Electrolysis takes more energy than it stores by separating hydrogen and oxygen, of which only the hydrogen needs storing. Hydrogen is awkward to store. It can be combined with other things, but that uses yet more energy. This is the same problem as with batteries. It takes a lot of energy and mineral resources to make batteries, then you still have to get electricity from somewhere. They are not an energy source, only an expensive storage medium.
What could work efficiently is small vhicles with a gasoline or diesel motor driving the rear wheels, and sometimes charging batteries a bit, and regenerativ-braking moors on the front wheels only, to capture energy as electricity, and use it for sudden acceleration from a stop, or for passing. It's the Toyota Prius balance. It works. You don't store much electricity, and you get it from braking, for "free".
Also I would be happy with a car that had a 10kW generator and a 50kW electrical system and enough battery for one trip say 50km with the generator charging the battery full again while you work/shop/study. At night it would top up from home generated solar.
I also would like more IC engines that work on 95% ethanol so that people could grow their own Jerusalem Artichokes and make (ferment, distil) their own easy to store liquid fuel for transport and electricity and heating.
Alcohol cars are nothing special, most newer injected cars can do it with a simple firmware update or perhaps a change in injector size.
That is a lot of battery, and one cannot top-off from solar at night. Ethanol from corn likely consumes more energy to generate than it can provide when burned, a net waste of diesel, or break-even at best.
How many root crops have you dug? It is more work than you can humanly do.
I never owned a car until I was 26, and I had to get one for my last 2 years of med school. I was borrowing money for those things, which I never did before med-school.
I have a RAD Rover 6.0. With back sacks. We get groceries sometimes. A heavy bike though. Recently I’ve wanted to take the GO Train to Toronto and wished I had gotten a lighter bike. Can go 70 km. 50 miles. Nice E bike though.
Awesome. How far do you take it now? I like being able to go along the lake over to other small towns for coffee and shopping. I could never do it just manpower, lol. Although you do have to peddle all the time.
I just ride for exercise these days, not loaded touring, but I have the panniers, which would serve to carry groceries. I therefore ride my fixed-gear bikes, which give me more exercise, typically for an hour and a half per day, which is 6 laps of a 3 mile loop with a fairly long steep hill, for a whole-body workout on the climbs.
Yesterday I just rode from Yoakum to Shiner (home of Shiner Beer) and back, which is a little under 26 miles. Picture on today's post.
Oddly enough with Jerusalem Artichokes it has been found that harvesting the tops just before flowering nets almost the same amount of sugars as lifting the tubers. A side effect is that most/many of the tubers will survive to sprout the next year and provide a self sustaining crop with some addition of manure perhaps.
I cannot champion corn alcohol and you are probably right there. However alcohol was a think before diesel so there has to be some possible energy excess that will make an efficient plant provide more than it takes to farm it.
What choice do we have in the long term. Trust that nation states or BlackRock will provide fusion power (or fission) into the distant future with attendant risks or try and find a method that will work forward into the distant future.
An ethanol powered tractor and farmstead will be possible in tropical climates. in Finland it may be a risky proposition without cheap firewood.
Having stored energy is a good thing. Having liquid fuel is a good thing.
I occasionally ride my bike but there is not that much within cycle range that I need. Coffee shop and small grocer (expensive) are in easy reach but that is about it. I struggle to cycle without a destination so am not at full fitness any longer.
The sugars in JA are also mostly Innulin and regular yeast does not like that. You either have to use an acid or enzyme process to chop the sugars into shorter ones that can be used by regular yeast. I think there is a problem with passing the cell membrane perhaps but not sure. There are some designer/selected yeasts that have the required enzymes.
Similar is true of other plans as well. Banana has a lot of the carbs in starches and also need enzymes to chop them up for effective fermentation.
I bike-commuted to work and rode daily for a long time. It may take 3 months of riding at least 3 times per week for your body to get comfortable again. Find a way that becomes habitual, integrated with your daily schedule, then you will maintain that option.
My son and my husband worked up in Fort McMurray, Alberta. “The oil sands”.
I had tours in a couple of mines up there. It really is amazing how they do it. There is a discovery centre in Ft. Mac that shows how it is done.
I went up and down the rows of mountains of sand. On one side were miles of black sand, way over on the way back there were miles of very white sand.
The dirtiest thing up there is the fine alluvial sand as it was once a sea.
I went again when Syncrude filled in their huge pit and reclaimed the land for wildlife. There is a double fenced area you can see vast plains and 20 year old trees and roaming buffalo . Lol. There were some tourists there that couldn’t see the buffalo. So I put my fingers in my mouth and loudly whistled. Low and behold, over the ridge came the buffalo running in unison coming near then dipping through another ridge then stopping and staring at us. They thought I was the Buffalo whisperer. They were bored, and they are used to humans. They would come for anyone’s whistle. Lol.
But, one of the cleanest operations anywhere. The stories of their beginning in 1940’s were very interesting. Lots of inventing going on there.
Millions of barrels of oil a day. There are so many operations up there. Canada has bought back the main ones. My husband worked for Shell Canada in a medium sized operation, huge huge utilities and warehouses. Omg everything there is sooooo big. Canadian National Resources Ltd. bought out Shell Canada. CNRL. Royal Dutch Shell was a great company to work for. CNRL,....not so much.
Maligned by the media for far too long. The companies built wonderful recreation centers and amenities there. All mines combined put out 1/10th the pollution of New York. Never mind the biggest polluters in India and China. I learned a lot about the ‘media’ when I was there. Bought and paid to put out already written narratives but actual facts are none making reporters dumber than stumps.
Thank You, Happiness. There is so much media filtration of "Viewpoints"..
This reminds me of the very large scale surface mining of coal on the Navajo Reservation when I worked there between 1990 and 1992, Arizona. The hauling vehicles looked normal, but they were 3 stories tall. The scale was hard to take in.
My understanding about the tar sands in Canada and Venezuela is that there is lots of it, but it requires a whole lot of fire to heat it up to get the bitumen to flow out of the sand, so the energy-return-on-energy-invested is about 3:1.
It can be done profitably, though marginally so, if there is a large industrial economy to support it, and take some profit, but it cannot support a large industrial economy. Net EROEI of 12 or more is requred for that, as I understand it.
Well it keeps the boiler makers employed for sure. The bitumen is steamed to get the oil out in big frothers. At Shell they sent their oil to Scotford outside Edmonton Alberta to be processed for gas. Mostly diesels. I don’t know. The operations are so huge. I can’t see it not making a profit.
The only thing is we sell it to the states for peanuts, then buy it back for more. Something about a debt we have with them? They have to be making a profit,.......the incentives were enormous, safety bonuses, production bonuses, all big. Most of that is gone now as the government is taking it.
They have to convince you there is no oil left (perhaps it is as suggested but 'denied' that oil is abiotic and renew, and we are looking in the wrong places for more oil). There is plenty of energy - they have nice new pocket nuke reactors that could fill the void, decentralizing the power needs would go a looong way to helping reduce oil dependence. I myself think there may even be cold fusion and Tesla like technologies lurking which have been suppressed as they would be disruptive to the powers that be bottom lines of profit. But to get you to reduce your footprint so they can live like 'kangz and queenz" they have to convince you of the fear of running out.
Oil is abiotic-it is created at the earth's core all the time.. John Rockefeller put out the idea that 'fossil fuels' were limited thereby making his oil properties worth more.
Oil will be more expensive to finds as deeper wells are needed but new technology will lighten that load considerably; oil will be around for another 400 or 500 yearws as the main energy source.
Oil seems more likely to be abiotic (at least to me), but the time frame of its creation seems very slow and long, like plate tectonics, not like human civilization.
We shall see. There is not enough, and it is declining.
That which is held in secret, like maybe Alaska, is not for "us".
Also the whole area had animal bones from herds falling into the tar pits that were naturally there. The natives used to use the tar to seal their canoes.... can you imagine? Now they are saying the operations are hurting the environment.!?!
If people would go LOOK they would see what a wonderful thing that is being done cleaning the tar sands. But there is so much of it. It’s going to take a very long time. You used to be able to get articles on how dangerous the tar sands in natural state were. The government misinformation group is crowding out any truth you might find online these days.
Oil in Alaska, discovered during Carter Admin. Capped off all the test wells. Still a secret. There is reason to suspect, and rumors that there is a lot there, but "we" are burning "their" oil first.
That oil is not for you and me, though, as I see the power dynamics.
Worth mentioning is that M. King Hubbert, the 1950's author of the peak oil study most frequently referenced, was on the payroll of the Shell Oil Company.
Another thing worth mentioning is that Hubbert's entire thesis is based on his modeling of oil supply and demand. Models are useful things, but are certainly influenced by "GIGO" (Garbage In, Garbage Out). Neal Ferguson helped to fuck the whole world with his Covungabunga model of disease communication and mortality. The software he used for his model was literally garbage and could not produce repeatable results. We need to be very careful about making concrete assumptions about the Real World when we base them on models. Just saying.
M. King Hubbert was the most foremost Petroleum-Geologist in the world.
He was on everybody's payrol.
He predicted US oil production would peak in 1970-1971 and it did.
The reason it is relatively easy to pick a top-date is that consumption of oil increases exponentially over time, so a modest mistake in estimation of how much recoverable oil there is does not throw the timeline of the peak off so much.
No, you are incorrect; Total US oil production was at its highest (because of fracking) in February 2020-13 MM, In February 1970 the peak was Feb at 10 MM barrels.
Gerald Celente interviews Dr. Jensen, the man who uncovered many unsettling truths during the Covid War. He brings up an important question; are patients pawns? Accountability must be demanded!
Electrolysis takes more energy than it stores by separating hydrogen and oxygen, of which only the hydrogen needs storing. Hydrogen is awkward to store. It can be combined with other things, but that uses yet more energy. This is the same problem as with batteries. It takes a lot of energy and mineral resources to make batteries, then you still have to get electricity from somewhere. They are not an energy source, only an expensive storage medium.
What could work efficiently is small vhicles with a gasoline or diesel motor driving the rear wheels, and sometimes charging batteries a bit, and regenerativ-braking moors on the front wheels only, to capture energy as electricity, and use it for sudden acceleration from a stop, or for passing. It's the Toyota Prius balance. It works. You don't store much electricity, and you get it from braking, for "free".
Also I would be happy with a car that had a 10kW generator and a 50kW electrical system and enough battery for one trip say 50km with the generator charging the battery full again while you work/shop/study. At night it would top up from home generated solar.
I also would like more IC engines that work on 95% ethanol so that people could grow their own Jerusalem Artichokes and make (ferment, distil) their own easy to store liquid fuel for transport and electricity and heating.
Alcohol cars are nothing special, most newer injected cars can do it with a simple firmware update or perhaps a change in injector size.
That is a lot of battery, and one cannot top-off from solar at night. Ethanol from corn likely consumes more energy to generate than it can provide when burned, a net waste of diesel, or break-even at best.
How many root crops have you dug? It is more work than you can humanly do.
A cargo bike is so much easier and more efficient. https://www.alibaba.com/pla/2021-New-6-Speed-Front-Loading_62155423820.html?mark=google_shopping&biz=pla&searchText=electric+cargo+bike&product_id=62155423820&language=en&src=sem_ggl&field=UG&from=sem_ggl&cmpgn=18552481638&adgrp=&fditm=&tgt=&locintrst=&locphyscl=9028322&mtchtyp=&ntwrk=x&device=c&dvcmdl=&creative=&plcmnt=&plcmntcat=&aceid=&position=&gclid=Cj0KCQjwrMKmBhCJARIsAHuEAPTB3dectXzamIz_n3e4pRMxEA8s2XnFyqHRX5vtznGEkoojX6B9Em4aAk7EEALw_wcB
I never owned a car until I was 26, and I had to get one for my last 2 years of med school. I was borrowing money for those things, which I never did before med-school.
I have a RAD Rover 6.0. With back sacks. We get groceries sometimes. A heavy bike though. Recently I’ve wanted to take the GO Train to Toronto and wished I had gotten a lighter bike. Can go 70 km. 50 miles. Nice E bike though.
My loaded-touring bike is a Kona Smoke, which I got in 2004 and "toured the world" on with my wife and 4 teenage kids in 2005-2006.
A regular bike doesn't need a motor if it has a rider.
https://www.bicyclebluebook.com/value-guide/2010%20Kona%20Smoke/
Awesome. How far do you take it now? I like being able to go along the lake over to other small towns for coffee and shopping. I could never do it just manpower, lol. Although you do have to peddle all the time.
I just ride for exercise these days, not loaded touring, but I have the panniers, which would serve to carry groceries. I therefore ride my fixed-gear bikes, which give me more exercise, typically for an hour and a half per day, which is 6 laps of a 3 mile loop with a fairly long steep hill, for a whole-body workout on the climbs.
Yesterday I just rode from Yoakum to Shiner (home of Shiner Beer) and back, which is a little under 26 miles. Picture on today's post.
Oddly enough with Jerusalem Artichokes it has been found that harvesting the tops just before flowering nets almost the same amount of sugars as lifting the tubers. A side effect is that most/many of the tubers will survive to sprout the next year and provide a self sustaining crop with some addition of manure perhaps.
I cannot champion corn alcohol and you are probably right there. However alcohol was a think before diesel so there has to be some possible energy excess that will make an efficient plant provide more than it takes to farm it.
What choice do we have in the long term. Trust that nation states or BlackRock will provide fusion power (or fission) into the distant future with attendant risks or try and find a method that will work forward into the distant future.
An ethanol powered tractor and farmstead will be possible in tropical climates. in Finland it may be a risky proposition without cheap firewood.
Be one with your bicycle.
:-)
Interesting about cutting the tops off the Jerusalem artichokes. I'll read up.
Having stored energy is a good thing. Having liquid fuel is a good thing.
I occasionally ride my bike but there is not that much within cycle range that I need. Coffee shop and small grocer (expensive) are in easy reach but that is about it. I struggle to cycle without a destination so am not at full fitness any longer.
The sugars in JA are also mostly Innulin and regular yeast does not like that. You either have to use an acid or enzyme process to chop the sugars into shorter ones that can be used by regular yeast. I think there is a problem with passing the cell membrane perhaps but not sure. There are some designer/selected yeasts that have the required enzymes.
Similar is true of other plans as well. Banana has a lot of the carbs in starches and also need enzymes to chop them up for effective fermentation.
I bike-commuted to work and rode daily for a long time. It may take 3 months of riding at least 3 times per week for your body to get comfortable again. Find a way that becomes habitual, integrated with your daily schedule, then you will maintain that option.
:-)
My son and my husband worked up in Fort McMurray, Alberta. “The oil sands”.
I had tours in a couple of mines up there. It really is amazing how they do it. There is a discovery centre in Ft. Mac that shows how it is done.
I went up and down the rows of mountains of sand. On one side were miles of black sand, way over on the way back there were miles of very white sand.
The dirtiest thing up there is the fine alluvial sand as it was once a sea.
I went again when Syncrude filled in their huge pit and reclaimed the land for wildlife. There is a double fenced area you can see vast plains and 20 year old trees and roaming buffalo . Lol. There were some tourists there that couldn’t see the buffalo. So I put my fingers in my mouth and loudly whistled. Low and behold, over the ridge came the buffalo running in unison coming near then dipping through another ridge then stopping and staring at us. They thought I was the Buffalo whisperer. They were bored, and they are used to humans. They would come for anyone’s whistle. Lol.
But, one of the cleanest operations anywhere. The stories of their beginning in 1940’s were very interesting. Lots of inventing going on there.
Millions of barrels of oil a day. There are so many operations up there. Canada has bought back the main ones. My husband worked for Shell Canada in a medium sized operation, huge huge utilities and warehouses. Omg everything there is sooooo big. Canadian National Resources Ltd. bought out Shell Canada. CNRL. Royal Dutch Shell was a great company to work for. CNRL,....not so much.
Maligned by the media for far too long. The companies built wonderful recreation centers and amenities there. All mines combined put out 1/10th the pollution of New York. Never mind the biggest polluters in India and China. I learned a lot about the ‘media’ when I was there. Bought and paid to put out already written narratives but actual facts are none making reporters dumber than stumps.
There is lots of oil people.
Thank You, Happiness. There is so much media filtration of "Viewpoints"..
This reminds me of the very large scale surface mining of coal on the Navajo Reservation when I worked there between 1990 and 1992, Arizona. The hauling vehicles looked normal, but they were 3 stories tall. The scale was hard to take in.
My understanding about the tar sands in Canada and Venezuela is that there is lots of it, but it requires a whole lot of fire to heat it up to get the bitumen to flow out of the sand, so the energy-return-on-energy-invested is about 3:1.
It can be done profitably, though marginally so, if there is a large industrial economy to support it, and take some profit, but it cannot support a large industrial economy. Net EROEI of 12 or more is requred for that, as I understand it.
Well it keeps the boiler makers employed for sure. The bitumen is steamed to get the oil out in big frothers. At Shell they sent their oil to Scotford outside Edmonton Alberta to be processed for gas. Mostly diesels. I don’t know. The operations are so huge. I can’t see it not making a profit.
The only thing is we sell it to the states for peanuts, then buy it back for more. Something about a debt we have with them? They have to be making a profit,.......the incentives were enormous, safety bonuses, production bonuses, all big. Most of that is gone now as the government is taking it.
They have to convince you there is no oil left (perhaps it is as suggested but 'denied' that oil is abiotic and renew, and we are looking in the wrong places for more oil). There is plenty of energy - they have nice new pocket nuke reactors that could fill the void, decentralizing the power needs would go a looong way to helping reduce oil dependence. I myself think there may even be cold fusion and Tesla like technologies lurking which have been suppressed as they would be disruptive to the powers that be bottom lines of profit. But to get you to reduce your footprint so they can live like 'kangz and queenz" they have to convince you of the fear of running out.
Oil is abiotic-it is created at the earth's core all the time.. John Rockefeller put out the idea that 'fossil fuels' were limited thereby making his oil properties worth more.
Oil will be more expensive to finds as deeper wells are needed but new technology will lighten that load considerably; oil will be around for another 400 or 500 yearws as the main energy source.
Oil seems more likely to be abiotic (at least to me), but the time frame of its creation seems very slow and long, like plate tectonics, not like human civilization.
We shall see. There is not enough, and it is declining.
That which is held in secret, like maybe Alaska, is not for "us".
Also the whole area had animal bones from herds falling into the tar pits that were naturally there. The natives used to use the tar to seal their canoes.... can you imagine? Now they are saying the operations are hurting the environment.!?!
If people would go LOOK they would see what a wonderful thing that is being done cleaning the tar sands. But there is so much of it. It’s going to take a very long time. You used to be able to get articles on how dangerous the tar sands in natural state were. The government misinformation group is crowding out any truth you might find online these days.
Reminds me of the La BreaTar Pits in California's oil region.
Having pitch to seal a canoe is bound to be a good thing.
:-)
Sorry John thought I sent this. What did you mean by, “That which is held in secret, like maybe Alaska, is not for "us".” 🤔
Oil in Alaska, discovered during Carter Admin. Capped off all the test wells. Still a secret. There is reason to suspect, and rumors that there is a lot there, but "we" are burning "their" oil first.
That oil is not for you and me, though, as I see the power dynamics.
Oh cool. It makes sense there would be oil at that latitude. Thanks
Worth mentioning is that M. King Hubbert, the 1950's author of the peak oil study most frequently referenced, was on the payroll of the Shell Oil Company.
Another thing worth mentioning is that Hubbert's entire thesis is based on his modeling of oil supply and demand. Models are useful things, but are certainly influenced by "GIGO" (Garbage In, Garbage Out). Neal Ferguson helped to fuck the whole world with his Covungabunga model of disease communication and mortality. The software he used for his model was literally garbage and could not produce repeatable results. We need to be very careful about making concrete assumptions about the Real World when we base them on models. Just saying.
M. King Hubbert was the most foremost Petroleum-Geologist in the world.
He was on everybody's payrol.
He predicted US oil production would peak in 1970-1971 and it did.
The reason it is relatively easy to pick a top-date is that consumption of oil increases exponentially over time, so a modest mistake in estimation of how much recoverable oil there is does not throw the timeline of the peak off so much.
No, you are incorrect; Total US oil production was at its highest (because of fracking) in February 2020-13 MM, In February 1970 the peak was Feb at 10 MM barrels.
https://www.aei.org/carpe-diem/chart-of-the-day-us-oil-output-increased-to-a-44-year-high-in-april/#:~:text=3.,below%20US%20peak%20oil%20production.
Well, that was "oil", not "conventional oil" that peaked in the US in 2020.
"Oil" was redefined to include fracked liquids and natural gas liquids, which are not the same as "conventional oil".
You can't make diesel out of this light stuff. It was always known to be there.
:-)
Drew would you have data on the ‘deeper wells’ needing new technology. I can’t find anything on on oil like that. .!?
Certainly-here:
https://www.newswire.ca/news-releases/sinopec-starts-the-drilling-of-asia-s-deepest-oil-and-gas-well-in-tarim-basin-899554189.html
You may have already seen this:
Gerald Celente interviews Dr. Jensen, the man who uncovered many unsettling truths during the Covid War. He brings up an important question; are patients pawns? Accountability must be demanded!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9kS8guJ77-g
< https://www.sunfire.de/en > and Audi e-diesel. Direct replacements for petroleum diesel and gas. Maybe it's time now ?
Interesting.