The Coalition of the Swilling

It's all so funny. There's no scientific evidence that there is an oil shortage, and the shortage doomsayers have about given up on that shibboleth.

Now they want to do the biofuel thing to stop global warming, even though there is no evidence that it would help that either.

There is some perverse struggle out there to make life more difficult for people, and I'm not sure I like the only reasons I can think of as to why they're doing it.

Except for the gullible people and useful idiots who are fooled into supporting these movements, the real impetus behind these philosophies can only be that people are a blight on the earth.

That there is no logical basis for their theories on how to make the rest of us less comfortable and less safe is irrelevent. That their theories are mutually incompatible is irrelevent. The only thing that matters is that they convince others to destroy the advancement of mankind no matter the cost.

Hmmm.

1. Global warming is a crock of nonsense.

2. Using regular agriculture to produce biofuels is a waste of time, energy and land.

3. Using *corn* to produce biofuels is a waste period.

4. However production of biofuels can be useful in many ways.

Some forms of algae consist of a large percentage of useful oils that can be extracted and then processed into biofuels. The remaining solids can then be further processed into animal feed. Or it can be burned to power the system. So this means that almost 100% of the algae produced can be used for this purpose.

Since algae is a plant all it needs is water, sunlight and nutrients. One possible source of nutrients is the outflow from land-based aquaculture, particularly shrimp farming. Another possible source could be human waste. The only issue is the amount of land required to house this sort of system and if any additional energy is needed to run it such as plant growing lamps.

...

Frankly the real question is whether or not we stick with the fuel based system of automotive transport or switch entirely to an electric based system. It all depends on the battery technology that'll come out over the next couple of decades. Ultimately we'll probably shift towards a full-on electric based automotive system as it's pretty efficient overall. Using atomic power to generate the electricity and then funneling that energy into a car wouldn't require intermediate steps to convert that energy into other forms.

Electric is ONLY feasible and more efficient if we go nuclear. Otherwise, we're burning lots of coal and oil and converting into energy inefficiently. Oh yeah, and the mining for the metals that go in the batteries are killing some areas.

So the oil might run out in 50 years, price goes up lasts longer, we have some control over where it is how fast we use it how we price it, whereas Corn- nature, water, temp, weather, new diseases, insects, resistant insects and diseases, pollution, overseas supplies, supply and demand, pricing, foreigners growing it and not selling it to us etc etc how much control do we have over most of this stuff, less than we do over oil. Rock on Fred Flintstone.

Hmmmm.

*shrug* regardless of what we do we're going to advance further on battery technology. There are far too many devices dependent on batteries.

I get so tired of these corn and bean based "biofuels," hydrogen cells, etc., being presented as the thing that's going to save us from ourselves.

There's a pesky little thing called the second law of thermodynamics.

Every time you convert energy from one state to another, some is released as heat - essentially, some is wasted. Growing corn takes a lot of energy (and not just from the sun). Transporting that corn to a plant takes energy. Fermenting the stuff - even if it's just keeping the interior of the plant warm enough for the yeast to do its job - takes energy. Transporting the finished ethanol takes energy.

IIRC, neither biodiesel, ethanol, nor hydrogen cells, in the current state of the technology, is even break-even for the energy that has to be put into their production (that may change if some of the algae-based systems I've been reading about work). And that doesn't include the solar energy that's locked up in the plant tissue; I'm just talking about the oil (or whatever) burnt in order to get the energy into a usable form.

The main thing it does is provide subsidies to farmers and maybe make some environmentalists feel good about themselves.

Putting my "ecologist" hat on, I think what we need to do is:
a. Increase efficiency of the existing technology so less energy is required to do whatever

b. Find ways to use less oil, at least oil from politically unstable regions of the world (okay, so that's not so much ecology as "I don't like feeling like we're beholden to the Bad Guys")

c. Conserve energy where reasonable. (note I said REASONABLE. Amount of toilet paper used by a person doesn't enter into the equation, but walking the four blocks to the dairy store instead of driving it might).

d. Find some kind of more-renewable resource. This cuts down reliance on oil, which is good for natural security. I'm kinda pro wind-power, even though I know it has problems. I don't really have issues with nuclear either, as long as plant security is good enough to keep the kooks out.

e. Recognize that there are NO perfect choices and that humans just ARE going to have an impact on the environment...and that it's not some kind of quasi-religious issue where your "purity" and closeness to $deity is greater the less energy you consume. I mean, bully for you if you can live without a/c through a heatwave, but don't tar me as immoral because I need it to keep from dying of my asthma.