Turkey “as shells rained overhead” in the Gallipoli
Campaign, which is regarded as one of the greatest disasters for
the Allies in World War I.
>
> An ideal home for Blake, says Skinner, would be a “secure
sunny garden, with a healthy diet of weeds and wildflowers
dusted with calcium,” with “warm dry shelter” in cooler weather.
Eleanor Tirtasana, rehoming officer at the Tortoise Club, notes
that Blake, like many tortoises, could live into his hundreds.
>
>
HTML http://www.care2.com/causes/tortoise-98-witnessed-gallipoli-and-outlived-owner.html#ixzz23MWCARbd
>
--- End Quote ---
#Post#: 10218--------------------------------------------------
Re: Blasts from the 2012 to 2013 past when there was more HOPE
🌟
DIR By: AGelbert
Date: July 6, 2018, 6:48 pm
---------------------------------------------------------
--- Quote from: agelbert link ---
>
> [quote][center]Canadian Scientists Mourn The Death of
Evidence[/center]
> The organizers cite job cuts at Environment Canada, Fisheries
and Oceans Canada, Library and Archives Canada, the National
Research Council, Statistics Canada and more as proof that this
government does not care about evidence-based knowledge. They
specifically mention the Conservative government’s decision to
make the long-form census voluntary, which will make statistics
less generalized and will have a major effect on research for
years to come. There have also been cuts to grant programs which
fund scientific research in all different fields.
>
> The organizers plead:
>
> If you are fed up with the closure of federal scientific
programs and muzzling of scientists, if you think that decisions
should be based on evidence and facts instead of ideology, then
please come out and show your support.
>
> Read
more:
HTML http://www.care2.com/causes/canadian-scientists-mourn-the-death-of-evidence.html#ixzz23MYOycnq
>
--- End Quote ---
THE ABOVE IS HOW MODERN PEER REVIEW REALLY "WORKS" (hint: if it
doesn't pad some corporate bottom line contolling the fascist
government, it never sees the light of day, period).
[/quote]
#Post#: 10219--------------------------------------------------
Re: Blasts from the 2012 to 2013 past when there was more HOPE
🌟
DIR By: AGelbert
Date: July 6, 2018, 6:53 pm
---------------------------------------------------------
--- Quote from: agelbert link ---
>
> [quote]Did you know that animal testing does not even
accurately
> measure the effect the product may have on a human?
>
> This video, which contains no graphic imagery at all, explains
> why[size=14pt] this is not only unjustified cruelty, but
flawed science.
> [/size]
>
> [center]
HTML https://youtu.be/u6x4vkLyu7E[/center]
>
>
>
HTML http://www.nextworldtv.com/videos/humane-treatment-of-animals/cruelty-free-products.html
--- End Quote ---
[/quote]
#Post#: 10220--------------------------------------------------
Re: Blasts from the 2012 to 2013 past when there was more HOPE
🌟
DIR By: AGelbert
Date: July 6, 2018, 6:57 pm
---------------------------------------------------------
--- Quote from: agelbert link ---
>
> Fascinating and hope inspiring video with solid information on
permaculture reforesting including the fact that pink color
increases photosynthesis due to its effect on the light spectrum
on young seedlings and also the fact that carbon depleted soils
are dryer because they are hydrophobic. Don't miss this 8
minutes of reforesting through permaculture success story.
>
> [center]
HTML https://youtu.be/VHBEdQ31rUk[/center]
>
> [center]The Man of a Thousand Trees[/center]
>
>
HTML http://www.nextworldtv.com/videos/permaculture/1000-trees-for-a-permaculture-forest.html
>
--- End Quote ---
#Post#: 10221--------------------------------------------------
Re: Blasts from the 2012 to 2013 past when there was more HOPE
🌟
DIR By: AGelbert
Date: July 6, 2018, 7:00 pm
---------------------------------------------------------
--- Quote from: agelbert link ---
>
> [quote]A maltreated animal has two potential responses to an
abusive master: attack to stop the abuse, or cower/flee to avoid
it. He cannot disarm the bully with a witty remark or ironically
imitate his master behind his back for his own amusement. One of
the first government actions in Nazi Germany was the
establishment of a law against treacherous attacks on the state
and party that made anti-Nazi humor an act of treason, and there
was a reason for this.[size=14pt] Research has shown that humor
is the most effective means of preventing the indoctrination of
brainwashing.”
>
> How’s that?! It’s a mind control deterrent! Laugh on,
people…it’s protecting you![/size]
>
>
>
HTML http://activist-post-forum.947009.n3.nabble.com/Should-we-lighten-up-about-the-gloom-and-doom-td4024942.html
--- End Quote ---
[/quote]
#Post#: 10222--------------------------------------------------
Re: Blasts from the 2012 to 2013 past when there was more HOPE
🌟
DIR By: AGelbert
Date: July 6, 2018, 7:08 pm
---------------------------------------------------------
--- Quote from: RE link ---
>
> [quote author=agelbert link=topic=697.msg6437#msg6437
date=1344835382]
> Laugh on, people…it’s protecting you!
--- End Quote ---
[move]Funny is GOOD![/move]
[center]The GREAT Steven Wright!
HTML https://youtu.be/YD0KApiFdLg[/center]
Great lines from this Stand Up...
"I'm a [i]Peripheral Visionary. I see the future, just off to
the side."
"Everybody Dies Instantly. You're alive, you're alive...then
you're DEAD"[/i]
RE
[/quote]
--- Quote from: agelbert link ---
>
> RE,
> Great laughs!
>
HTML http://www.createaforum.com/gallery/renewablerevolution/3-141113185047.png
> I about split a gut with the elevator practice! ;D
>
--- End Quote ---
--- Quote from: RE link ---
>
>
> I may start a Comedy Channel here on the Diner.
HTML http://www.createaforum.com/gallery/renewablerevolution/3-141113185047.png<br
/> It should be no surprise to anybody that in addition to doing
the Disk Jockey/Talk Show thing as a Radio Pirate Pumping Up the
Volume
HTML http://www.doomsteaddiner.net/blog/2012/07/23/pump-up-the-volume/<br
/>in my teens, I ALSO did Stand Up Comedy a few times at
Dangerfields and Carolines just after college, while I was a
Piglet working for Drexel. Met a LOT of girls this way
HTML http://www.createaforum.com/gallery/renewablerevolution/3-141113185047.png<br
/>Another Phase of the Life of RE I will cover sometime in the
future perhaps. Been some kinda ride for RE folks through the
last years of the Age of Oil.
>
> RE
>
--- End Quote ---
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