LIFTOFF - THE STORY OF SPACEX

[A64Pilot]

Peak oil is irrelevant, if governments would leave it alone normal supply and demand forces will take care of things, oil will become more and more expensive and other sources of energy will become cheaper and we will switch to them, sure it’s likely things may change, we may not be living in 5,000 sg ft. Mcmansions and driving 9,000 lb SUV’s, but our standard of living can be the same or better.

There will always be oil, but eventually all the easy, cheap oil will be gone, if it’s not already.

But the more Governments mess with it, the more painful the change over will be.

The crime in burning oil for energy in my opinion is the waste of so much valuable raw material for making so many important substances, sort of like burning forests for fuel, we think that nuts now, but not so long ago it was the norm, now most of the old growth timber is gone, much of it simply burnt for heat.

Don't underestimate the brilliance of a few Entrepenuaers, things we are sure aren’t possible may be tomorrow’s normal, like I said I never thought a vertical descent rocket could be re-usable, and I don’t think I was alone. 

Edited July 15, 2021 by A64Pilot

[N201MKTurbo]

4 minutes ago, A64Pilot said:

oil will become more and more expensive and other sources of energy will become cheaper and we will switch to them,

There is no other source of energy, other than electricity. Right now, our electric grid cannot power all the cars, if they were all electric. Besides the bulk of our electricity is made from fossil fuel.

Biofuels have never produced a single BTU of energy. The most successful bio fuel is corn ethanol. If you used the corn ethanol in the tractors to till the soil, plant the corn, harvest the corn and used corn ethanol in the trucks to bring the corn to the still and deliver the ethanol to the refinery and used the ethanol to run the still and dehydrate the ethanol, you would have no ethanol left. It takes a lot of diesel fuel and electricity to make corn ethanol. Corn ethanol is just a farm subsidy program.

[N201MKTurbo]

Well, It looks they have got it to the point where you can get 135 BTUs of corn ethanol by using 100 BTUs of fossil fuel. 

https://www1.eere.energy.gov/bioenergy/pdfs/energy_balance_of_corn_ethanol.pdf

 

Edited July 15, 2021 by N201MKTurbo

[A64Pilot]

We have nuke plants, and if we again get the Governemet to allow better more safe plants than the old Admiral Rickover water plants they can be safe too.

Solar has come a LONG ways, it’s down to less than $1 a watt now, I had a kilowatt on the boat and it covered most of our needs, if we were the type to be frugal it would have covered all of them. I don’t know about wind, how practical it really is.

If we think we are going to all electric ground transportation, we are going to have to make huge increases in production.

The Brazilians are producing alcohol with out using much power to do so, but they are an outlier. not every one can grow sugar cane. Corn made the Greenies and the business side happy. Just as ULSD did. The Grennies congratulated themselves how much pollution they solved, and the oil companies make more profit off of it.

By the way, over 80% of the farm bill is food stamps, yeah I didn’t know that either, so when you hear huge numbers for the farm bill, most all of it is food stamps.

Seems to only be 75% now, but the Farm Bill isn’t the big giveaway to farmers some woud have us believe

https://www.ers.usda.gov/topics/farm-economy/farm-commodity-policy/farm-bill-spending/

‘For reasons that I can’t comprehend a great many are convinced we could solve the global warming thing if we tax oil high enough, not sure how taxes decrease pollution, but a huge number of people are sure that is the answer.

Edited July 16, 2021 by A64Pilot

[Hank]

40 minutes ago, A64Pilot said:

‘For reasons that I can’t comprehend a great many are convinced we could solve the global warming thing if we tax oil high enough, not sure how taxes decrease pollution, but a huge number of people are sure that is the answer.

Every tax increase leads to higher prices, and eventually to lower consumption. And the extra tax dollars can be spent on their other "projects." Their goal is to eliminate what they don't like, and compel usage of what they do like; if you don't like it too, suck it up and pay the higher prices.

[steingar]

14 hours ago, A64Pilot said:

Peak oil is irrelevant, if governments would leave it alone normal supply and demand forces will take care of things, oil will become more and more expensive and other sources of energy will become cheaper and we will switch to them.

I am sorry, but this just isn't true.  There isn't a single alternative source of energy that doesn't depend on fossil fuels except perhaps geothermal.  As fossil fuels get more expensive the price of the alternatives will rise as well.

The worry is as fuel prices rise, so do the prices of everything connected to them.  Food is mostly transported by trucks, which run on gas.  I think you see where this is going.

The problem is simple.  Oil is a miracle.  There is enough energy in one gallon of gasoline to propel several tons of vehicle thirty or forty miles. Nothing on Earth has that kind energy unless you start breaking nuclei, and we're not all that good at that.  And you need fossil fuels to set up nuclear plants. And the supply of fossil fuels is limited, fossil fuels will run out.

What do we do like we did 100 years ago?  We don't eat the same things they did in 1921.  We don't live where they lived in 1921, we don't wear the same clothes, do the same things, but we still burn the exact same fuel. We're better at it, but we're still burning the same stuff over a hundred years later, even after artifical shortages in the  1970s.  We've been looking for alternatives for 50 years and haven't found any.

Make no mistake about it, Peak Oil is coming. I just hope be dead before it hits.  If not, odds are I'll be dead shortly after it hits.

Edited July 16, 2021 by steingar

[N201MKTurbo]

I found a neat way to illustrate the amount of energy in a gallon of gas. Drain all the gas out of your car. Add exactly 1 gallon of gasoline. Drive the car as far away from your house as you can until it runs out. Now push it home.

That being said, it is time to go burn about 40 gallons of avgas!