100 Percent Renewable Energy......

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kyleb said:
Consumer Reports says the average life expectancy of a new vehicle is 8 years. I'm not gonna argue with CR, but that seems a bit short to me.

Anyway, if the replacement cycle on cars is 8 years, the stated problem is easier to solve.
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That’s cause everyone enjoys a nice big car payment lol
 
flyingcheesehead said:
Fast forward x number of years, and we get to the point where the oil supply is at or close to its end. Can you imagine the chaos? Governments declare no more sales of petroleum products to the public to save what little oil they have left for military purposes. War likely breaks out as the most powerful countries attack the most oil-rich countries to get the few drops that are left. Europe would likely fare OK, as they're much less dependent on cars than we are, but in the USA? Holy crap, we'd be screwed. At first, people would converge on the grocery stores, but those stores would quickly run out of food with no way to replenish it (because it gets there on a truck). We would quickly be back into the 1800s, but with a lot more conflict because it's not like there's enough farm animals in every town to supply food needs, and frankly we don't remember how do distribute things without trucks any more. Cities would collapse, and countries too.

The market would certainly support electric vehicles and solar/wind energy at that point, but it would be far too late. . .
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That's quite an interesting theory on the sudden collapse of an entire industry, like it would happen over the course of a month and all of the sudden there is no substitute for transportation. Unfortunately it's in the realm of never-gonna-happen. If we did run into an actual issue where our oil reserves began to deplete, it wouldn't happen simultaneously at all shale plays in the USA. It would happen slowly over the course of a decade, and the "market" would be well-aware of the problem. There would likely be a period of a decade or two for the free market to come up with a substitute for petroleum-based fuels, not some apocalyptic event where everyone's capital assets were reduced to worthless in a matter of months/years.
 
kyleb said:
Consumer Reports says the average life expectancy of a new vehicle is 8 years. I'm not gonna argue with CR, but that seems a bit short to me.

Anyway, if the replacement cycle on cars is 8 years, the stated problem is easier to solve.
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Well that's probably the average time people own a vehicle after it's purchased new, not the total life cycle of a vehicle.
 
SoonerAviator said:
That's quite an interesting theory on the sudden collapse of an entire industry, like it would happen over the course of a month and all of the sudden there is no substitute for transportation. Unfortunately it's in the realm of never-gonna-happen. If we did run into an actual issue where our oil reserves began to deplete, it wouldn't happen simultaneously at all shale plays in the USA. It would happen slowly over the course of a decade, and the "market" would be well-aware of the problem. There would likely be a period of a decade or two for the free market to come up with a substitute for petroleum-based fuels, not some apocalyptic event where everyone's capital assets were reduced to worthless in a matter of months/years.
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This. We have supposedly been 50 years away from "out of oil" for over a century and they keep finding more. If we were really about to run out prices would not be as low as they are. It's more likely we have 250 years before it's a problem.
 
Rushie said:
This. We have supposedly been 50 years away from "out of oil" for over a century and they keep finding more. If we were really about to run out prices would not be as low as they are. It's more likely we have 250 years before it's a problem.
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I saw a really neat graph which covered average, median and the standard deviation for 80% of wells by depth by year from msl. We went from hundreds of feet in the 50s to a thousand or so feet in the 70s to five thousand feet in the 90s. Now with fracking it has headed back down some.
What I want to know was it accurate?

Sent from my SM-J737T using Tapatalk
 
kyleb said:
Consumer Reports says the average life expectancy of a new vehicle is 8 years. I'm not gonna argue with CR, but that seems a bit short to me.
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That's average, though... Meaning 50% replaced in less, 50% replaced in more.

While it does seem somewhat short, remember that plenty of cars are taken off the road through accidents. I wouldn't expect most cars to die mechanically in 8 years, but there will be an additional percentage that do have mechanical problems that aren't *economically* viable to repair, with that percentage increasing for each year in age.

But, if you look up the 2010 models of a bunch of cars to see what they looked like, the 8 years thing becomes more believable. I know I don't see a whole lot of the older-generation Fusions on the road any more (they're quite easy to distinguish from the 2013+ generation). I'm not sure why that is, but it'd certainly be interesting to see the causes of a vehicle's end-of-life by year.

Rushie said:
This. We have supposedly been 50 years away from "out of oil" for over a century and they keep finding more. If we were really about to run out prices would not be as low as they are. It's more likely we have 250 years before it's a problem.
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It's not only that we're finding more, but that we're using it more efficiently. Look at how much cars burned 50 years ago - From what I've found, the average just prior to the 1973 oil crisis was just shy of 12 MPG! :eek:
 
Dan Thomas said:
When I was in school in the '60s we were taught that oil came from dead dinosaurs. They don't teach that anymore. The current thinking is this, from
https://oilprice.com/Energy/Crude-O...xplanation-On-This-Essential-Fossil-Fuel.html :

Crude oil is created through the heating and compression of organic materials over a long period of time. Most of the oil we extract today comes from the remains of prehistoric algae and zooplankton whose remains settled on the bottom of an Ocean or Lake. Over time this organic material combined with mud and was then heated to high temperatures from the pressure created by heavy layers of sediment. This process, known as diagenesis, changes the chemical composition first into a waxy compound called kerogen and then, with increased heat, into a liquid through a process called catagenesis.

Maybe eight or ten years ago Ukrainian scientists took dolomite, a form of marble that is formed from those prehistoric microorganism remains, mixed it with water, and put it under terrific heat and pressure. They got crude oil out of it. I think that's when the theories changed big time. When you think about the constant tectonic subduction of seafloors in so many places, you start to realize that this is indeed a renewable resource.
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It's not renewable in any useful sense, though - That is, we're using it much faster than it is forming.
 
JOhnH said:
From my high school physics, I think you are both wrong.

m is indeed the "change" in mass,
and
E is the "change" in energy The more correct formula is actually:

e2 - e1 = (m2 - m1) * c^2
or
Delta E = Delta m * c^2
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Your assertion is incorrect. Your formula is just a different version of the mass/energy equivalence as it states a change in mass results in a change in energy. While that is obvious, it is not "correct", as in claiming my statement defining E=mc^2 is "wrong".

The E=mc^2 formula and the description of it I stated in my post is valid and correct. The poster I responded to claimed the formula was produced as a description of the fusion event, which it was not.

In the late 19th century the equivalency of mass and energy was hinted at by other scientists, and a version of E=mc^2 was postulated in On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies, an Einstein paper produced in 1905 which was one his works cited in the award of his Nobel Prize for physics in 1921.

The formula was refined by Einstein and others over the next 30 years to account for the different total energies of bodies at rest and when they had inertia and momentum. While the earlier congruent versions of the formula were identical for all intents and purposes, it was finally written in the popular E=mc^2 form by Einstein in 1941.

The first successful fusion events in the laboratory were not made until 1932, and Hans Bethe won the 1967 Nobel Prize in physics for his 1938-1939 papers which detailed the proton-proton chain reaction and how fusion powers the stars.
 
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While we like to blame the government for phasing things in overnight, the reality is there's usually some level of warning that's fairly significant. Emissions regulations, for instance, are published years in advance. I remember when I was in college we had some folks from Cummins come to talk, and they were complaining about how the emissions standards for trucks that were... I think at the time about 8 years out... were so low that there wasn't even equipment that could measure that low of emissions. Obviously those technological hurdles got overcome, as I'm driving that truck now. ADS-B is another example, that's been announced for some time.

So if there were some mandate going to electric vehicles, it wouldn't be an overnight thing, there would be some level of warning. If nothing else, manufacturing wouldn't be able to keep up with an overnight switch.

I'm not too worried about it happening anytime soon. Far more concerned with driverless cars.
 
3393RP said:
Your assertion is incorrect. Your formula is just a different version of the mass/energy equivalence as it states a change in mass results in a change in energy. While that is obvious, it is not "correct", as in claiming my statement defining E=mc^2 is "wrong".

The E=mc^2 formula and the description of it I stated in my post is valid and correct. The poster I responded to claimed the formula was produced as a description of the fusion event, which it was not.

In the late 19th century the equivalency of mass and energy was hinted at by other scientists, and a version of E=mc^2 was postulated in On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies, an Einstein paper produced in 1905 which was one his works cited in the award of his Nobel Prize for physics in 1921.

The formula was refined by Einstein and others over the next 30 years to account for the different total energies of bodies at rest and when they had inertia and momentum. While the earlier congruent versions of the formula were identical for all intents and purposes, it was finally written in the popular E=mc^2 form by Einstein in 1941.

The first successful fusion events in the laboratory were not made until 1932, and Hans Bethe won the 1967 Nobel Prize in physics for his 1938-1939 papers which detailed the proton-proton chain reaction and how fusion powers the stars.
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Exactly.

I suspect (and I could be wrong) that JOhnH may be missing the concept of equivalence. https://www.brightstorm.com/science/physics/nuclear-physics/mass-energy-equivalence/


Also refer to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass–energy_equivalence

"Mass and energy can be seen as two names (and two measurement units) for the same underlying, conserved physical quantity."​

Mass and energy are the same thing; what we perceive as mass is a huge bundle of energy in a teeny-weeny volume.

Also,

In relativity, removing energy is removing mass, and for an observer in the center of mass frame, the formula m = E/c2 indicates how much mass is lost when energy is removed. In a nuclear reaction, the mass of the atoms that come out is less than the mass of the atoms that go in, and the difference in mass shows up as heat and light with the same relativistic mass as the difference (and also the same invariant mass in the center of mass frame of the system). In this case, the E in the formula is the energy released and removed, and the mass m is how much the mass decreases. In the same way, when any sort of energy is added to an isolated system, the increase in the mass is equal to the added energy divided by c2. For example, when water is heated it gains about 6983111000000000000♠1.11×10−17 kg of mass for every joule of heat added to the water.​

So when you throw a baseball, imparting kinetic energy, its mass increases. In our everyday world, though, the increase is so infinitesimal as to be negligible, and Newtonian physics is perfectly adequate for those of us who drive cars, fly airplanes, and do stuff not involving nuclear power generation or thermonuclear detonations.
 
Rushie said:
This. We have supposedly been 50 years away from "out of oil" for over a century and they keep finding more. If we were really about to run out prices would not be as low as they are. It's more likely we have 250 years before it's a problem.
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What I foresee is coal and oil becoming gradually harder and more expensive to extract over some period of time. My HOPE is that it occurs over a long enough period so that market forces will drive development of other solutions fast enough to avoid severe disruption. Meanwhile, I do think that it would be wise for governments to support research into alternatives, because in reality, no one really knows whether it will be that gradual or not.
 
tspear said:
I saw a really neat graph which covered average, median and the standard deviation for 80% of wells by depth by year from msl. We went from hundreds of feet in the 50s to a thousand or so feet in the 70s to five thousand feet in the 90s. Now with fracking it has headed back down some.
What I want to know was it accurate?

Sent from my SM-J737T using Tapatalk
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Not sure what the graph you saw was supposed to represent, but the main explanation for the depth changes is: technology. Directional drilling (fracking) didn't come into heavy use until the 70's, and has been refined a TON in the past 2 decades. Drilling rigs weren't great at going down several thousands of feet, and locating the oil/gas reserves was less accurate in the 50's vs now. We drill deeper because we can see the shale formations with scientific equipment these days, where in the 40's/50's there was a much larger amount of speculation to it. The can now drill thousands of feet and come out within a few meters of the intended sweet spot. No chance of that kind of accuracy in the 50's or even the 70's. We've just gotten so good at it that we can extract more product per well, and do it at a faster rate, too.
 
Ted DuPuis said:
I've been told by others that the water heat is the best use of solar heat. Given what I found on my pool in Ohio, I'd tend to agree that probably makes sense. I think we're going to live here long enough that the investment could actually make sense and have a payback, but there's other things that I'd rather use the money for, like various home improvements, building the Cobra, etc.
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IIRC, passive solar heating for houses was reasonable, if you designed it in from the start. Maybe not 100% of your heat load, but it would save some energy costs for a reasonable expenditure during design and construction. I'm not sure about how that would work for retrofitting an existing house.

kyleb said:
Consumer Reports says the average life expectancy of a new vehicle is 8 years. I'm not gonna argue with CR, but that seems a bit short to me.

Anyway, if the replacement cycle on cars is 8 years, the stated problem is easier to solve.
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Average, maybe. We keep the average up. 1999 Jeep Wrangler, 2006 Jeep Commander and 2013 Ford Escape. Yeah, the Ford is less than 8 years old, but there are NO plans to replace it anytime in the foreseeable future.

flyingcheesehead said:
That's average, though... Meaning 50% replaced in less, 50% replaced in more.
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Average is not the same thing as you state. You have defined the median value. I know, picky, picky, picky. :D
 
Yes, totally possible in 10 years. Just put a $2 tax per barrel of oil in place and increase it $2 each month for 10 years. Total tax $240 a barrel. Do the same thing with a natural gas, nuclear, ect. A gallon of gas would be $20.
 
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SoonerAviator said:
Not sure what the graph you saw was supposed to represent, but the main explanation for the depth changes is: technology. Directional drilling (fracking) didn't come into heavy use until the 70's, and has been refined a TON in the past 2 decades. Drilling rigs weren't great at going down several thousands of feet, and locating the oil/gas reserves was less accurate in the 50's vs now. We drill deeper because we can see the shale formations with scientific equipment these days, where in the 40's/50's there was a much larger amount of speculation to it. The can now drill thousands of feet and come out within a few meters of the intended sweet spot. No chance of that kind of accuracy in the 50's or even the 70's. We've just gotten so good at it that we can extract more product per well, and do it at a faster rate, too.
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It was part of a general article that oil/gas was getting progressively harder to extract, and only advances in technology actually have kept it economically viable and within reach.
The first obstacle was depth, then accuracy, then material (from pockets to shale). The question was, what was next?

Tim
 
Clip4 said:
Yes, totally possible in 10 years. Just put a $2 tax per barrel of oil in place and increase it $2 each month for 10 years. Total tax $240 a barrel. Do the same thing with a natural gas, nuclear, ect. A gallon of gas would be $20.
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That's not working too well in FRance, nope.
 
Bill Jennings said:
And I firmly believe the government has no business picking (or trying to pick, Solyndra, etc.) marketplace winners and losers. Electric cars, alternative energy strategies, etc., should not be subsidized with our tax dollars. If they're good and relevant products, they'll stand on their own in the marketplace.



I've often thought of this. There is no free lunch. The energy that is taken from the wind, from the ocean currents, etc., what long term issues does this cause? And would it not possibly cause climate change? It would be hard to study, but not hard to imagine negative consequences.
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Not much different than the current climate change issues. Frankly if you carry the thought exercise to its logical solution the only way to protect Mother Earth is to eliminate the virus that is humanity.
 
Tarheelpilot said:
Not much different than the current climate change issues. Frankly if you carry the thought exercise to its logical solution the only way to protect Mother Earth is to eliminate the virus that is humanity.
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The goal is not to protect Mother Earth, it's to protect humanity.
 
Bill Jennings said:
And I firmly believe the government has no business picking (or trying to pick, Solyndra, etc.) marketplace winners and losers. Electric cars, alternative energy strategies, etc., should not be subsidized with our tax dollars. If they're good and relevant products, they'll stand on their own in the marketplace.

-- snip --

I've often thought of this. There is no free lunch. The energy that is taken from the wind, from the ocean currents, etc., what long term issues does this cause? And would it not possibly cause climate change? It would be hard to study, but not hard to imagine negative consequences.
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The problem is that no one cares about those things. Everything about climate change and alternative energy policy is politically-driven. Neither side gives a rat's ass about the science except to the extent that it buttresses their own interests or harms their opponents' interests.

That's not to say that the scientists are insincere, by the way. But in the end, it's not the scientists who make policy. Politicians do that; and as with everything else they do, their decisions are based on political factors such as personal ideologies and campaign contributions. The results are often bizarre and work against the very results they claim to seek.

For example, one of the natural gas pipeline companies have been trying to run a six-inch pipeline along a certain stretch of road around here for at least 15 years, but have been thwarted in their attempts to do so by anti-fossil-fuel activists. The pipeline, if laid, would allow thousands, or possibly tens of thousands, of households a cleaner heating option than what they're already using.

Currently the available heating options are oil, wood, or propane. Natural gas is much cleaner than oil or wood. It's also somewhat cleaner than propane because it doesn't have to be delivered in tank trucks that burn diesel, belch fumes, and get about 4 mpg. By any practical analysis, laying that gas line would have a more immediate beneficial effect on the atmosphere than anything else that could be accomplished within the same time frame.

But none of that matters because policy isn't based on science or common sense. It's based on politics. In this case the operative political pressure is coming from people who are anti-fossil fuel: and politically speaking, their hatred of fossil fuel companies overrides the obvious practical benefits of allowing thousands of households to burn a cleaner fuel than they're burning today.

And then there are the ones who install wood stoves and wood furnaces to avoid burning oil or propane, like Hippie Lady down the hill from me. We had a discussion about the relative emissions of burning wood versus burning propane a few years ago. In the end she admitted that she knew that propane burned cleaner than wood. Her main motivation was not to save the planet, but to screw fossil fuel companies. She just got a cord of wood delivered a few weeks ago, so I guess she hasn't changed her mind.

Don't get me wrong. I don't give a rat's ass if Hippie Lady burns dead bodies to heat her home. But hatred is always a poor basis for policy whether on the micro or the macro scale. Whatever infinitesimal harm Hippie Lady is doing to "Big Oil" is of no concern to them.

Speaking of which, a 2003 article in Mother Jones magazine titled "Hydrogen's Dirty Little Secret" gives an interesting and perverse insight into how political pressure can thwart common-sense solutions. The gist of the article was a pessimistic take on hydrogen based on the facts that the fossil fuel industry currently produces most of the hydrogen and owns almost all of the present hydrogen infrastructure, and that the other logical candidate for hydrogen production would be nuclear power plants.

Or to put it more succinctly, because two industries that Mother Jones and its readers hate would be the initial beneficiaries of expanded implementation of hydrogen as a fuel, we shouldn't do it.

The article ignores the fact that oil and gas companies don't so much "make" hydrogen as harvest it as a by-product of their other processes. If hydrogen were to catch on as a fuel (especially for motor vehicles), demand for fossil-fuel based fuels would drop proportionately; and in fairly short order, "Big Oil" would no longer be able to meet the demand for hydrogen as a by-product of their refining processes.

That would create a huge opportunity for others to produce hydrogen using direct solar power, electricity derived from solar or wind power, or thorium-fueled nuclear power -- all of which are essentially zero-emissions processes. But that doesn't matter. As long as "Big Oil" and the uranium-fueled nuclear power industry stand to make money -- even if only for a little while -- hydrogen is no good. Hatred for those industries outweighs the staggeringly obvious benefits of hydrogen expansion.

The other thing that makes me scratch my head is why anyone with the least bit of common sense believes that "Big Oil" would, or even should, disappear because of alternative energy expansion. What exactly prevents ExxonMobil from investing their dollars in wind, solar, or any other non-petroleum energy source? There are dozens of struggling, publicly-traded fledgling companies in those industries that ExxonMobil could acquire overnight if they wanted to. And when it becomes in their business interests to do so, I'm sure they will.

What people overlook is that ExxonMobil isn't in the petroleum business. Oil is a raw material for them -- and one that won't last forever. Their product is energy. They'd have to be fools to not be at least interested in other profitable energy venues considering that their present business depends on finite resources. And as much as many people hate oil companies, not too many accuse them of being run by fools.

Even if ExxonMobil remained the nation's largest hydrogen producer, does anyone actually believe that they'd keep making it from oil and gas when cheaper, renewable sources were available? Why on earth would they spend more money to produce hydrogen from a finite resource that's essential to their other businesses when they could spend less money to make it from water?

But again, few people think along lines of science, technology, and common sense these days. They're motivated by hatred. They hate "Big Oil," and because of that, they're literally incapable of believing that their favorite pariahs might possibly do something that is in both their own corporate interests and that of the earth.

It's pretty damned mind-boggling when you think about it.

What it comes down to is that "Big Oil" will never cease to exist because "Big Oil" is really just "Big Money." When the time is right, they'll put that money elsewhere. Rather than thinking of them as the enemy, renewable-fuel advocates ought to be courting their favor and cooperation.

But they can't. Their hatred is just too strong.

Rich
 
RJM62 said:
For example, one of the natural gas pipeline companies have been trying to run a six-inch pipeline along a certain stretch of road around here for at least 15 years, but have been thwarted in their attempts to do so by anti-fossil-fuel activists. The pipeline, if laid, would allow thousands, or possibly tens of thousands, of households a cleaner heating option than what they're already using.
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Good post, though I'm afraid it might get the thread locked so I'll just add this: the same controversy has been going on in Vermont for a number of years. Chittenden County (which includes Burlington) has natural gas now, and a few years ago there was a plan by Vermont Gas to extend the service to Addison County, but climate activists nixed the plan because "we must not invest further in fossil fuel infrastructure". For similar reasons it's unlikely that central VT will ever see natural gas. It makes no sense, given that the three main fuels used for home heating throughout VT are oil, propane, and wood. Oil and propane are, of course, fossil fuels (or derived from fossil fuels), and they are so expensive that many houses offset the cost by burning wood, which is not a fossil fuel but is much "dirtier" than the other two. Folks don't consider that all three fuels result in higher CO2 emissions per btu than natural gas, and wood burning is so pervasive that the air is often nearly unbreathable in villages like the one I live in.

IBTL (I hope).
 
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