Seeing as a it's become almost a pastime as an American to drive a car that can compete with most tanks, correct me if I'm wrong, but 30 MPG is something worth murdering someone else for around these parts.
Why it's great to live in the USA
- Thread starter dizietsma
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Seeing as a it's become almost a pastime as an American to drive a car that can compete with most tanks, correct me if I'm wrong, but 30 MPG is something worth murdering someone else for around these parts.
Why would they need to burn oil? There's no reason they can't burn alcohol.
I'm not suggesting the world should switch over to biofuel completely, but there's little reason it can't used to supplement petroleum as a fuel source. I'm confident the world can produce more grain/corn whatever, but right now they are mostly too busy drilling for oil.
ShootMyMonkey
Veteran
They have, many times, actually, but it's bad politics to try and say that ethanol is bad.
You still have to think about EREOI. And I believe in the case that he's referring to, the purpose of petroleum is still for heat. And there's no way you can get more heat out than you're putting in. At least the amount of energy invested on the human end of the equation for petroleum is comparatively small. Also, the energy efficiency of producing ethanol from corn is utterly piss-poor. By comparison, countries which have made it work like Brazil have massive supplies of sugarcane, which is a several times better source, not that it's perfect or even a tiny fraction of the way there.
Cellulosic ethanol is a hopeful on the horizon, not so much because it's efficient, but because there would be less impact on the agricultural economy since you can use otherwise trash plant matter.
Even aside from the burning of oil in the process of producing biofuel, people also seem to ignore the fact that producing more grain/corn also means spending more money on irrigation (which people forget is also a pretty premium resource) and pesticides and farm real estate.
I put far more stock in the concept of biodiesel over ethanol as a superior fuel (more energy, and a wider range of material available to use), but that, too, has its problems if you try to propose an all-biofuel economy (or at least all biofuel for transportation needs).
There are other ways to produce heat, afaik all they need is steam which wouldn't be hard to produce with simple solar. Perhaps they are using petroleum now because of the cost or whatever. I would think natural gas would be a much better choice if they are going to use a non-renewable resource (or perhaps thats what he meant), but perhaps availability there is an issue.
I know there a number facilities that are testing producing various biofuels around here right now, some of them are completely on site self sustaining (in terms of resources). I don't know what fuel price they'd need to become financially viable
You'd be hard pressed to find farms around here that irrigate, at all... ever, and a major export here is grain. Pesticides are another issue and there's no doubt there's an environmental impact that needs to be weighed in as part of the cost. Farm real estate is cheap around here, farming has been suffering along for quite a while and if my paying a few more cents for a loaf of bread is the cost of getting off of petroleum that's not a problem for me.
I would never suggest we limit ourselves to one form of fuel certainly not yet. Many of these fuels are still in the experimental stage and there's a lot of research to go yet, just because some of them don't look as promising now doesn't mean they won't in the future.
aren't alot of oil transactions bought and sold in dollars...
if anything, oil in europe should be getting cheaper... the value of the dollar another factor hurting the price here in america.
then we have farmers growing corn and other such products trying to make ethanol based fuels... which are fermented by burning oil to beging with. So now corn costs more money at the supermarket, as well as every other vegatable as supply decreases from all the farmers converting to corn. Price of pork/beef/chicken has increased, since feed prices have now risen, since people are using their corn for e86...
ethanol fuels cost americans more than they save, it's a completely stupid idea, and they should be boycotted. I can't believe our crap media hasn't run a story on this absurdity.
so gas is more expensive AND groceries are more expensive, and our government is wasting more taxpayer dollars on subsidies... And people wonder why a reported "socialist" canidate is leading the election polls... woohoo, a great time to be a middle class american
I agree completely. Ethanol is a horrible idea, and I live in one of the biggest proponent states of Ethanol, Minnesota. We need Hydrogen!
"Simple" solar is anything but simple, until panel prices reach affordable levels or are subsidized.
ShootMyMonkey
Veteran
Maybe, but as you say, cost and availability are factors. Natural gas and solar are not easily available or universally reliable in the case of solar... Though if you listen to GWB, he might tell you otherwise, and wax philosophical about how natural gas is "hemispheric."
Moreover, for ethanol, they'd need to be 30% cheaper per gallon than gas for the overall cost to come out even to the consumer. Fuels like biodiesel can do fine at the same price as regular, but they're also costly to produce.
Where is "around here"? In the US, there is pretty close to zero square inches of farmland that isn't irrigated in some fashion. Most countries either have to irrigate year-round or yield too little crop output to have any sort of export.
Problem is that there are a number of meaningful things you can do until that time that nobody will do. Sure, there are a number of reasons that are sort of valid, but a lot of it is attributable to bass-ackwards protocols which are so often very "precisely" wrong.
Saskatchewan, Canada. I shouldn't say hard pressed to find ones that do irrigate, there's quite a few, but the vast majority of farmers here do not irrigate. Its around 10% of the 40 million acres of cultivated farmland that's irrigated.
There's certainly a number of scams going on just meant to take advantage of various incentive programs.
They burn oil cause it's cheaper than ethanol... It costs more money for E86 than it does for petrol fuels... the government here just subsidises the hell out of it... literally, you can google it you don't believe me(and i'm not suprised, it's a bit hard to swallow and recieves 0 press) if it werent for subsidies, nobody would make ethanol fuels here in america, cause they cost more to make.
Its about 30c a gallon, from my recollection. (at least here in Texas)
it's more expensive yes... but you have to realize, the UK is about the size of 1 medium US state... we have 48 of them. I know people that drive 150 miles round trip to work every day... and yes some of that is their own fault, for not just moving houses, but still. Stuff is alot more spread out in the rural area's... without a car, you are helpless....
and we don't have the public transportation systems in place over there either. What i think is crazy, is you pay alot more for gas, and you guys tend to pay alot higher income taxes if i'm not mistaken ? Like a double pinch on money... sorry guys
ShootMyMonkey
Veteran
Well, I assume that's the total price, and not just the tax. Total price per gallon in many parts of the US would still be around 50-60% of what you pay in the UK. Exceptions would be those areas serving as lots for summer homes for the filthy rich, which do have gas prices above $5.00 a gallon.
Well, you can't necessarily fault people for not moving. There are usually other reasons not to move which supercede gas prices. Back when I lived in Dallas, I lived 30 miles from work because rent was that much cheaper (gas prices would have had to have been over $15.00 a gallon to make it even).
Mmm... some towns are extremely well-connected by mass transit. And they will typically be major business hubs like Chicago, Silicon Valley, New York, etc. The thing is that people aren't as likely to use it as we might think. People in the US want to own cars and get around by their own volition.
CosmoKramer
Newcomer
The US is not more urbanized than Sweden.
Unfortunately, I have to agree with Verge here.
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