Over at the Zero Energy Construction blog, they are trumpeting a new way to make ethanol. This way produces ethanol from waste products, not food. And considering the amount of waste products thrown away in this society every day, it makes a lot of sense to turn this waste into fuel. Here is the very interesting post (and I urge everyone to make this blog a regular read since the blogger does a good job of staying on top of energy issues):
His method is much cheaper and environmentally friendly than producing ethanol from corn. Daniell's technique involves using plant-derived enzymes to break down orange peels and other waste materials into sugar, which is then fermented into ethanol.
Producing fuel from waste has not only garnered more attention from the media of late, but it is also receiving much more attention from researchers and scientists, as well as politicians and financiers. Daniell and his team have had their research funded by the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
One of the greatest features of using waste for fuel is that it is an abundant resource that will never be in competition with food resources. According to Daniell discarded orange peels could produce up to 200 million gallons of ethanol annually in Florida alone.
Although Daniell's research and technology requires much more testing before it goes commercial, the professor says, "this could be a turning point where vehicles could use this fuel as the norm for protecting our air and environment for future generations."
Two words: Energy density. This method is capable of transforming about 2.5% of the sunlight that hits plant leaves into fuel. But we are currently burning thousands of years of sunlight hitting plant leaves every day to fuel our transportation infrastructure. To make photosynthesis work as our primary way of fueling our transportation infrastructure, we need either a far more efficient engine than is thermodynamically possible, or we need to cut back our transportation usage drastically -- which probably means the end of industrial civilization, since things like this computer you're reading this message on require the inputs of a significant portion of the world's population, carried on that transportation infrastructure, in order to exist.
ReplyDeleteSo, solar you say? But even if we get 90% efficient photovoltaic cells (current production cells are around 10% efficient, but there are experimental cells in the lab that are over 30% efficient and there's nothing *fundamentally* incompatible with a 90% efficient photovoltaic cell), we're still over 900 times short of energy.
In short, to maintain the capabilities of modern society (which is the only way of creating these solar cells or ethanol production facilities), you end up needing more energy than you can extract from solar. The French will be very smug when we're all shivering in the dark while they're nice and toasty in their nuclear-powered nation. They won't be smug for long, however, because they're as dependent upon this world-wide infrastructure as everybody else... keeping their reactors going after the rest of the world experiences a mass die-off is gonna be a real beach.
- Badtux the Energy Penguin
So what's the answer?
ReplyDeleteIf we get around to killing every 3rd person and only allow a world wide zero population growth, then 90% of all problems vanish.
ReplyDeleteThe 1st part though is really tough on that 3rd person!
Curious: We need a variety of energy sources, but for running the industrial part of our society, the only thing other than coal, oil, and gas that has the required energy density is nuclear energy. Unless you've tried to put together your own fabrication shop complete with welders, grinders, air compressors, and so forth, you have no idea -- zero idea -- of just how much energy these things require to operate. And that's just a small fabrication shop, the modern equivalent of a blacksmith's shop -- building anything on large scale, whether talking about computer chips or solar panels, takes an order of magnitude more energy. Contrary to popular belief, homes do not account for the majority of energy use -- industry does, and the laws of physics say that a welding gun is always going to require a lot of energy in order to weld metal.
ReplyDeleteSo anyhow, unless we're going to have Mr. Long's mass die-off, nuclear energy has to be a significant part of the mix going forward. Unfortunately idiot greenies keep pulling out decades-old prejudices to stop it from happening...
Bad Tux's dire predictions and L.Long's solution (I'd say "final solution," but then I'd fall victim to Godwin's Law) are all too reminiscent of that 20th Century Cassandra, Paul Ehrlich, in his book "The Population Bomb" (1968):
ReplyDelete"The battle to feed humanity is over. In the 1970s, the world will undergo famines. Hundreds of millions of people are going to starve to death in spite of any crash programs embarked upon now. Population control is the only answer."
There was a famine in Ethiopia in the early '70's (not exactly the whole world), and tragic as it was, an estimated 200,000 people died (not hundreds of millions). Was the battle to feed humanity already over in 1968? Not by a long shot.
It's these kinds of doomsday predictions (that somehow never come true) that lead me to look at present-day prognosticators like Al Gore (whatever happened to him, anyway?) with a somewhat jaundiced eye. Somehow, the human race manages to keep muttling through, despite nature's best efforts to the contrary.
Curious, your "logic" is a perfect example of what I'm talking about when I talk about the scientific illiteracy of the left on my own blog. It will *always* require heating steel up to around 2700F to liquify it. Always. It will *always* require a significant amount of energy to heat steel up to that temperature. This is a fundamental law of physics imposed by the nature of the universe, similar to gravity, not amenable to argument.
ReplyDeleteThis has nothing to do with what some idiot said in 1968. There was no fundamental law of physics involved in what some idiot said in 1968. Indeed, examining the number of acres of arable land on the planet, and the crop yields we knew were possible in 1968, it was clear that any famines during the 1970's would be political famines, not ones imposed by the fundamental carrying capacity of the planet. But to go from what some science-rejecting lefty idiot said in 1968 to saying that science is bunk is... err... BUNK. It is utterly lacking in fundamental logic and displays a woeful ignorance of the fundamental difference between science and hand-waving accompanied by loud assertions of "fact".
Regarding future energy requirements and how to meet them, currently we are relying on millions of years of stored sunlight, held underground in oil reservoirs. Clearly at some point this is going to run out. Also clearly, we have managed to burn at least a million years of stored sunlight within the course of 100 years, and you simply aren't going to replace 10,000 years of stored sunlight with a year's worth of unstored sunlight no matter how you wish to do so. The fundamental laws of the universe simply don't care what we humans think about them or how hard you wish... they simply are. Industrial society requires energy -- a *lot* of energy -- because steel, silicon, aluminum, etc. all require heating up to high temperatures in order to allow shaping them. The fundamental laws of physics say that to get the strength needed to build a wide variety of useful industrial items (such as, say, the robots that do the pick-and-place on the circuit boards for the charge controllers for solar panels), you need metals -- no other material has the combination of ductility, strength, and flexibility required. So maintaining the sort of industrial society that can build wind generators and solar panels requires concentrated energy capable of melting metals. This isn't something that's amenable to argument. It simply *is* -- that's how the universe works, sort of like, if you don't eat, you die.
To say that fundamental laws of the universe are "doomsday predictions" is utter nonsense. Gravity isn't a "doomsday prediction". It simply *IS*. Reality is not what you want it to be, it is what it is.
- Badtux the Reality-based Penguin
BadTux,
ReplyDeleteI somehow ended up posting my last comment before having read your second comment - just one of the pitfalls of responding to individual comments received via email rather than reading the whole thread. My bad.
That being said, I agree with you that nuclear energy is at least part of the solution. Had I known that was your position, I wouldn't have been so hard on you. Absent that comment, I misconstrued your earlier comment about the "smug French." Again, my bad.
I also agree with your characterization of Paul Ehrlich's predictions as what "some idiot said in 1968." Unfortunately, there are still people who consider Ehrlich to be some kind of guru, not unlike Al Gore.
A propos Gore, he's back in the news again. On his blog today (February 1) in a post entitled "An Answer for Bill" [O'Reilly], he quoted an unsourced Chicago Tribune article claiming that "scientists have been warning for at least two decades that global warming could make snowstorms more severe," while totally ignoring the fact that about 11 years ago, Dr. David Viner of the Climate Research Unit (CRU) of the University of East Anglia (the gold standard among global warming adherents) said just the opposite. Viner predicted in this 03/20/2000 article in the UK Independent that "within a few years winter snowfall will become 'a very rare and exciting event'."
"'Children just aren't going to know what snow is,' he said." More idiocy.
Finally, I read with some amusement you characterizing my "logic" as a perfect example of "the scientific illiteracy of the left" [Emphasis added]. I may not be as scientifically literate as I'd like to be, but politically, I'm far from a Leftist. And now that I more fully understand your position, I certainly don't consider it to be anywhere near the pseudo science of Ehrlich and Gore.